ELIMINATE…REDUCE…AUTOMATE…SCHEDULE…EXTERNALISE ©

If you missed the earlier posts you can click on the links for Part 1. Part 2 and Part 3

EXTERNALISE

Depending on your skills, abilities and finances externalising jobs, tasks and projects that need doing can save you and/or your family hours and days of time. The things you don’t need to do personally, that you don’t want to do, have the skills needed to do, have the time to do or even if your time is better spent on others things are all perfect for externalising.

As an example, most of us hand off the maintenance of our cars besides the very basic oil, petrol, air in the tyres, washing type functions. We bring in plumbers and electricians for maintenance or repairs involving water and electrical. Mostly we don’t have the skills needed and it’s just smarter (not to mention in some cases illegal) for us tackle those things ourselves.

What I’m asking you to consider where finances allow is to hand off more. By all means, keep doing the things you and your family don’t mind doing or find enjoyable. Don’t create an expense for no quantifiable reason or benefit. If it causes stress, arguments or is costing you time as a family or personally that you’d like back to do other things though .. externalise … pay someone else to do those things for you.

Let your neighbourhood teenager or mowing/landscaping business take care of the yards. Bring in a cleaner for the whole house or just the parts you hate. I had a relative who had a burning hatred for doing windows, so periodically they hired someone to do it for them. Problem solved. They had beautiful clean windows and never again wasted a moment of time or negative emotion on it. Hire an ironing lady. Some even pick up and deliver. Hire a broker to ring around and check you’re getting the best insurance deal or mortgage. Do your grocery order online and have it dropped straight to your door. Hire a handyman to clean out your gutters. Hire a contractor to handle the renovation project. Find an odd jobs person to pick up dry cleaning or post office box mail or handle drop offs etc. Have your dog washed and clipped by a groomer and walked by others if you choose to.

You and /or your family are completely capable of pulling together and doing a lot these things of course. Kids can earn pocket money doing odd jobs, learn the teamwork of being part of a family and contributing and also learning valuable life skills. They are all valuable things and can be taught regardless without it eating personal or family time on a permanent basis though. This is about time. If you’d rather have the time back or a bit more of it back – pick and choose what you’re happy to hand off and do that immediately.

I would add also for those who feel this is a cop out or lazy that you are creating jobs (preferably) within your community… but work and jobs none the less. An income or part thereof for another person. Thereby making this a win/win situation. You get more time. Someone else gets more money. As always spend your dollars with thought. Who and where you choose to spend your money can make an enormous contribution to your community or not. I always encourage trying to keep it local where possible and then individually owned over corporates if you can which for most of our home based jobs is absolutely doable.

Spend a half hour or so brain storming yourself or with your family and see what can be externalised to free up your precious time. Literally, that is all the time it will take. Then find a provider and start planning what you’re going to do with those extra minutes and hours .. that might even just be going for that long walk, or having that bath… maybe a family movie night.

That brings to a conclusion this little series folks. I’d love to hear about the things you chose and the amount of time that freed up for you or any of the other things you were able to accomplish with E.R.A.S.E in the comments.

E x