I read a great post the other day by Caitlin McCabe. She talks about how she decided she should hire a cleaning service, but noted that she wouldn’t want to tell anyone she had help to clean her small apartment.
I get her reservations about the whole thing. She’s envisioning people saying, “She has no kids, she lives in an apartment, and she can’t keep it clean? Such entitlement.” But that’s not it. She’s actually tackled an important question: How much her time is worth to her.
If you took economics in college, this will be familiar to you. It’s all about the opportunity cost. The hours you spend doing laundry or cleaning the bathroom are hours that you aren’t spending doing something else.
Ask yourself: What’s more valuable to you? An hour spent cleaning the bathroom or an hour spent reading up on the latest industry news? Seeking out new clients? Even… gasp… watching TV?
If you don’t make a ton of money, chances are you probably wouldn’t pay someone to do an hour’s worth of work so that you can watch Real Housewives. (Or would you?) But the point is that it’s not always worth it to do simple tasks yourself.
For example, I get groceries delivered. It’s fantastic. I avoid the trip to the grocery store and back, jostling among carts and strollers in the store, standing in long lines, and carrying bags of groceries back to my apartment until my arms hurt. It costs me an extra $10 to have the groceries delivered, but to me it’s totally worth it. Sure, I could go myself. But I can also spend that time finishing up a work project, or blogging. And I’d rather do that than save the $10 by going myself.
One thing we will never have more of, no matter how successful we become, is time. There are only 24 hours in a day. Figuring out what those hours are worth to you, and delegating out tasks accordingly isn’t lazy or entitled. It’s smart.
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