I've been thinking about the ideas in the book “168 Hours”, which strongly recommends personal outsourcing as a way of freeing up time that you could spend on goals or core competencies.

On one hand, I agree with it: delegation can help a lot. On the other hand, there's something here I need to explore further. I'm not sold on the idea that maximizing life is the way to go, or that this is the best fit for us.

It helps that I can compare the experiences. I grew up with maids and a cook. Laundry was whisked away, ironed and folded. There was a hot buffet at lunch in the company dining room, and dinner was sometimes business, sometimes family-style. My mom cooked a bit, and she taught us how to wash dishes.

In the Philippines, having household staff isn't that big a deal, and it really helped my parents with their business. In Canada, W- and I do all the work of maintaining the house. It's not that bad, actually. Fifteen minutes of exercise bringing the laundry down and sorting it; half an hour to fold the laundry, which is really social time + movie time; a good weekend afternoon's work preparing a month of lunches and a week of dinners, also social time; half an hour of tidying up each day and more organization during the weekends, which is really a working meditation.

We could trim our “preparation time” further by ordering groceries and household goods online instead of heading out, I suppose, or hiring out laundry or cooking. I'll try keeping a more detailed time diary to see if I can identify big chunks of time that I can recover.

What would I spend the extra time on? Writing and coding, probably. Spending more time with W-. Learning how to drive, draw, or play the piano. Sewing, so I can learn how to make things. Cooking. (Yes, I return to that; it's fun.)

But it's not a straightforward money-for-time swap. It's not just a matter of paying ~$25/hour to reclaim time for personal use. It's really a time-for-time swap, because money is time, too. I'd be trading time now for time later, considering after-tax expenses now versus the compounding growth of investments that might enable early retirement or more opportunities.

The things I'd want to do with that time – writing, for example – mature with age and experience. Squeezing out more discretionary time to work on writing might result in improvements, but a lot of it is really just a matter of living more and learning more so that I can share more.

Doing things ourselves isn't drudgework, either. We can save, learn, exercise, and build our relationship, all at the same time. If I ever run into tasks I truly despise, I might outsource those, but W- and I are easy-going and have so far managed well. (In fact, cooking all that food leaves me with a warm glow of accomplishment and productivity, and I learn a lot along the way.) I don't feel starved for time. I feel that there's enough time to do the things I want to do – perhaps not all of them, but that teaches me to prioritize and be efficient.

And of course, there's my resistance to lifestyle inflation. ;) The longer I can live a simple life, the more I can resist the hedonic treadmill and sock away savings I won't even miss.

I might dust off my experiments with virtual assistance and try out cooking and cleaning services. Some frugal bloggers I read have said wonderful things about housekeeping. We might see if it's a good fit.

Shifting time around to have more discretionary time would be nice, but am I close to the point of diminishing returns considering the other factors, or are there other things I might discover if I keep at the experiment? Hmm….

Have you experimented with this? What have you done with your newly-freed-up time? Or how have you made household work even more productive?

2010-12-31 Fri 08:26