Outsourcing and Hiring Extra Help To Get Things Done

Outsourcing is not just for big business. Why not maximize your personal productivity by hiring some extra help?

You don’t have to be a large corporation or wealthy mogul to have people working for you. From hiring a landscaper for your yard to enlisting the assistance of a professional web designer to revamp your website, outsourcing can ultimately save you money in the long run and get the job done.

Hire Extra Help To Get Things Done

What exactly is outsourcing? Instead of hiring employees, you contract work out on a project basis. From website design to washing windows, there are people waiting to help you finish all those projects you never get around to do.

As an alternative to outsourcing, people have also tried to do bartering. Offer your services in exchange for the services of someone else. Do you dislike housecleaning after a long day at work? Is your friend a stay-at-home mom who desperately needs a break from the kids? Watch her children one weekend day in exchange for housecleaning services during the week. Without spending a penny, your friend will get a day off and you will have a cleaner house.

Why Should You Consider Outsourcing?

So you want to save money by doing things yourself? Well, here are some interesting reasons why you should get the hired help anyway:

• Detrimental Do-It-Yourself Projects. We’ve all attempted to DIY and some of us may have had less than satisfactory results. When you don’t really know what you’re doing, it takes extra time to learn. The time spent researching and trying to accomplish the job often costs more than hiring someone. If your DIY project fails, you wind up spending money all over again to get someone to correct it. I would only tackle DIY projects which are fairly simple to do or if they are within my areas of expertise. For example, plumbers should be able to fix their own leaky sinks and mechanics can repair their cars on their own. Otherwise, we can save time and money by hiring a pro.
• Get Your World Together. There are things on our task lists that we defer to a later date or that just slip through the cracks. But with a small outlay, we can add order to our lives and organize our homes by outsourcing some of our chores. Overgrown grass annoys your neighbors, attracts bugs and may even cause you to receive a local citation. A messy, disorganized house makes it difficult to find what you want when you need it. You can outsource your household and yard cleaning in order to achieve organization in your surroundings, which will make it easier to get all the other elements of your life together so that you are a more productive person.
• The Cost Of Putting Off Things Until Tomorrow. How much does it cost you to put off jobs until tomorrow? Will the sink fix itself or will you develop a dangerous leak behind the wall that will ultimately cost more to repair? How do you stop procrastinating about things? I remember the tale of the Brownies when I was in Girl Scouts: the brownies would come during the night to get all the chores done. Unfortunately, this is a fictional story; in many situations, we may have to resort to outsourcing some of our tasks so that we can cross them off our to-do list. When we ignore problems, they can escalate over time because they aren’t addressed right away and may cost us additional time and money.
• Time Is Money. This leads us to our final point. Ultimately, our time is worth something. And if you would like to become more productive and efficient, you may want to assess just how much you value your time. With time being a limited resource, it’s a good idea to determine what the opportunity cost is for you to spend time doing certain activities vs other things. Through outsourcing, you can leverage your time better, allowing you to prioritize on the things you care about doing the most.

So have you thought of hiring a virtual assistant lately? Or have you thought of securing the services of someone who can help you run errands or tidy up your home?