In my ABC Model exercise, I encourage entrepreneurs to increase their freedom and improve their lives by eliminating activities they find irritating (“A activities”), delegating or automating activities that are “just okay” (“B activities”), and increasing the amount of time they spend doing activities that are fascinating and motivating to them (“C activities”).

While eliminating irritating activities and focusing on fascinating activities seems simple enough, the benefits of automating or delegating your “okay” activities can seem less straightforward.

What are “okay” activities?

“Okay” activities are those tasks and responsibilities that don’t exactly irritate you but don’t excite you either. These B activities have less negativity associated with them than your A activities but far less fascination than your C activities.

For most entrepreneurs, “okay” activities are the ones that bring in money to your business. It’s likely that when you first did these activities and got paid for them, they were truly fascinating (because making new money is fascinating and motivating!). But once you repeat them over and over again, the thrill goes away. These money-making activities are vital to your business—but the question is whether you need to be the one doing them.

The benefits of automating and delegating “okay.”

One of the main points of being in business is to make money, and so cash flow is always important, but if it becomes repetitive cash flow, then you want to, as quickly as possible, distinguish between the part of the money-making activity that you really love doing and the part that’s just okay.

This is where you have to be emotionally alert and decisive. Be aware of when something becomes repetitive and no longer exciting to you.

I always want to be right at the cutting edge of what’s new and challenging, which is fascinating and motivating for me. So, part of my responsibility is to systematize all of my money-making activities so that I, personally, can liberate myself from the parts that just become okay and are possibly irritating after a period of time in order to focus on the bigger, more fascinating opportunities.

If you’ve created a system around the activity that someone else could learn, it’s time to hand over the reins. To motivate yourself to let go, consider what new, bigger money-making opportunity you could take advantage of once you’ve freed yourself up. This is a huge benefit of delegation. Also consider that what’s no longer fascinating to you will be fascinating to someone else, and by delegating those activities, you’ll be allowing someone else on your team to grow.

Free yourself up from any activities that don’t fascinate or motivate you.
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Automating teamwork.

Compared to entrepreneurial life in the 20th century, we have much more available to us now in terms of teamwork and technology.

When you have really solid teamwork around a particular project and the team has it down to where the results are predictable and the activity is repetitive, it’s time to ask, “How much of this activity can we move over to automated teamwork?”

In other words, there are a lot of activities now that can be put in the form of software and can become technologically governed and managed. The benefit of automation for certain activities is that it also gives an opportunity for your team members to continually move their irritating and okay activities into what’s fascinating and motivating for them.

But as the entrepreneur, it’s your job to actually be breaking open and exploring new territory, and the way to do this is to free yourself up from any activities that don’t fascinate or motivate you.