In this episode, Amy continues the Museum Professional’s Summer Survival Guide by looking at your task list from a new angle: not just what you do, but whether you should be doing it at all. She walks you through a simple sorting exercise that divides everything into three piles: what only you can do, what someone else could handle, and what honestly doesn’t need to happen at all.

Links from the Episode:

• Sign up for the Summer Series
• Amy’s Social Media system

More Free Resources for Museums:

• Getting Visitors Through Your Museum’s Doors: Building Connection in a Noisy World ebook
• Museum Planning Calendar
• Museum Metrics Template

About the host:

Amy Kehs is a brand strategist and communications expert for museums. She has owned Kehs Communications since 2000 and has worked for the most renowned and well-loved museums in Washington, D.C. Her goal is to ensure that museums thrive into the next century and she hopes people will come to love museums as much as she does. Her proven process sets up proactive communication habits for museums, cultivating relationships with visitors who will want to return and bring a friend. Want to talk more? Click this link to book a call.

Here's episode two in the summer series, The Museum

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Professional's Summer Survival Guide.

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Today we're tackling what to do

with the tasks you keep doing

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that you really shouldn't be.

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Let's get started

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Hello, and welcome to the

Love My Museum podcast.

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I'm your host, Amy Kehs,

and I love museums.

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I'm also a brand strategist and

communications expert for museums and

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the creator of the Love My Museum method.

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So if you work in a museum and you

wanna get more visitors through your

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doors, you're in the right place.

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My method will help with that.

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I've spent decades helping museums

just like yours become places their

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communities can't stop talking about.

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Today is episode two in my fifth

annual summer series, and this

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year's series is called The Museum

Professional's Summer Survival Guide.

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If you're new here, here's a quick recap.

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All summer long, I'm sharing small,

practical ways to take some of the

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weight off of your shoulders so that

you can actually enjoy your summer,

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maybe even take a real vacation.

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And we're going to do it together one

step at a time here on the podcast

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and also in my weekly Tuesday email.

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So two weeks ago, in our first episode,

we started by documenting the tasks that

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depend on you so that if you stepped

away, things wouldn't fall apart.

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If you missed that first

episode, go back and listen.

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And today, we're picking

up right where we left off.

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And I'm wondering, when you looked

at your list of everything that

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depends on you, did some of those

tasks also make you think, "Wait,

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why am I the one doing this at all?"

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That's what we're talking about today.

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Not everything on your

plate belongs there.

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Some tasks are yours

because they truly need you.

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Others are yours by accident.

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Maybe you've just always

been the one to do them.

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Maybe no one else ever learned how.

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And probably it was just faster

to keep doing it yourself.

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But over time, faster just to do

it yourself became part of your

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job description that isn't in

your job description, and we're

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going to get that sorted out now.

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So here's the simplest way

I know to sort this out.

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Every task is one of two things.

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Either it actually needs you, your

expertise, your authority, your

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relationships, the things that only you

can bring, or it just needs a person and

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some time, but it doesn't need to be you.

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And here's what I've heard from

clients over and over again.

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Most of what is quietly draining

you is in that second pile.

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It's things you shouldn't be

doing in the first place, and

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that's going to lead to burnout.

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So if it's that clear, why is it so

hard to actually hand these things off?

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Maybe you're worried the job

won't get done or it won't

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get done as well as you do it.

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Maybe it honestly feels faster

to do it yourself than to stop

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and explain it to someone else.

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And this one time you're

right, it is faster, but it

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is not faster the 40th time.

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Or maybe handing it off feels like

more work to set up than it's worth.

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And here's one that might be

hard to say out loud, but I have

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seen it and I have heard it.

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Sometimes being the person who does

everything is part of how we feel valued.

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If you're not holding it all, who are you?

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Now, every one of these reasons

is normal and it is human, and

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every one of them keeps you exactly

where you are, doing too much.

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You are too depleted to fix the

very thing that's depleting you.

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But here's the good news.

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We already did the hard part.

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Remember the very first thing we

did this summer is we wrote down

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just how a task actually gets done.

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If you're on my email list, you

know that I even gave you some

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shortcuts to getting that done.

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And I hope after seeing how easy

that was, that you've continued down

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the list to document how the other

things on the list are getting done.

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So that has knocked off the biggest fear.

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Once it's written down, the it won't get

done right stops being true because now

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someone can do it the way that you would.

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If your fear is that it won't

actually get done at all,

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there are ways to fix this too.

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Okay, so what does letting

go actually look like?

