Keep It, Delegate It, or Ditch It? A Smarter Way to Reclaim Your Time

Jun 6

As a business owner, your to-do list never really ends—only evolves. Between client work, admin tasks, content creation, and inbox clutter, it’s easy to feel like you're doing everything… all the time. But what if your growing list of responsibilities wasn’t a sign to work harder, but a signal to work smarter?

At Lawson House, we’re big believers in simplifying systems, working in your sweet spot, and building businesses that don’t burn you out. One of the best ways we’ve done that (and helped our clients do the same) is by looking at our recurring tasks through a simple lens:

Should I keep this, delegate it, or ditch it?

This blog will walk you through a simple process you can use to evaluate any task in your business—and we’ll break down what kinds of things are usually worth keeping, which ones are easy to outsource, and which tasks you can stop doing altogether.

The “Keep, Delegate, or Ditch” Quiz

Use this simple decision tree next time a task feels heavy, time-consuming, or just... annoying. Follow the prompts and be honest with yourself—it might be time to make a shift.

Things You Might Delegate

You don’t have to wear every hat. In fact, you shouldn’t. Delegating key tasks can help you move faster, serve clients better, and make room for the parts of your business that actually light you up.

Here are a few areas we’ve seen clients delegate with great success:

Administrative tasks: Inbox management, scheduling, and calendar upkeep can eat up your time fast. A virtual assistant (VA) can handle these efficiently and often better than you can.
Ongoing website maintenance or updates: From refreshing content to backend tweaks, this is an easy task to hand off to a web pro so you can stay focused on bigger-picture work. (Like us!)
Systems and tech setup: Tech and automations are powerful, but they can be time-consuming to implement. Hiring an online business manager (OBM) or tech VA can get you up and running faster, with less stress.
Social media content batching or scheduling: You might love creating content, but do you really need to be the one uploading it to five platforms and writing captions on the fly? Outsourcing execution can free up creative energy.
Client onboarding and offboarding: Once your processes are defined, a team member or automated workflow can handle this so you can focus on client delivery.

Things You Might Keep

There are tasks in your business that require your voice, your face, or your leadership. These are the areas where your presence makes a difference and where your clients expect to see you.

Sales calls and lead nurturing: Clients want to connect with the person they’re hiring or working with. Your voice and confidence go a long way in building trust and closing deals.
Creative direction and vision-setting: Even if you have a team executing, you’re the one who steers the ship. Strategy, long-term planning, and vision-casting are your zone.
Client relationship management: If you’re a service provider, your personal touch can be a differentiator. Even with systems in place, hopping into a quick Loom or checking in can go a long way.
Thought leadership content: Writing blogs, showing up on Instagram stories, or podcasting might be core to your personal brand. If it’s high ROI and you enjoy it, keep it.

Things You Might Ditch

Sometimes, we keep tasks on our plate just because we’ve always done them or because we think we should. But letting go of low-value, low-impact tasks can open up serious breathing room.

Here are a few tasks that often aren’t worth the time:

Unnecessary meetings: If there’s no clear agenda or action item, it might be better as an email, Loom, or Slack message.
Outdated service offerings: If something doesn’t align with your current business model or drains your energy, it’s okay to let it go.
Manual processes that could be automated: Still sending client reminders or uploading receipts by hand? Time to streamline.
Overcomplicated systems: Simplify your tech stack. You don’t need five platforms when two will do the trick.
Trying to do it all yourself: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

What We’ve Kept, Delegated, and Ditched at Lawson House

We believe in practicing what we preach—so here’s a behind-the-scenes peek at how we use the “Keep, Delegate, or Ditch” method at Lawson House:

Kept: Our CEO, Caroline, still handles all sales calls and lead nurturing. Why? Because connecting with potential clients and hearing their goals firsthand is something she genuinely enjoys, and it’s where she shines. These conversations often shape our service offerings and spark new ideas.

Delegated: Caroline may love meeting new clients, but scheduling those meetings? That’s been handed off through our favorite sales software, GoHighLevel. We’ve also delegated our accounting and bookkeeping to a trusted CPA. It’s freed up time and ensured everything runs smoothly behind the scenes (no more late nights reconciling receipts)!

Ditched: There were a few internal tasks that we realized just weren’t serving us anymore. We ditched overly detailed internal reports that no one was reading, and simplified to softwares that helped pull those reports for us. We let go of outdated processes, like taking a meeting when we can provide our clients support through Loom. It’s been freeing—and it’s given our team more space to focus on meaningful work.

Ready to Reclaim Your Time?

This week, take 15 minutes to run your to-do list through the quiz above. You might be surprised at how many things you’re ready to let go of, either through delegation or a full-on ditch.

And if you're looking for a team that helps you simplify your marketing workload? That’s exactly what we do. At Lawson House, we help clients design websites, automate marketing tasks, and build better systems so they can spend more time in their genius zone.

Schedule a call with our team today and see where we can lighten your load!