Alec Torelli: Why You Should Outsource Everything
7 years ago24 Feb
In a previous video Alec Torelli challenged his viewers to take literally the axiom that time is money and put a dollar value on their every hour. Once they knew the value of their time, he suggests you outsource every task in your life that is worth less than that dollar amount. There was clearly a degree of backlash from an interesting quarter, because his most recent vlog is on the apologetics of his ‘outsource everything’ theory.
The backlash seems to have come from a group of people who worry that outsourcing their lives might lead to them being accused of being inhabitants of the ivory-tower whose silver-spoon lifestyles have made them lazy, entitled and decadent. No one wants to be accused of being out of touch with the average prol in the street, after all.
Alec’s response to those unconvinced by the financial wisdom of buying yourself more profitable hours by outsourcing takes two main lines. The first argument is that although he allows that you’ve got to have something to keep you grounded, by freeing up your time with outsourcing you get to chose what that activity is. His points of reference are Mother Teresa – who one suspects he may not realize has shuffled off to Catholic Valhalla – and Oprah. Wouldn’t Mother Teresa have been better, he asks, fighting world hunger rather than folding linen? You too can take your linen folding time and turn it into volunteering or perhaps, more selfishly, on working on something with particular meaning to you.
His other point is that you are becoming an employer when you outsource. You give someone a new job that they wouldn’t have otherwise and as long as you are paying fair market value then you’re adding value to their lives at least. It’s symbiotic, everyone benefits.
The general point is that if you can either spend the hour doing something for more money or else it gives you free time, a resource which can be worth far more than money depending of how you spend it. Outsourcing, Alec points out, gives you more of that resource and the freedom to spend it where you think it will be worth the most. Sure it can be spent selfishly, but nothing is stopping you from going out and doing good by it.
In the end though, I can’t help but feel the thing he’s mostly freeing up is time to play a card game. Can hardly fault him for that though, isn’t that what we’d all like more time for?
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