Cognition #32: Why did I hire an intern?

Notes on delegation, time tracking, and the process so far

Aug 12, 2023

Delegation has been on my mind for over a year now. I always used to think, “If I can NOT focus on certain tasks, I can make most of my skills.”

But freelancing (or any biz for that matter) doesn’t work that way.

You have to put in the hard yards initially. You must be a generalist and handle the primary services, management, communication, promotions, sales, invoicing, and everything.

As you grow, you earn the luxury of buying time with money.

“After a year and a half of freelancing full-time, I removed secondary tasks from my routine even though I had time to focus on them.”

Before I share my reasons for delegation + my actions and observations so far, let me tell you what the intern does for me:

Manages my client’s social media
Keeps Cognition Insiders active when I’m not available
Does backend work in the community: Organizes resources, sets up calendars and documents, and generates ideas with me to improve value in the community.
Curates posts and profiles to engage on LinkedIn
Curates leads to pitch for my freelance biz
Curates a list of potential sponsors that I can pitch to
Might handle posting on my IG soon (we are still discussing this)

Why I hired for these roles:

1. I am a content guy

I handle Newsletters, Email Marketing, and Social Media for a client. I’m niching down to email marketing and newsletters, so I’m willing to play around with tools. But I have to take care of SM too (it’s part of the strategy I’ve laid out to increase sales), and I hate management.

I see myself as a content guy. I write, I think, I strategize.
I’m good at this.

I believe designing, scheduling, posting, and interacting (okay, in a word, management) is not the right use of my time.

Plus honestly, I am bad at management. It will not only take longer than an average manager, but the results won’t be great as well.

Management is a skill in itself, and I needed a professional to handle this.

2. Reducing the Friction

I am aware I need to grow my freelance biz and find sponsors for Cognition and Vikra’s Café, but my biggest roadblock has always been finding the leads.

I am super quick with pitches. You show me a profile, I’ll write a personalized pitch in less than 15 minutes. It has never been a problem for me. The problem was to get to these leads so I could pitch.

Amidst all the content I create and the time I allocate for my clients, I simply don’t have the energy to find prospects.

So I outsourced this to the intern. She’ll get me leads to pitch for the services I offer, sponsors I look for, and the kind the profiles I want to engage with on social media.

3. Increased workload

I have a few projects at hand, I teach writing in partnership with an ed-tech platform, and I run three newsletters. Adding to this, I play 27-35 hours of sports each week and I have a social life.

I’m happy with almost everything, but the truth is I am not resting enough; and I am someone who can’t function even if there is a slight fluctuation in my rest and relaxation routine.

I had to delegate tasks that didn’t require my complete attention and energy to maintain calmness in my life.

I am doing this REALLY COOL Experiment!!

I am tracking my work hours.

I want to spend 70-80% of my time in creation and strategy and the rest of it, I want to delegate. It’s an attempt to invest my complete energy in the tasks I can perform the best.

I am using Toggl to track my time and measure it. Because as my friend Aravind once said to me, “What gets measured can be improved.”

The experiment is still in the first phase, and I’m tracking everything. Once I get enough data to play with, I will optimize my work life accordingly.

Will write a separate issue on this once I observe the results and impact.

More: I asked my intern to track time too to see how many hours of work I’m delegating.

My steps, processes, and observations with delegation so far

As I have said in a few of my previous issues, I’m fairly young with my experience in hiring and team handling.

I have read about delegation and hiring, but what can I say?

I made a few mistakes and took some appreciation-worthy actions in the last three weeks. Let me share my hiring notes (I wrote these for myself) with you:

See from their POV. For the intern, you are a client. Think of times you felt good as a service provider and also the times when clients irritated you. Try to be the ideal client you always wish you had.
Speaking of idealism, you’re not here to be a good guy. You hired the intern to get work done. Following your principles is important, and so is leveraging the intern’s skills while providing a good environment.
Seems like I’m doing a decent job
Folks were not wrong about overcommunication. It’s better to speak your mind than to assume your intern knows. It brings clarity to the team and hopefully, with time, synchronization too. Encourage the intern to speak up as well.
“No question or opinion is dumb or less important.”
The first few weeks will be hard. You’re used to your process and your intern has their own. It takes time for you both to get on the same page.
Training is important. In the first week: Before I asked the intern to handle the community, I gave her a list of situations/messages and asked her to respond. Based on her answers, I gave inputs on how I wanted her to represent Cognition.

If you want to check out the assignment, it’s here.
Understand what the intern is good at and double down. Yes, I hired the intern for certain roles, but they might not be good at everything or they might excel at a few tasks. My job is to identify what the intern excels in and assign more of it.

I realized my intern is excellent with organization, management, and research. So I’m optimizing the work scope accordingly.
Giving instructions is a skill. You don’t want countless conversations on how a task needs to be done. The entire motive is to save time, isn’t it?

You want to share a clear one-time instruction with all the details, and that’s it! You should consciously focus on improving giving instructions. Otherwise, it’s all messed up.
Systems take time to build. You can’t expect smoothness in workflow as soon as you hire someone. Three weeks in, and only 35% of the work scope has been put on a cycle.

These are my notes so far. I’m tracking and documenting as much as I can. I’ll share more on this soon.

Before I hop to the non-technical segment, I want to thank two friends.

Riten, for connecting me with a few potential interns as soon as I asked for it. He’s always kind and ready to help.
Abhilash, for helping me out with delegation. I’ve been talking with him about my processes, and he is patient enough to explain everything in detail. He is the reason why I’m using Toggl and for doubling down on what my intern is good at.

Non-Technical aka Fun Segment

Books I’m reading currently

I don’t have a favourite line from a book this week, so I thought maybe I could share what I am reading.

No Rules Rules
Great email marketing case studies
Anything you want (Starting this Monday)
Cold Email Manifesto (Will begin after I finish the second book on this list)

YouTube video I loved recently

It’s beautiful how Tanmay explains (+ in a way states the obvious), and you keep listening. His breakdown on virality and attention-grabbing makes the video worth watching.

If you want to know about my personal side:

Vikra's Café feels like home to people who enjoy reading light and beautiful content. If you love reading personal stories, travel blogs, and some authentic heartwarming writeups, this is your place:

Or read the archives first here.

(Trust me when I say this is growing faster than Cognition)

Song I’m listening to on a loop

If any South Indian is not vibing to this right now, I hope whatever they are up to is worth it 👀

See ya soon! (I’ll write more, I promise.)

Take care, stay safe, and delegate what you can!

Love, Vikra.

Cognition