
My entire office is preparing for a move to a new location at the end of year. Part of that preparation includes cleaning our offices of all unnecessary paper and materials. Fortunately, I am the complete opposite of a pack rat, and I tend to scan most things given to me in paper form. I scan and save them electronically. No matter how I try, though, paper builds up. Without question, the largest collection of paper, booklets, and binders in my office comes from training programs and courses that I have attended. I kept a lot of the training materials, because most had some good information that I thought might be useful at some point in the future. Nevertheless, I have to get rid of most of this stuff. While standing at the shred bin, dumping the contents of several binders, a small note card fell out with the heading “DELEGATION.” I stopped Operation Purge for a moment to read my notes on this card. I immediately took a picture of the card and uploaded it into a folder in Springpad. It occurred to me that I might not be the only one who has occasional struggles with effective delegation, so I thought that sharing my notes might be helpful to others.

Just in case you can’t read my writing…
Before
Determine the task
Determine the staff needed
Time
During
Agree on the scope of the tast
Set expectations
Explain why the delegation was made
Set due dates
Remove barriers
Establish open communication
Be flexible
After
Evaluate result/Feedback
Give credit/recognition
Discuss any next steps
If these notes are helpful, please feel free to share the link to this post with others. You can also save a copy of the picture of my note card (Flickr), or download a PDF copy of the note text. (Dropbox).
If you look at the image long enough, you can make the train change direction simply by thinking about it. Pretty cool!


What is the most interesting thing that you read, saw, or viewed recently? Please share your links in the comments.
Ever since leaving social media last year, I can say that my focus has definitely increased. Nevertheless, I am always looking for ways to stay, or become, more focused. Perhaps some of you suffer from issues of focus, too — particularly due to digital distractions. I ran across this infographic and thought that it was worth sharing. As with most advice, not all of is practical or something that you can, realistically, implement; but it’s worth thinking about how much you can work into your daily routine.

Source: Mind Map Art
Do you have a particular technique, habit, or practice that you employ when you need to really focus? If so, please share. I think that it might be good for me to revisit Leo Babauta’s book Focus. (Click here for a downloadable PDF copy.)