Law of Increasing Returns

When I hired my terrific new website designer, I told (warned) her that I would go onto the site and edit too.  And I did. I changed some language, I moved a few things around. Most of these were improvement plus It took a lot less time to do it myself than to explain it to someone else.

And then one day I broke the new website. I made a mess and realized that I didn’t have time to learn how to fix it.

So, as I told her, I gave back my box of crayons. Now I just tell her what needs to be added, changed, deleted … or new ideas. 

More than 99 percent of the time she does it just right the first time. The rest of the time, I give her feedback and then it’s just right. 

And overall, it now takes much less time than if I do it myself. It’s the “go slow to go fast” syndrome, I  just had to get past that initial learning curve.

In the mean time, while I’m not tinkering with my website, I’ve done something else that needed doing … client calls, creating IP, even just reading. But that something else is contributing to the part of the business where I am most needed and best used.

Highest and best use of my time.

I see this with my clients too. Worst of all, we tend to be the less effective with our time when we are the busiest. When we think we don’t have time to ask someone else to do something. It’s crazy, but it’s what we do.

  • The more that you do yourself, the less the return on your time.
  • The more that you have others do, the greater the return on your time. 
  • The law of increasing returns.
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Karen Walker
— One Team Consulting

 

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