How to stop doing everyone else’s work

Busyness is an epidemic – one spread by women who take on too much of other people’s work.

“I had to work late last night doing something INSERT NAME was meant to do”.

Sound familiar? We usually hear this complaint when women are tasked to lead people and projects, yet find themselves doing most of the doing.

Moving from doing to leading is hard. The skills that make you very good at your work can make you very bad at enabling others to do it. We hate to break it to you, but you’re not the only one who suffers while you navigate the transition. If you’re running yourself ragged, you’re probably also driving coworkers crazy. Not ideal.

That’s not all. While you overload yourself with tasks you’ve outgrown, your peers are focused on high-priority and highly visible work that gets them the recognition you deserve. Very not ideal.

We love and support you, so take this feedback as a gift to help you improve: If you’re always doing other people’s work, you’re not nailing your own.

How to expand your impact

You may be the world’s most diligent employee, but your impact will always be limited to the 24 hours you have in a day. And if you work late, you’re probably less productive. Life is too short to spend sacrificing our sanity for… What? Seriously, what? As Powrsuit expert Rachael Fitzjohn says, ‘no one is handing out medals for doing it all’.

If you want to progress in your career, you have to stop doing everything yourself. Anyone who has successfully moved into a leadership role has learned this critical lesson – probably the hard way. And we hear you: Other people’s work doesn’t meet your standards. We’re not going to ask you to drop them, but we do want to offer some tools to deliver great results without burning out:

1. Plan. Plan. Plan.

Do you identify as a woman of action? Fight the urge to dive in and start doing.

Planning is a critical component of good time management. You’ve experienced what happens when you skip it – people run in different directions while you run back to your desk to deliver what’s needed.

Planning doesn’t always mean Gantt charts and spreadsheets; it can be as simple as prioritisation and time blocking. When you know what you’re meant to be doing, it’s easy to see the opportunity cost of taking on more.

Include buffers wherever you can. At Powrsuit, we plan to complete everything days (or weeks) before a deadline, so we’re almost never trying to finish something at the last minute. It’s not always possible, but finishing early is a very easy way to lower stress levels.

2. What does ‘done’ look like?

Define what ‘done’ looks like. Just as importantly, define what’s out of scope. The 80/20 rule is a helpful tool for this.

Upfront expectations limit future pain. It can be hard to set them, but you can’t expect someone to meet yours if they don’t know what they are. So, create a checklist for everyone to refer to. Even if you’re working alone, this is still a useful exercise to stop scope creep. Some questions to get you started:

Goal: What is the benefit of this piece of work? How will success be measured?

Timeframe: What is a reasonable deadline for delivery? What are key deliverables?

Audience: Who is this for, and what do they need?

Scope: What’s required – and what isn’t? How much polish is needed? There’s a big difference between a rough document and a pixel-perfect slide deck!

Participants: Who needs to collaborate on this, and to what extent?

Milestones: At what points do you need to review or sign off before continuing?

3. Your way is not always the only way

Over our careers, we become experts at doing things in a particular way. We hone skills and develop specific processes, communication styles, and frameworks that make us very good at doing.

What we usually don’t know is how to enable other people to deliver to the same high standard.

An important distinction: Doing work to our standard is not the same thing as doing it our way. We waste everyone’s time by reworking something simply because we would have done it differently. Do it a couple of times, and everyone else will start doing less while you continue to do more.

Other people won’t write like you, plan like you, or manage stakeholders like you. Before you take that red pen to their work (and motivation levels), ask yourself, “Does this meet the standard we agreed to?”

If it does? Give them a whopping great thank you for a job well done, and give yourself the night off.

4. Good things take time

The main reason we do others’ work is for speed. You might take 30 minutes to whip out an email, white paper or budget, while everyone else will need more time (you used to, remember?).

Here’s the thing: Even if they take 2 hours, that’s time you are not spending. And the more other people do it, the less time they will take.

Break big deliverables into smaller milestones – like a first, second and third draft – and block out time for feedback and tweaks. Planning for iterations means they no longer come as an unwanted surprise.

Encourage peer reviews before work gets to you – after all, everyone knows what’s expected #checklist.

Avoid making changes yourself. Giving actionable feedback means you’re teaching people how to do the job better in the future – an investment worth making.

5. Think twice before stepping in

As you get used to sharing the load, expect lots of questions and requests. Use your judgement to know when to step in and when to delegate back.

We learn through observation. If you step in to help when you’re not needed, you’re exhibiting doing, not leading (remember, you’ve already mastered doing!).

Take the time to clearly and kindly repeat your expectations and remind everyone that you back them to figure it out.

Don’t hand out answers or respond to impromptu distractions – you’re surrounded by great people working on exceptional things, and often, the best thing you can do is stay out of their way.eople working on exceptional things, and often, the best thing you can do is stay out of their way.