Personal Outsourcing

Dave Navarro is a great productivity coach - he’s got lots of little tips and tricks. He has one question, that can completely change the way you think - would you trade a dime for a dollar ? Have you ever wasted an hour to try and save a couple of bucks? Have you ever wasted a day doing something yourself, even though for $25 you could have hired someone to do it faster and better than you did? Have you ever wasted weeks on trial and error, when you could have bought a $25 book that could have taught you all that in a few days?

I know I have. And I know that a lot of other people who go out of their way and spend a dollar to save a dime. When you go to the other end of town to get a $5 discount - you’re working for less than minimum wage. When you spend a day doing something that someone is willing to do for $25 - your working for less than minimum wage. When you spend a month learning through mistakes what a $25 book can teach you in two days - you don’t value your time . Time is the most prescious resource you have. So why are you wasting it?

Time is limited, and it is non-renewable. Once an hour has passed, it’s gone forever. Money, on the other hand, is infinite. It is infinite, because it is recursive - you can spend money, to make money. It is infinite, because it is renewable - you can always make more money. You need to start valuing your time more than you value your money. You need to leverage your money, to get more time. You need to embrace outsourcing.

For some reason, outsourcing has a very bad reputation. The truth is, that we all do it - we just don’t think about it as outsourcing. When your car breaks down, and you hire a mechanic to fix it - that’s outsourcing. When you need to repaint your house, and you hire someone to do it - that’s outsourcing. When you want to go out, and get a babysitter to whatch your kids - that’s outsourcing. When you hire a lawyer, a web-designer, a marketing agency, an assistant, a driver, a house-cleaner - that’s outsourcing. We outsource for two reasons - they can do it better/faster than us, and it frees our time, to do something else.

Outsourcing gives you freedom, and it gives you leverage. If you would need to spend 2 hours doing something, that can be oursourced for $50, and your time is worth more to you than $25 an hour - DIY is a waste. Use outsourcing to your advantage. Find as many tasks as you can that you can oursource. Anything you need to do that you don’t have a personal interest in - outsource it. Anything you need to do, that someone else can do better or faster - outsource it. Get a virtual personal assistant to find you information that you need, and use the time that this frees up to do what you’re best at and what you care about.

Contrary to popular belief, money can buy time. All that it requires, is a simple cost and benefit analysis. Think about what you can outsource, and leave a comment below, let us know. Where are you wasting time, when you can hire someone to do it for you? Where are you spending hours to save a buck or two? Where are you trading dollars for dimes?

If you want to learn how to reclaim your time, take control of your life, and find personal freedom to do what matters to you (and, since you are reading this, you probably do), you're in the right place. Make sure you don't miss a single update - subscribe to the blog and have all the latest post delivered straight to your RSS feed reader or your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter so we can chat and get to know each other a little better. This blog is not about me, it's about you - so feel free to email me, or leave a comment. Thanks for visiting, hope to see you here more often!