Indentifying Your Strengths In Business

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Updated 10 years ago

This is an email I received today and I'm not even sure who it's from but I got a lot of value from it so I thought you might too. Check it out and leave your comments below.

"Spending time on the tasks you are good at and enjoy, while
outsourcing the rest will make you highly more productive.

The thought process behind this is that if you are outsourcing
the activities that take you a long time, you can spend that time
doing the tasks you are good at and enjoy. Time is valuable and
this makes better use of the time you have available.

However, you may have trouble deciding which tasks to keep and
which tasks to delegate or outsource. This uncertainty may come
from conflict between what you are good at and what you like to
do because these are two very different things. For example, you
might be really good at writing html code for your own web design,
but having to do it makes you want to jump off a cliff.

There is a great book by Marcus Buckingham called Go Put Your
Strengths To Work. In this book, Buckingham talks about discovering
what your real strengths are, and he proposes there are actually
four qualities you need to look for to determine strengths.

These 4 qualities are:

1. Success. You’re really good at the task, and you can effectively
accomplish the task without too much frustration.

2. Draw. You feel drawn to the task or you look forward to
completing the task.

3. Time Flies. When you’re working on a task time flies by.

4. Fulfillment. Completing the tasks leaves you with a sense of
fulfillment; even if it was really difficult.

Write down all the tasks you need done in order to accomplish your
goals. Once you have a list, go through and decide which tasks you
classify as your strengths. Use the four qualities listed above as
the criteria for identifying a strength. Also, keep in mind you
likely have multiple strengths.

Make a list of the tasks that do not fulfill the four qualities
of a strength; these are the ones you want to consider outsourcing.
Before you start thinking you can’t afford to outsource, keep reading.
In order to understand how you can afford hiring out certain tasks,
you need to change the way you think about it. Your time is valuable
and worth money. If you are focusing your time on the tasks that
are your strengths you will be more effective and successful than
if you are focusing your time and energy on trying to accomplish
something that isn’t even close to a strength.

For the tasks that are not your strengths, write down how long it
takes you to accomplish the task. For example, if writing is not
your strong suit, it might take you two hours to write a simple
500-word article. You can pay a writer to write the same article
for $10. You have to decide if your time is worth more than $5
per hour because for $10 you can save yourself two hours.

This goes the same for all business tasks. Let’s say you just
have a lot of menial tasks that aren’t getting down because you’re
too busy doing other things. You can hire a virtual assistant for
a couple hours a week to just keep up on your busy work for you.
You can’t simply look at what it will cost you monetarily. You
need to look at what it will save you. You can make more money,
you can’t create more time.

One of the many benefits of being a home business entrepreneur
is our ability to create a schedule that works with our lives.
However, if you are not using your time effectively to grow your
business, you will have no life to work around."