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Outsourcing your chores is a good thing

nytimes.com

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Re: Outsourcing your chores is a good thing

#31

Post by veidr »

ghaff wrote: post #9
cmbaus wrote: post #2

At one point I hired a personal assistant through oDesk. I took this idea from Timothy Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek, but I hired someone in the US. I wanted to get a landscaping project done (that was required by the environmental regulators in Tahoe), but I didn't have time to track down the contractors, do background checks, make sure they showed up, and finally get the regulators to sign off on the project. The contr…

I'm not sure it's related to work ethic or religious roots but it's certainly true that there was never a particular culture in the US of service whereby even people of fairly middle-class backgrounds had servants. And this has probably carried over to modern culture whereby people probably outsource fewer tasks like grass cutting, housecleaning, and so forth than they arguably should (whatever that word means in thi…

It's a good point about eating at restauranta vs. hiring a chef; in my limited norcal experience, it cost less to have a come-and-cook chef weekdays than it did to routinely eat out, and it was substantially more awesome in several ways.

Despite it costing less, though, several of my fellow Americans thought the chef was like, bourgeois, or pretentious, or something.

(I would still do it, except now I have a wife who cooks, and resists my lobbying to outsource this function...)

Re: Outsourcing your chores is a good thing

#32

Post by netcan »

veidr wrote: post #31
ghaff wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's related to work ethic or religious roots but it's certainly true that there was never a particular culture in the US of service whereby even people of fairly middle-class backgrounds had servants. And this has probably carried over to modern culture whereby people probably outsource fewer tasks like grass cutting, housecleaning, and so forth than they arguably should (whatever that word means in thi…

It's a good point about eating at restauranta vs. hiring a chef; in my limited norcal experience, it cost less to have a come-and-cook chef weekdays than it did to routinely eat out, and it was substantially more awesome in several ways. Despite it costing less, though, several of my fellow Americans thought the chef was like, bourgeois, or pretentious, or something . (I would still do it, except now I have a wife wh…

Tell her it will free her up to spend more time on other wifely tasks.

Re: Outsourcing your chores is a good thing

#33

Post by mgl »

joelrunyon wrote: post #15
martin-adams wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep wondering what my repeatable tasks are. I suspect I just don't recognise them because I don't have documented procedure. I don't suppose you'd elaborate on some examples of tasks you give to your VA?

Data entry & research. Used to spend hours for lists, contact information, etc. Can be done automatically. Lead sourcing is another big use here. Competitive research. Having your VA research these tasks & put together a database of information becomes a 1-day task that has immense value down the road. Customer Service - haven't done this yet - but having them take messages, be my secretary, handle refunds & answer 8…

True, we decided to outsource, at least partially, lead sourcing for http://codedose.com, as it was just way too much time consuming and steering away from other more strategic tasks, like e.g. "processing" these leads.

Re: Outsourcing your chores is a good thing

#34

Post by ghaff »

hajderr wrote: post #17

Talk about degrading family value. Doing chores is beneficial and a nice way of taking a break.

Depends on what you like doing. Some people find cutting the grass relaxing. I find it's just a chore that needs to get done on a schedule. So I have someone else do it.

Re: Outsourcing your chores is a good thing

#36

Post by speeder »

russjhammond wrote: post #11

The best advantage I have found with our VA is having them listen to all the podcasts I want to listen to, summarize the articles and send me the transcript. Then I can skim in 30 seconds what use to take me 45-60 minutes to listen to. Also, I have found Odesk very helpful when our sales people ask for custom demos for clients. Instead of distracting our team I hire someone on Odesk to reskin our demo app. The best p…

Can you remove the chat widget from your blog? It makes reading the site impossible on my phone.

Re: Outsourcing your chores is a good thing

#38

Post by _delirium »

ghaff wrote: post #9
cmbaus wrote: post #2

At one point I hired a personal assistant through oDesk. I took this idea from Timothy Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek, but I hired someone in the US. I wanted to get a landscaping project done (that was required by the environmental regulators in Tahoe), but I didn't have time to track down the contractors, do background checks, make sure they showed up, and finally get the regulators to sign off on the project. The contr…

I'm not sure it's related to work ethic or religious roots but it's certainly true that there was never a particular culture in the US of service whereby even people of fairly middle-class backgrounds had servants. And this has probably carried over to modern culture whereby people probably outsource fewer tasks like grass cutting, housecleaning, and so forth than they arguably should (whatever that word means in thi…

Yeah, I think it definitely has a "weird things aristocratic British people do" association: job titles like au pair, chauffeur, butler, chef, governess, etc. don't seem like something that would fit into a red-blooded, down-to-earth American household.

Housecleaning and grass cutting are really common to pay people for in the U.S., though. I think in the neighborhood I grew up the same large company must've had at least 20-30% of the lawns, because they basically came through with their big trailers of equipment and went house to house marching through their customer list.

Re: Outsourcing your chores is a good thing

#39

Post by _delirium »

joelrunyon wrote: post #24
quaffapint wrote: post #18

I will say I would never hire anyone to do work I can accomplish myself - I don't care if it makes sense or not, I just couldn't do it. Why? Because I and I would say most people that hire people to take care of their lawns and clean their toilets aren't then using their time more wisely or getting that oh so amazing hour of family time they could never have. They just don't feel like doing the task.

> Because I and I would say most people that hire people to take care of their lawns and clean their toilets aren't then using their time more wisely or getting that oh so amazing hour of family time they could never have. They just don't feel like doing the task. This is an emotional response to the economic mindset that the article purposes. In the article - the entire point is that it doesn't matter what you do wi…

How do you value your time at $100/hour, though? If it's because you subjectively place $100 value on that hour of doing nothing, then that's fine, and it's true that you should in that case pay someone to do the hour of work. But if it's because you earn $100/hour when you're working, and therefore infer that your time is generally worth $100/hr, that is a somewhat questionable inference unless you are actually going to do paid work in that hour, i.e. you will actually incur an opportunity cost of $100 by mowing your lawn instead of doing an hour of contract work.

If it's not displacing paid work, then it becomes a matter of subjective valuation of your time, which depends not only on the time, but the task and what you would do instead. In that case, you really have to place a subjective value on how much you like or dislike mowing the lawn, and how much you like or dislike what you would do instead. Since you're just displacing one kind of unpaid time for another kind of unpaid time, there's no objective economic basis for determining what the delta value between "sitting in a chair" and "mowing the lawn" is. I personally put it fairly low, because I don't mind mowing the lawn (plus it's exercise, something I'd have to find time to do anyway).

Re: Outsourcing your chores is a good thing

#40

Post by quaffapint »

hackula1 wrote: post #29
quaffapint wrote: post #18

I will say I would never hire anyone to do work I can accomplish myself - I don't care if it makes sense or not, I just couldn't do it. Why? Because I and I would say most people that hire people to take care of their lawns and clean their toilets aren't then using their time more wisely or getting that oh so amazing hour of family time they could never have. They just don't feel like doing the task.

This seems like a bit of a puritanical viewpoint. Taking a nap for an hour can be more productive than raking leaves, if rest is what you need most.

But there you use the word 'need'. If you have been working 48 hours straight and want to hire the neighbors kid to mow the lawn that's now a foot high, fine.

It's just my viewpoint, I know how much time I waste (heck I'm wasting it right now) and how much time I have to take care of the lawn, etc. I don't need to add to the waste because I don't feel like doing it.

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