January Challenge: Planning and Delegating Tasks

Sometimes tasks and projects become bigger than we can handle on our own. They require one or two things: a plan and/or someone to help you.

Planning tasks and projects can be as easy adding it to your to-do lists or something that takes more thought and preparation. 99% of my tasks and projects are simple enough that I don't need to plan them out. I've created a project planning page to help you with this planning process. I know down the road when I have a house I'll use this project planner all of the time.

The project planner document is perfect for planning out an actual physical project (such as building a new desk) or planning out an organization overhaul on a specific room (such as your office that looks like a tornado came through). The last box on the document - called "envision it" - can be used for more notes, photos from magazines, or a sketch or diagram that you've come up with.

project planner

Delegating tasks and projects can make your life easier and less stressed. Sit down with your spouse and/or family and decide who can do what to help take the complete home work load off of you. After all, you made a list of things you'd like to spend more time doing. If you try to do everything yourself, you may never get to do what you enjoy. Delegate! Take advantage of your children being able to complete some tasks themselves or for you if they're old enough. It teaches responsibility and it's a great way to get them involved in helping out the running of your household. {On a side note: I love how Dave Ramsey talks about his children helping out around the house when they were young and earning a commission. What a great way to teach children about money and responsibility. (You can read more about it here.)}

Delegate tasks to your spouse. After all, there are truly some things that our spouses do better than us. Why shouldn't we take advantage of that? Here's a free honey-do list for delegating tasks to your spouse.

honey-do list

Ladies: pay close attention, because I'm about to let you in on a little inside tip. Men need and want a "complete by" time for tasks we're delegating to them. My husband sent me this article that was linked via Yahoo, and told me that tip #3 was definitely one of the most important things he wanted me to remember. Since I've read this article from Woman's Day, I've been telling that tip to people all of the time, and they think that it's not really something that's as important as I'm leading it on to be...until they ask their spouse. Then I'm told that I was right. Trust me on this one!

So, your homework for this week's challenge is to finish categorizing and creating your lists (from Monday's post), plan out tasks and projects that need more than just a reminder on a to-do list, and delegate tasks to others in your household. I know you can do it!

Only one week left before the January Challenge comes to an end. Remember: there will be a post on January 26, allowing you to share your progress and enter a giveaway for an amazing prize that goes along with this month's challenge, and will fit hand-in-hand with next month's challenge (which you will all love by the way). To share your progress you can simply leave a comment telling me what you've accomplished this month, related to the challenge. If you have a blog and want to post about it on there and share the link, I'd love to see what you've been up to!

Keep up the good work! Get ready for monthly organizational challenges for the rest of 2012 by finishing up January's challenge with a great schedule, to-do lists, and sense of relief from fixing your time crunch hunch. I'll be back next Monday with the last January Challenge task post!