Money Musings 💭 stop doing the work ✌️
When I have a long to-do list (which is all the time ), it often feels easier to do things myself than to pass them on to others. I do it at work, with Justin (my hubby) at home, and even with the nanny.
Researching for an article, I just found out that one of the many perks of having a library card is that you can check out free museum passes. Who knew?! 🤯 We checked out a pass to go to the Children's Museum on Saturday, and it needed to be returned today.
Justin offered to take it back after work but I imagined him forgetting to do it, having to remind him and feeling guilty that he’d miss time with Eli, so I said, "I’ll figure it out."
This is what Fortune’s Kristen Bellstrom calls the "Hell, I'll just do it myself!" tendency that so many of us women share. And it hurts us in our careers. Not to mention our sanity!
I mean, if this happened in the last two hours, imagine how often I’m doing this! I have some major work to do here.
This Wall Street Journal article talks about new research out of Columbia Business School that suggests women are less likely to delegate than men, are more likely to feel guilty about it when we do, and actually have less courteous interactions with subordinates when delegating because we just want to get the conversations over with. I’m sure social role backlash has something to do with it!
As you can imagine, there are some big problems with this. The things we aren’t delegating take up our time and don’t allow for big picture thinking or nurturing our teams at work. This grows exponentially because we’re not training and mentoring our subordinates to take on these responsibilities in the future, so we continue to do them over and over.
Modupe Akinola, the professor leading the study, suggests a delegating reframe - "not only are you saving time for yourself, you’re giving other people an opportunity." Yes!
This week, I’m pausing before I take on any task to ask myself:
1) Does this really need to get done? In the words of the amazing Tiffany Dufu, we can and should drop the ball!
2) Can I give someone else the opportunity to do this? And if so, I’ll write a quick script and take the time so I can delegate with joy.
I’d love to hear if you can relate to this. What helps you delegate?
Money Move of the Week
Put together your happiness allocation. For those who have been with us for the last three weeks, I’ve given you a weekly step to build your happiness allocation (what I call a budget!). Quick recap: 1) You listed out your expenses, 2) put numbers to those expenses for the next twelve months, and 3) calculated what you actually earn. Now it’s time to put it all together! For simplicity, here’s a happiness allocation tool that I use with my clients. Use the golden rule of personal finance: total annual income minus total annual expenses equals what’s available to put toward your goals.
You Gotta See This
Women bring the 💰. Female CFO’s brought in 1.8 trillion (that’s TRILLION with a T) more than male peers in cumulative profits over the last seventeen years. According to a study by S&P Global Market Intelligence, within the first 24 months of appointing female CFOs, companies saw, on average, a 6% increase in profits and an 8% better stock return, compared to performance under male predecessors. One of the reasons for this, according to the author of the report, is that women face a "higher bar" to win top financial roles.