Ways you can buy your time back

If you’ve been a professional for a number of years and started to find your groove, and especially if you’re independent, your main constraint is your time, not your money. You can make more money, if need be. You can’t make more time.

Where you can, you should buy it back.

Here’s some things you can try:

• household chores: periodic maid services, pickup/dropoff laundry service (most of the time saved is folding), dog walking, picking up after the dog, yard work, things you might DIY…
• errands: subscriptions to consumables on Amazon, a milkman if there’s one in your neighborhood, buying less stuff, grocery deliveries…
• business administration: hire a bookkeeper, turn frequent tasks into checklists and hire a virtual assistant, automate your email (automate anything, really)…

It’s easy to want to do everything yourself, but you’ll never have the time. If you have the privilege to choose, use it.

Don’t overdo it: if walking the dog is the one thing that gets you out of the house in the morning, do it yourself. Don’t pay someone to do something that’s good for you unless you’re doing to do something even better instead.