Let’s be honest: for many founders, stress seems like a constant companion, and free time feels like a distant memory from another lifetime. You started your business fueled by passion and big ideas, but somewhere along the way, the endless to-do lists and late nights have begun to take their toll.

Every successful entrepreneur, at some point, has faced this crucial question: how do you keep your business growing, hitting your goals, and staying competitive, all while managing to stay sane, balanced, and present for the important things in life?

The answer lies in one of the most powerful yet often underutilized resources: an assistant.

You may have heard this advice a million times already, but the correlation between delegation skills and business success is real, and the numbers don't lie.

So the next big question is, where do you start? What are the first tasks you should hand over to unlock the biggest wins?

Before we jump into the “what,” let’s start by understanding the “why.”

Why does this matter?

Founders are used to wearing a lot of hats. Some of that comes with the job. But when admin tasks start eating into the hours that should be spent building and growing, things get expensive. Not just financially, but personally too.

We ran a survey to understand how admin affects founders, and a few patterns stood out. Founders who regularly delegate their admin work are seeing real results—not just in their numbers, but in how they feel day to day.

Businesses grow faster

Founders who delegate consistently are seeing stronger results across the board.

Here’s what the data showed:

• 82% of "expert delegators" experienced revenue growth. That drops to 66% for non-expert delegators.
• 85% of expert delegators reported a profit increase, compared to 74% among others.
• Revenue growth among expert delegators averaged 143%. For everyone else, it was closer to 80%.

More balance behind the scenes

The benefits go far beyond the numbers. The difference in founder well-being was just as noticeable.

Here’s what the numbers told us:

• 50% of non-expert delegators say they struggle with work-life balance. Among expert delegators, that number drops to 43%.
• 48% of non-expert delegators hadn’t taken a proper vacation in the past year. That drops to 33% for those who delegate regularly.
• 53% of non-expert delegators always feel tired. For expert delegators, it’s 40%.

These shifts may seem small at first glance, but that margin can make the difference between staying stuck in the day-to-day or finally stepping into the bigger role your company needs from you.

See: The Big Price Of Small Tasks: How Entrepreneurs May Be Unwittingly Keeping Their Businesses Small, Hurting Bottom Lines And Compromising Wellbeing

Five essential tasks to take off your plate today

So, what’s the first move if you’ve never delegated before?

Here's the thing that trips up most founders: the tasks that feel "too small to delegate" are often exactly what's holding you and your business back.

You tell yourself it'll only take five minutes to respond to that email, or that it's faster to just update the spreadsheet yourself than explain it to someone else. But those five-minute tasks add up to hours, and those hours add up to days of your life spent on work that someone else could handle just as well (if not better!). Meanwhile, the strategic thinking, relationship building, and vision casting that only you can do get pushed to tomorrow, next week, or next month.

Let's break down the five key areas where delegation can make the biggest impact on your time, stress levels, and bottom line.

1. Email and inbox management

Let’s start with a heavy hitter: email.

If you're like most founders, your inbox probably feels like a hydra. Cut down one email, and three more appear in its place.

It’s easy to underestimate just how much mental energy and time get swallowed up by constant notifications, sorting through irrelevant messages, and trying to prioritize what’s truly important.

And if you're not careful, email becomes the work itself, rather than the medium that supports it.

Why it's overwhelming:

For starters, the time cost is huge. A survey by Adobe found that most professionals spend around 3.1 hours each day dealing with email. That’s over 15 hours a week. Multiply that by the months in a year, and you’re looking at nearly 20 work weeks lost to your inbox.

McKinsey Global Institute backs this up with their research showing that the average person spends over 13 hours a week just managing emails. Around half of this time is thought to be wasted on needlessly checking for updates and fielding spam or junk mail. Some estimates put the financial cost of this "email distraction" at around $6,000 per employee each year.

But there's something many of us deal with on a daily basis, even if we don’t always talk about it.

Email anxiety.

It often shows up as sinking feelings of dread or, as is the case for around 92% of us, elevated blood pressure and heart rate when we dive into our work emails.

There are a lot of reasons why email can cause this kind of stress. High volumes of emails and expectations for quick replies can create a sense of urgency and pressure. Juggling different tones, topics, and recipients in a single inbox can be mentally draining, particularly in environments where CCs and reply-all chains feel like a public stage.

The permanence of written communication also leads people to overanalyze their words, fearing misinterpretation or mistakes. For those with social anxiety or perfectionist tendencies, this can become a source of intense stress—especially when responses are delayed, which can trigger a spiral of overthinking.

