11 Time-Wasting Things Leaders Need To Stop Doing

If you’re a business owner, you probably aren’t afraid to roll up your sleeves and get knee-deep in the tasks that make your colleagues cringe. That’s one of the traits that make up an achiever, after all.

Entrepreneurs can be real go-getters, and that means they’ll try to handle everything themselves. A study published in Elseveier’s Personality and Individual Differences journal in June 2014 found that successful entrepreneurs tend to exhibit the big five personality traits -- including extraversion and agreeableness. It’s these traits that help lead founders through all the tasks required to start a business.

But once your company is up and running, certain tasks drain your time and distract you from focusing on the things that matter.

Take email, for example. A survey by Atlassian shows constantly fielding email causes you to operate as if you have 10 less IQ points. That’s equivalent to working as if you didn’t sleep at all the night before.

To grow your business, you’ll need to delegate some menial tasks so you can spend time on what’s really going to increase the bottom line. Here are 11 jobs every business owner should stop doing:

Bookkeeping

It is absolutely crucial to hire an independent bookkeeper who can correctly categorize all expenses, generate monthly financials for transparency and help you stay GAAP compliant. This will be especially handy if you are ever audited. – Sohin Shah, IFunding

Exclusively What You Love

Your greatest strength is your greatest weakness. When you love to do something in your business, it's easy to focus on that thing to the exclusion of others. Love to sell? You probably aren't hiring salespeople. Love to code? You probably aren't hiring programmers. A business won't scale until you let go of the thing you love the most. – Jeremy Brandt, WeBuyHouses.com

Your Tweets

You have better things to do with your time than share articles that you haven't read on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. This typically doesn't result in any additional revenue to your bottom line. Leave that to someone who truly loves doing it. Focus on what's going to build your business. – John Rampton, Due

Managing Email

Have an intern or admin screen your email. Without this it's possible to waste several hours every week digging through emails in order to identify important ones and weed out the junk. An email screener can make sure you only look at urgent and important emails that require your personal attention, while they delete the spam and reply to general emails for you. – Jonathan Long, Market Domination Media

Proofreading

Although it may be hard to let go of proofreading materials that will be displayed publicly (e.g. brochures, website material) it's worth it in the long run. It's a drain on a CEO's time and frustrating for employees as well. – Elliot Bohm, Cardcash.com

Office Maintenance

Although founders should be involved in designing a space that'll encourage collaboration and support team productivity, they shouldn't be personally responsible for restocking the fridge, taking out the trash and fixing the printer. Colleagues should share those responsibilities, or you could hire an office manager or vendor to take care of those tasks. – Danny Wong, Grapevine

Tedious Pre-Meeting Work

Meetings are crucial for every CEO, but they're a pain to set up. I've eliminated almost 100 percent of the pre-meeting hassle with two free tools. I use Amy, or x.ai, to schedule my appointments. It's an amazing artificial intelligence solution that behaves like a real person. Charlie researches everyone I'm meeting with and sends me a brief the day of. Together, this one-two punch is unbeatable! – Brittany Hodak, ZinePak

Being the Sole Decision Maker

Entrepreneurs have an aversion to delegation. An entrepreneur’s company is her “baby,” and only she knows what needs to be done. The moment you recognize and overcome that impulse, you will unleash your company’s growth potential. – Mina Chang, Linking the World

Paperwork

Having a team that will allow you to focus on your actual business is essential. When starting a new company, it’s easy to become inundated with notices and filings from the feds and also the states and cities in which you operate. Paperwork can become a full-time job and divert your attention from the reason you started a company. – Tom Alexander, PK4 Media

Process-Oriented Tasks

Anything that's a repeatable process, across all applications of your business (sales, product, marketing, etc.). Over time, as you recognize tasks that can be repeated (and often, should be repeated) create quick one-page processes with steps to assign to employees or new hires. Better yet, have the employee create the processes; that way they have they have buy-in and investment in the process. – Andrew Fayad, eLearning Mind

Legal Research

There are some great legal research resources out there, but that doesn't mean you're anywhere near having the foresight, mental training and depth of knowledge that a lawyer does. Save yourself future headaches now. For any legal questions related to patents, trademarks, contracts, employment law or other issues, you should just hire a lawyer instead of trying to figure things out yourself. – Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

About Ilya Pozin:

Serial entrepreneur, writer and investor. Founder of Pluto TV, Coplex, and Open Me (acquired by Rowl). Writer for Forbes and Inc. Husband 1x, father 2x, entrepreneur 3x. Follow Ilya below to stay up-to-date.