I hate, I hate, I hate dandelions
As you might have noticed, I didn’t write last week. This was due to me being down with the flu. Unfortunately last weekend was also the time where my lawn exploded with dandelions.
I don’t know about you, but looking out at all the dandelions exploding up in my lawn from the sofa in the living room with almost 40° fever was almost too much to bear.
Stress comes when things move outside your control
I certainly suddenly felt stressed out even though I was shaking with cold in full clothing under two blankets. I could just look at the damn dandelions and do nothing but become more stressed out.
So has this blog suddenly turned into “confessions of a sick gardening rookie”? Well no – but I would like to remind you that outsourcing is not always some guy in India setting up a website for you, no… Outsourcing is also closer to home, the tasks you don’t want to do yourself.
“But I can do that myself”-syndrome
Some people certainly enjoy gardening more than I do, but the point here is that there are several things you might get someone else to do. I know, I know, you can paint the garage yourself, but here are a few reasons why you might want to get someone else to do it.
You can spend more time with friends and family
When having a normal 9-5 job, you typically do all the chores around the house in the weekends where you have a little more time. But the weekend is also the time you could spend with your family.
Wouldn’t you rather spend a few hours with your children (if you have any) or your spouse rather than doing spring cleaning or chasing dandelions? Well, I know I do…
You don’t have to do stuff you don’t really like doing
I’m really not that handy and therefore I also hate all the small things that always have to be done when you own a house. For instance I once spend 3 months painting our bedroom (well, I didn’t paint for three months but from I started painting to I removed all the covering it did take three months), and I ended up hating the result…
Professionals are so much faster
The next time I had to get something painted I simply hired a professional. He had it done in two days flat (and that was a space bigger than our bedroom that took me three months).
So here a few things you might want to outsource that you might not have thought of.
5 Things You Probably Want To Outsource
Cleaning
This thing alone is probably saving me from a fight with my girlfriend each week. You know… over who will use the vacuum cleaner and who will play his latest PlayStation3 game 
By having someone come help us with the cleaning I can play my game without feeling bad (or work on my business, or spend time with my little baby princess, or… well.. you get the idea)
Gardening work
I have really considered this, but haven’t taken the plunge yet. I really want to have “green fingers” and our garden is really not that big, but it is also being a pain the butt, so I might just end up having someone help me with this.
In our second home in Thailand there is of course a garden company that looks after the garden three times per week, but this is quite cheap labor. Here in Denmark it is quite expensive (so… if you a cheap guy who can come and look after my lawn once per week – in the Copehagen area, Denmar 
– throw me an email).
Cooking
In the “4-Hour Workweek” book Timothy Ferriss actually writes about a family who got some private person to cook for them. This gave them a lot of free time as they didn’t need to go to the supermarket and buy groceries, they didn’t need ot spend hours in the kitchen preparing dinner and so on.
I really want to experiment with this, but have found it a little expensive. One solution could be to get “au pair” do some of it, but this probably take some persuasion of my girlfriend (also I’m not sure that I would like to have someone living with us all the time. I’m open for comments on this ).
Grocery shopping
This is a little like the one above. Recently we’ve actually started to buy groceries online. You’ve probably done this for a long time, but in Denmark buying groceries online has really only been possible for the last year or so.
There were some pioneers a couple of years ago but they all had to close down because the market really wasn’t ready for it at that time. The main issue is delivery because we have quite high salaries in Denmark. This means that the added price of delivery can be quite high.
Well…. Currently my girlfriend shops sunday evening for the entire week, and we get everything delivered during monday. A lot of time is saved this way.
All sorts of handywork
As mentioned earlier, I’m really not that handy. This means that I generally call a professional even if it is just something like our dishwasher making strange noises.
You should basically do more of what you are good at, and just ignore the stuff you’re bad at… I’m really bad at everything that requires powertools and/or drywall, painting, electricity, water pipes etc (you get the idea )
What do you pay someone to do so you don’t have to?
So, what are you doing? And if you are not doing any of this, then why not?
It all comes down to what your hourly rate is! And if you want to “buy time”!
I usually say that my goal is to only work with stuff I’m passionate about, why shouldn’t this apply to my personal life as well?
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We have an Au Pair and find that helps with the cleaning, cooking and sometimes picking up of children. I also get people in to do more and more handywork around the house, but I still don’t feel like I’m winning. This draws me back to an excellent book I read called ‘Come home to your family’ where it basically says make your life easier from the outset: rent rather than buy – let someone else do the maintenance; live in an apartment, a block from your work, so you have no lawns to mow and a 2 minute walk to work. These things free you up and allow you to take your kids to the park for a green space to play in rather than kick them out int the yard by themselves. We create a massive list of commitments and then spend time and money trying to get out of them.
my post-it note at my desk says:
Don’t do a job you HATE
So you can buy things you don’t NEED
To impress people you don’t LIKE
Hey Rob
Your absolutely right. For me time is probably one of the most important assets, and I’m currently trying to minimize “stuff” (stuff you buy with emotions but stuff in a drawer of closet once your brain sets in
)
I’ve thought about the au pair thing my self, but haven’t been able to convince my girlfriend that it’s a good thing yet.
I guess it’s the whole thing with a person living with you and being sort of part of the family.
I find it’s a never ending battle choosing between time and money. For example, as I sit here typing this, I’m paying a guy to re-fit our bathroom. This is something I could do, and I’d probably learn a lot from doing it. But he’ll do it much faster.
This is the key for me – I wouldn’t mind doing the job myself, but I don’t want to give up two weeks of my time to do it.
Secondly, I think we have to be careful when calculating our ‘hourly rate’. The idea that we should outsource to people who will produce work to a similar standard, but for less than our time costs, is fine for highly paid people in hourly rate work.
But for someone who, for example, runs a website, the lines are not quite so clearly drawn. It’s harder to calculate the earnings made from an hour investing in it. Plus there’s the ‘am I enjoying this?’ factor, not to mention other people’s feelings.
Tim recently posted.. Aug 31, Got A Messy Desk? Clear It, Clean It, Use It, Love It!
Hey Tim
Thanks for your comment.
People often have trouble putting a value to hours where they don’t work. It’s easy enough to calculate your rate when working, but what if you don’t want to work (or cannot work) more hours?
When I coach people, I still like to have them put a price on their spare time. It can be less of what they are making when they work, but it should have a price.
Only like this will it be possible for them to decide whether or not to pay someone for a task rather than doing it themselves
Outsourcing is a great idea if you work for yourself. But if you work for someone else, your hourly rate is zero in the weekends. Therefore doing it yourself can be the better option. That is, if you are confident that you can do a good job at it.
Hey Demian
Thanks for commenting.
I have to say though that I totally disagrees.
Could I clean every weekend? Could I do a better job than my current cleaners? Sure I could. If I cleaned myself I could do it exactly like I wanted it.
But that’s not the point. The point is that I would probably rather do something else? I rather spend time with my family and friends instead. Could I save some money? Sure I could but money is not everything. I believe in time and mobility being currencies as well.
I can code myself but I’m doing it less and less. I can make more and more projects just spec’ing everything and letting other people code for me. Could I do a better job myself? Sure I could but I wouldn’t get as much done.
So if you want to scale your business and have more time for whatever you want to do, then I would recommend you looked into outsourcing!