The saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” applies to busy professionals and small business owners as well. Even though you may have many goals and dreams that you wanted to achieve yesterday, success does not happen overnight and usually not without help.

Create and manage realistic expectations of what you can accomplish each week. Challenge yourself so you excel, but don’t set yourself for failure. If your expectations are too high or unrealistic, you will feel frustrated and stressed.

Delegate what you cannot do yourself—or should not be going. As your business grows, it will become more difficult to manage everything yourself.

Compare the cost of using an outside service or a virtual assistant to the value of your time.

Identify business activities you don’t like hate doing or are not good at doing. These are activities you can hire someone else to perform so you can focus on the most important activities for business success.

Being productive does not mean doing everything or doing it by yourself. This can actually be inefficient. Sometimes you have to let go and give the task to someone who can do it better and faster. Keeping your schedule realistic and delegating properly will save you time and money.