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Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is that when you outsource, you're still a resource.

You can't check something entirely off your list, even if you hire someone else to do it.

You still have to do a little management and supervision.

So it's best to focus on how you are saving 90% of the time you would have spent on a task,

rather than get frustrated about the 10% that likely won't go away.

Longtime listeners know that I advocate outsourcing lots of things. Often, a manageable

amount of money can free up a good bit of time. Rather than spending your weekends cleaning

or running errands, you can spend them hanging out with your family. At work, rather than handling every detail,

you hire a team to specialize and you provide direction. Even for folks who work for themselves,

having an in-person or virtual assistant can be quite helpful. Here's the thing, though, when you outsource a

task that would otherwise fall to you, and that actually needs to get done, you won't be able

to let it go completely. You will need to have some level of involvement. It will just be way less involvement than when you are

handling the task directly. People are much happier when they focus on the reduction, rather than the

small amount of lingering mental load. So, for instance, you might like to imagine that having

house cleaners come every week means that you won't ever have to spend time cleaning your

house again. But that is not entirely true. At the beginning, you will need to show the

cleaners around the house and let them know how

you like things. Some weeks, you might need to ask for some area to get extra attention, really spiffing up

...