If you have followed my journey from corporate CEO to full-time writer and speaker, you know I am a big advocate of using virtual assistants. I couldn’t survive without mine.

But I have noticed that many of my fellow entrepreneurs are reluctant to take the plunge. So often they don’t get the help they need because they think hiring a full-time, physical assistant is their only option.

I left my role as CEO of Thomas Nelson in April 2011. I thought I could get by without an assistant. Boy, was I wrong.

As a result of greater focus on writing, my blog traffic spiked and my comment load doubled. I started getting more email. I had to book my own travel. I soon felt overwhelmed.

Delegation is critical to leadership. You can’t take on more responsibility unless you are willing to delegate to others. But that doesn’t mean it is always easy.

Recently, one of my mentees was planning a special event. Last week, he was surprised to discover that someone on his planning team had completed a project that he didn’t really authorize. He was clearly frustrated, because he felt the other person had taken more initiative that he was given.

After listening to him describe the situation, I finally said, “The fault is not with your team member’s action. The problem is that you didn’t make your expectations clear when you delegated this task.” I then asked him if he had ever heard of the five levels of delegation. He said, “no,” and then I shared them with him.

One of the most helpful time management principles I have found is David Allen’s Two-Minute Rule. The basic concept is that you take immediate action on anything that can be done in two minutes or less. This is the key to becoming more productive.

To implement this, you should do these kinds of actions NOW. Why? Because it will take longer than two minutes to write the action down on your to-do list, organize it, get back up to speed later, and complete the task. Instead of going through that whole rigmarole, you just do it and move on to the next task. It is a huge productivity booster. And it will keep your to-do lists much shorter.

Perhaps you may have heard the adage, “what gets measured gets improved.” I would propose a parallel principal: “what gets tracked, gets done.” This is especially true when it comes to delegation.

Let me be honest. I am actually better at writing about delegation than actually doing it. This is especially true when it comes to email. I have always prided myself in being super-responsive. As a result, I like to process my email myself. However, that has become increasingly difficult.

Whenever I write or speak on the topic of delegation (as I did yesterday), I always get a question from someone who says, “But what if you don’t have a staff? How can you delegate?” This question typically comes from staff people, technicians, stand-alone professionals, or start-up entrepreneurs. It’s a great question.

For my first few years out of college I worked as a salesman in the publishing industry. I didn’t have anyone reporting to me. It was just me, a telephone, and an order pad. I didn’t even have a computer.

Most of us don’t spend enough time thinking. We are so busy doing that we have, I fear, almost forgotten how to think. Yet it is our thinking, more than any other single activity, that influences our outcomes.