As a result, you might find yourself avoiding emails altogether or struggling to focus on other specific tasks because you’re worried about what’s waiting for you in your inbox. This kind of stress can really weigh on your mental well-being and even affect how you perform at work, making what should be simple communication feel like a heavy burden.

The bottom line is that letting go of email management—even partially—can be one of the healthiest decisions you make for your productivity and peace of mind.

Email tasks to hand over to an assistant:

• Filtering and organizing messages based on your personal criteria
• Flagging the most urgent or important messages for your attention
• Unsubscribing from spam and clearing the clutter
• Drafting replies for you to approve
• Responding to routine messages on your behalf
• Managing follow-ups and reminders
• Creating rules and automations to keep things streamlined.

See: How To Share Access To Your Google Or Outlook Calendar With A Virtual Assistant

2. Data entry

This might not be the most glamorous job on anyone's to-do list, but it's one of those necessary evils that keeps businesses running smoothly.

And that's exactly the problem.

The thing about data entry is that it feels productive while you're doing it. Checking those boxes can give you a sense of accomplishment. You see your to-do list shrinking, and it seems like you’re moving forward. But once the day’s done, you often find that all that effort hasn’t brought you any closer to solving bigger problems or making progress where it really counts.

Why it's inefficient:

The fact is, you're probably spending way more time on this than you think. A recent global study found that knowledge workers spend more than 40% of their time on manual digital admin processes.

Not only that, but the average worker burns through 1-3 hours every single week just moving data from one place to another. That might not sound like much, but let's do the math. At three hours a week, you're looking at 150 hours a year. That's three full work weeks of clicking, copying, and pasting.

Every minute you spend manually entering data is a minute you're not spending on the things that only you, as the founder, can do. Your unique insights, your vision for the company, your ability to spot opportunities and make key decisions all gather dust while you're buried in spreadsheets.

Data entry tasks to offload to an assistant:

• Updating customer relationship management (CRM) systems
• Transferring information between different software platforms
• Creating and maintaining spreadsheets and databases
• Updating inventory management systems
• Managing contact lists and mailing databases
• Converting documents between different formats
• Backing up and organizing digital files.

See: 5 Reasons Why You Need A Virtual Assistant For Data Entry

3. Scheduling and calendar management

If you're a founder, chances are your calendar is a minefield of meetings. The more senior your role, the more this becomes the norm. In fact, business leaders spend about 40% of their time in meetings with three or more people.

But meetings themselves are just the tip of the iceberg.

Why it's so draining:

Consider the typical lifecycle of a single meeting: initial outreach, multiple email exchanges to propose times, checking availability, rescheduling due to conflicts, sending calendar invites, dealing with any last-minute changes, and following up afterwards. This process can easily consume 15-30 minutes per meeting, and if you multiply that by the number of meetings you attend each week, these minutes accumulate into hours.

And it’s not just time that's lost. Each interruption steals your focus away from deep, meaningful work. What’s left is a fragmented workday where you're left mentally drained, not necessarily because the work is hard, but because your mental energy has been spent on endless context switching.

Thankfully, there’s a much better way.

Handing off meeting logistics to a virtual calendar assistant can give you back up to six hours a week. That’s six hours more to think, create, and lead without the constant distractions. Just show up to the meetings that matter, without spending half your week making them happen.

Scheduling and calendar management tasks to hand over to an assistant:

• Coordinate meetings with clients, partners, and team members
• Sending calendar invitations and managing RSVPs
• Rescheduling meetings when conflicts arise
• Preparing meeting agendas and sending reminders
• Taking meeting minutes and sending follow-ups
• Coordinating travel schedules and logistics
• Blocking time for focused work or strategic thinking.

See: How A Virtual Assistant Can Help You With Scheduling And Calendar Management

4. Social media management

Social media is hailed as a must-have marketing channel for early-stage companies—and in many ways, it is. It’s where your brand voice develops, where your audience gets to know you, and where trust begins.

Managing social media sounds deceptively simple. Just post and engage, right? But for so many founders, it quickly becomes one of the most relentless and distracting parts of running a business.

Why it’s problematic:

Social media has a way of making everything feel immediate. Notifications pop up in real time. Trends change by the hour. There’s always something new to check, respond to, share, or weigh in on. It can feel like you're falling behind the moment you look away.

