wow. I'm not going to deny that I don't outsource things - I pay someone to change the oil in my car or rotate my tires - but the idea that paying someone to organize my photos or clean my house is actually better than me doing it myself and saving the money and TIME spent earning it?
There's a disconnect here.
Here's one connection.
My spouse and I hate to clean. We're pretty neat in the first place after our years of service academies and sea duty, and we tidy up after ourselves when we make a mess, but we still hate to clean. We'll spend two hours bitching and procrastinating for every hour spent actually cleaning. We are Olympic-class experts at winning gross-out contests.
The solution? We set aside two hours every Wednesday morning for a housecleaner. The best ones get away with demanding weekly business because it's easier to keep up with the dirt.
We don't waste her time with clutter or laundry or dirty dishes or wastebaskets. We don't even want her to clean bathtubs or window screens. She's a highly-trained professional who scrubs toilets, cleans sinks & mirrors, dusts just about every horizontal surface, and damp-mops the floors. Once every 3-4 months she'll do windows or blinds or the fridge shelving.
We clear the deck for her to be able to do a good job. Because we know she's coming every week, we're much better about not making messes in the first place. (None of that "Eh, we'll let the housecleaner get it.") We also spend the time & effort to pick up after ourselves on Tuesday nights.
While she's cleaning, we disappear. We're usually outside doing yardwork, or in the garage working on a project, or (occasionally) running errands. (I might even change the oil in my car or fix a flat tire.) No playing, no workouts, not even any surfing. When the housecleaner's doing her job, it's no fair sitting on the couch watching TV and eating bonbons.
The result is that we're outsourcing to discipline ourselves to get stuff done. We know that every Wed morning we're going to put in two solid hours of chores or home improvement while avoiding a task that we utterly despise. Most times when the housecleaner has finished her duties, I'm dirtier and sweatier than she is. Yet if we had been left to our own devices we might not have even mustered the initiative to do our chores or the projects, let alone the cleaning.
Could we do it all ourselves or delegate it to a floor-cleaning robot? Sure, and we also know that we could have six-pack abs, eat more veggies, cook gourmet meals, and end world hunger. We also realize that we'll at least have a clean house in which we can not achieve those goals.
Rationalizing? You bet. We call it "budgeting" by spending on the things that we value, and the little hedonistic jolt that we get from her services is far more valuable than any restaurant meals or luxury consumer goods.
By the way, I deal with the laundry problem by accumulating 50+ t-shirts from thrift stores, swap meets, and freebies. I'm only doing 3-4 loads (of everything, not just t-shirts) once per month.