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And I know that that depends on whether

you've got a team or you are the team.

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You're the only one.

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So I'm gonna walk you

through both scenarios.

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If you have a team, this is less about

handing off one task and more about

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looking at the whole workflow, because I

also understand that taking one thing off

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your plate and putting it onto someone

else's plate when you're short-staffed

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and everyone is stretched thin, that's

not going to solve the problem, right?

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So this is less about handing

off one task and more about

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looking at the whole workflow.

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Take something like getting a newsletter

out the door or promoting an event.

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Right now, how much of it

is running through you?

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Map out the actual steps, the

whole workflow, who does each one,

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and where it tends to get stuck.

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You might even find that there's

some redundancy in the workflow.

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When I do consulting projects and I

teach the Love My Museum method to

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museums, the first thing I do is a

communications audit, and I interview

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and I talk to everyone on the staff.

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And I cannot tell you how many times I

find people doing the same thing, and I'm

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able to save them so much time because one

person doesn't know what the other person

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is actually doing And I'm able to save

them time because we create a workflow and

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assign parts of the workflow to everyone.

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So the goal is to write a workflow for

your priorities so that it lives with the

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team and not just in one person's head.

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That way everyone can see how the whole

thing gets done, and it doesn't just

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grind to a halt the second one person

is out, say, for a summer vacation.

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Now, if you're solo or you're

wearing a communications hat or

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any hat all by yourself, still

document these workflows and give

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someone else access to them, anyone.

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You can't hand work to people that

you don't have, of course, but these

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things should still be documented

and not all live in your head.

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Letting go, though, looks

a little different for you,

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but it's not impossible.

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Like I said, still document everything,

give someone else access to it, and

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then in terms of lightening your

workload, that might be creating

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a template for yourself instead of

writing from scratch every time.

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That might be adding recurring

tasks on your calendar so you

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don't need to remember to do

things once a week or once a month.

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Maybe you batch a whole month of

social media posts at once instead

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of having to sit down every day

and come up with a new idea.

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Having a system to do this

saves you so much time.

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If you need a system for social

media, I have mine linked in the show

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notes, so you can check that out.

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And you know what?

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Sometimes you hand it to nobody.

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Yes, you let it go entirely.

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If something needs to give, let it go.

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Good enough and consistent with the

priorities that you choose beats

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perfect and exhausted every single time.

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And one more thing, those SOPs

we created last time, those

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aren't just for handing work off.

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Write one for yourself.

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Doing one for something maybe that

you do every month or every quarter

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will save your brain the work

of remembering every single time

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Before I give you this week's action

item, let's go over what we've done

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so far because it's really adding up.

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Can you feel it?

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So first, we made a list of

everything that depends on you.

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Number two, we started writing down

how those tasks actually get done

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so they're not trapped in your head.

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And three, today we looked at that list

again and asked a harder question, which

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of these should even be yours at all?

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This is how you get to a summer

where you can actually step away.

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So here's your one thing this week.

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Take that list from two weeks ago and

sort each task into one of three piles.

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Pile one, only I can do this.

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Pile two, someone else could do this.

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Pile three, this honestly

doesn't need to be done at all.

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Most people are surprised how

short that first pile really is.

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Then here's how we tie it to your summer.

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Look at pile two and pile three and

find one task you would most hate to

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be doing the week before your vacation.

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That's your task.

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This week, take the first real

step to get it off your plate.

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Hand it to someone with the instructions

you wrote down, or maybe turn it

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into a template or just decide

that you're not doing it anymore.

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It is okay when you and your team are

stretched too thin to decide that some

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things are going to need to give for now.

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I have this conversation all the

time, and if you need permission,

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not just permission to log off

this summer, but permission to stop

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doing the thing just for the sake

of doing it, permission granted.

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One more thing before I go.

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This work, looking at who does what

and how the work actually flows,

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this is internal communications

and it's something I do with every

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one of my consulting clients.

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We map it out together so the whole team

knows how things are getting done, and

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so it isn't all sitting on one person.

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I just wanted to let you know that

if this is feeling really hard

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to do on your own, it's exactly

the kind of thing I help with.

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Next week's email goes a little deeper

on this with a simple way to map this

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out across everything on your plate.

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If you are not on the email

list yet, it is not too late.

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The link is in the show notes.

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The series this summer lives in

both places, here on the podcast

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and in the email list, and they

are built to work together.

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Okay.

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That's all for today.

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Keep loving your museum,

and I'll see you next time.