And whether it’s Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, TikTok, Threads, you name it, each one has its own format, tone, audience behavior, and algorithm quirks. Keeping up with that alone is exhausting. And when you add the pressure to create constant, fresh content, reply to messages, keep up with trends, and stay visible, social media can feel like another full-time job on top of the one you already have.

Perhaps the trickiest part is that social media isn’t a one-and-done task. You can’t just cross it off your list, call it done, and forget about it. These are tasks that need attention every day and every week. In fact, most small business owners spend about six hours a week managing their social media presence. That’s nearly a full working day gone.

Social media can also become a pretty hefty distraction disguised as work. You might sit down to share a quick update, but find yourself still scrolling half an hour later. It’s easy to tell yourself you’re “checking out the competition” or “staying connected with your audience,” but often it’s just a way to pass the time when there’s too much else on your plate.

At the end of the day, social media demands consistency, but it also requires boundaries. Finding a way to manage it without letting it take over can save you hours and help keep your focus where it really counts, and that's where a skilled assistant can make all the difference.

Imagine what you could do with those six hours if you weren’t tied up choosing hashtags, crafting captions, or replying to comments...

Social media management tasks to offload to an assistant:

• Creating and scheduling posts across multiple platforms
• Responding to comments and direct messages
• Monitoring brand mentions and engagement
• Researching and curating relevant content to share
• Analyzing performance metrics and creating reports
• Engaging with industry influencers and potential partners.

See: 10 Social Media Tasks To Delegate To Your Virtual Assistant

5. File and folder management

Running a business means making decisions constantly, often in the middle of a whirlwind. When you need to find a document quickly, the last thing you want is to dig through a maze of folders, filenames, and random drafts.

Why it’s a hindrance:

This is one of those things that doesn’t seem urgent until it suddenly is. You’re about to jump into a call. You need that document. You open your drive. Which folder is it in? What was it called? Is this the final version or the draft? It should have only taken 20 seconds, yet 20 minutes later, you’re still digging through files with vague names like “Final_Final_Updated_v2”.

In fact, recent data shows that it can take up to eight searches to find the right document or information, and people can spend an average of 1.8 hours each day—roughly 9.3 hours per week—just searching for information. To put that in perspective, if you were to hire five people, only four would be doing their job.

The bigger issue is what happens when things are out of place. Disorganization makes room for errors. An investor sees an outdated deck. The wrong numbers get shared in a team meeting. A team member wastes valuable time before a deadline redoing something that already exists. These aren’t dramatic failures, but these slip-ups can impact decisions, delay progress, and create extra stress that no founder needs.

Clear, consistent file systems might not feel urgent, but they give you back control. Every minute counts when you’re building a company, and you and your team can move faster when you’re not second-guessing where things live or which file is current.

File and folder management tasks to hand over to an assistant:

• Organizing digital files and creating logical folder structures
• Naming files consistently according to your preferred system
• Backing up important documents and data
• Managing cloud storage and sharing permissions
• Creating and maintaining document templates
• Archiving old files and cleaning up storage space
• Managing version control for important documents
• Creating systems for easy document retrieval.

What's the bottom line?

As a founder, it’s easy to think every task needs your hands on it. But the ones who make space for real delegation are seeing clear benefits. Their businesses are growing. Their profits are improving. They’re getting their energy back. They're also spending more time outside of work and coming back to it with a clear head.

This isn’t about working less. It’s about working with more focus. When you're not buried in admin, you make better decisions. You build better things. And you start to remember why you chose this path in the first place.

Ready to take admin off your plate?

From inbox triage and calendar management to social media, file organization, and more, you’ve seen just how much of your day is swallowed up by admin tasks that someone else could be handling.

Imagine what you could achieve with hours of extra focus, less stress, and more energy for the things that truly matter.

That's where we come in.

At Time etc, we connect busy founders like you with brilliant, experienced virtual assistants who take the weight off your shoulders and give you space to build the business (and the life!) you deserve.

We know you don't have time for lengthy hiring processes and HR hassle, so we've made everything simple and stress-free:

• Save 3-6 weeks of recruitment time with our pre-vetted talent pool—you could be working with a skilled professional in just 1-2 days.
• Cut hiring costs by up to 90% compared to traditional in-house hiring.
• Skip the daily management hassle—we handle all your assistant's HR and admin behind the scenes.

Ready to join the expert delegators seeing real results?

Speak to our expert team to let us know what you need, and we’ll handle the rest.

P.S. Want $150 off your first month of virtual assistant support? Answer a few quick questions to get personalized task recommendations and unlock your welcome discount.