Outsourcing Happiness
This sounds funny right? I can’t outsource happinesss, because happiness is truly an internal state, but the activities that we outsource can definitely produce an enhanced state of happiness. This was more evident today than it has been in a long time.
How often do you see the executive mowing the lawn, or the double income family spending their free time cleaning the house? When living in Victoria I had a beautiful system for outsourcing the energy draining activities of my life. This included things like cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, administration, etc. Now you might look at this list and think, Gabe is a baller. He must make a lot of money to afford all these luxuries. The opposite was true, how could I not afford these things. At the time I know I was earning more than $20 per hour at a bare minimum, therefore does it make sense for me to spend my hard earned free time on these activities that suck my energy away? No, not really. The result is I had more time to have fun, participate in those activities that I enjoy, and in turn, that gave me an immense amount of energy and allowed me to focus on my income producing activities.
The truth is, I paid a housekeeper to come in once every two weeks to clean, do laundry, take in dry cleaning, and organize (investment $100/ month) For the grocery shopping I used a paid delivery service through Thrifty foods. I ordered all my food online, and they would have someone shop for me and deliver it straight to my door for $5. We hired a cook for $12 hour to prepare healthy food and snacks once a week. For administration we hired an executive assistant p/t for $10 hour to file paperwork, run arronds, etc. All in all, my total cost to outsource these less desirable activities was $250 - $500.
Now, what did I do with all that spare time you might ask? We’ll, I had a heck of alot of fun! Played sports, threw parties, connected with friends, read books, went dancing, learned how to play guitar, speak a new language, searched for new real estate investment opportunities, travelled, spent time with family, volunteered as a big brother. The cumulation of this free time and fun gave me the energy I needed to perform better at work and make much more than the $250 - $500 outsourcing costs per month. I was truly happy.
Here I am now, almost two years later and I forgot this simple truth. I moved to Vancouver with my girlfriend Karla. We spent the last year + living with each other and a constant source of stress and discussions were around this topic of cleaning and organization. We, both disliked the idea of cleaning on Saturday/Sundays, but did it reluctantly, because we wanted to be smart with our time and money. Yet, when the house wasn’t clean I didn’t want to be here because it was a mess and disorganized and would often go somewhere to eat or drink coffee. Because cleaning absorbed so much of our time and energy, we didn’t make healthy foods and would resent one another for not cleaning. Not only that, but to do a simple 4 hours of cleaning and laundry, would probably take us close to 8-10 hours of production time, because we would both procrastinate and delay the activity. On top of that we would be negative and transfer that emotion to our fun time and couldn’t truly recharge and relax.
Karla, Romeo (our wonderful dog), and I needed to escape. We decided, last minute, that a trip to Kelowna would be a great idea. The house was a mess, we had no real itenerary in mind, but we knew we needed to get out the house and out of the city to reconnect and have some fun. As we were about to leave on Friday I heard a friend of mine raving about this housekeeper he hired. Apparently she works hard, folds laundry, and is very pleasant and trustworthy. So I figured, Ok, this is not going to seem like much of a vacation if Karla and I come back to a house that is a complete disaster, so I decided to hire this recommended person to come in and take care of business.
We’ll we just arrived and our home is immaculate, beautiful, organized and clean. We are so happy, because our place hasn’t looked this clean and organized for months! We paid one wonderful person to come in for 4 hours ($60) and get this place in ship shape condition. Now we are relaxed, focused, excited for the week ahead. We knew that we wouldn’t have to clean so we took the time to prepare some very healthy food. And we had an amazing weekend away. I’m feeling energized, balanced, and excited! Why didn’t we do this sooner!
Sometimes the writing is on the wall. We just have to read it :)
Cheers,
Gabe
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