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Outsourcing Life
- mattm 17y agoI upvoted this article even though I don't agree with "outsourcing life." I would rather learn and do things myself rather than pay someone else to do it for me. Take cooking, for example. The author doesn't like to cook but if she invested in cooking classes for 6 months, I bet she would start developing an interest in it and then she would have that skill for the rest of her life. If you pay someone to do work for you (and you don't know how to do it yourself), you will have to keep paying them forever. It will also cause you to become a one-dimensional person. She does have a million dollar windfall, but a million isn't really enough to last the rest of her life since she is only in her 20s.
- mattchew 17y agoIt is clear that she is not just sitting around on the couch watching soap operas with the time she frees up via outsourcing. She's hustling and making money (and presumably having fun). She can always learn to cook later if it strikes her fancy. The idea of outsourcing your life makes a lot of sense if you spend a lot of time on petty outsourceable tasks and are a driven sort of person who can use every extra minute. A lot of us don't fit that profile, and outsourcing more of our lives would just mean more time spent sitting on the couch or parked in front of the computer. I'm probably better off mowing my own lawn and only watching five episodes of Breaking Bad this week instead of six.
- mattm 17y agoI understand the reasoning and she at least gives the impression that she is busy with other things. However I've also learned that some people just like to talk about how "busy" they are to make themselves feel more important. Some of my best ideas or solutions to problems come to me when I'm doing "petty, outsourceable" work like washing the dishes or making dinner.
- ericabiz 17y agoInterestingly enough, I found that the ideas come either way--whether you're outsourcing or not. So, if you want to outsource things, don't worry that the ideas will stop coming. They just show up when you're taking a shower, driving, or doing any number of other things.
- potatolicious 17y ago> "To allow others, whose passion is cooking, cleaning, or assisting in various ways to help me — while I supported them by giving them income to do what they loved." If you really want to think about your maid, cook, chauffeur, etc this way, sure... For the majority I'm pretty sure cleaning, cooking, and driving all day wouldn't be top of their to-do list if they had the means. Don't get me wrong, I outsource plenty of things in my life, but I think it's incredibly out of touch and pretentious to think that you're doing someone a favor, and that your maid is really fucking passionate about cleaning. IMHO when you start spouting things like this, you probably lost touch with reality. Like mattm commented, there's a line between outsourcing the menial things and outsourcing things that give your life purpose. I wouldn't mind outsourcing my laundry, but outsourcing my Facebook profile may just defeat the purpose of using Facebook.
- DenisM 17y agoYou think people can't take pride in taking a mess and making it look good? Or you think that only writing software is a noble enough work to take pride in, whereas those other occupations are all inferior? It's true the many people in manual jobs do them out of need, not love. I can also find you a lot of software engineers who hate their jobs. And I can find a maid who loves what she does - it's easy to see when one goes above and beyond what was requested to make things neat and accurate.
- simon_ 17y agoShe doesn't really have to claim that maids love cleaning to make the point that this kind of arrangement is win-win. The maid's choice to be a maid reveals that the job is preferable to whatever is his/her next best option.
- ohashi 17y agoI upvoted it because Erica had the best web hosting company I ever worked with and I miss her running her service.
- gcb 17y agoas an amateur psychologist, she probably is so immersed in one face of her life (running a business) that when she got depressed by the lack of another (having friends) she focused back on her safe harbor (running a business) to compensate for it. Just saying.