Day 740 - Spend money to save time - https://golifelog.com/posts/spend-money-to-save-time-1673309295771
I'm a big fan of @waitbutwhy, and this [tweet](https://twitter.com/waitbutwhy/status/1599776291385126912) resonated loads:
> People tend to get wealthier as they get older, which is like everything becoming cheaper as you age.
>
> But time just gets more and more expensive. We start out as time fat cats and end up in time poverty.
>
> So the older you get, the more it makes sense to spend money to save time.
I'm currently nowhere near any definition of "wealthy" for sure, but I am richer than when I was a time fat cat six-year-old (or 20-year-old for that matter). More disposable income, but more than half way through my life. I'm definitely moving into time poverty zone.
It's just make sense to consider spending more money to save time. What's some high ROI areas where spending even just a little money will bring back so much more time? Especially time on chores or tasks that I hate, that I do grudgingly, or just low value, monotonous, boring, doesn't help me progress on my goals?
Brainstorming a list here:
- **Cleaning**. Paying someone to come to my house to do a massive clean-up once a month had been a huge time saver. I think we can do this even more often for better quality of life and cleanliness!
- **Groceries**. There's some items in the grocery list that repeats itself every week or month. Supplements, fruits, snacks, detergents, toiletries. I should just create a recurring buy list on repeat for them! Hack inspired by [@dickiebush](https://twitter.com/dickiebush/status/1612071130436698116).
- **Cooking**. Ordering delivery on some days of the week for dinner helps save time cooking. Otherwise I mostly fast or eat light dinners. I also go for recipes that are easy to cook and clean up after, e.g. scrambled eggs and butter for breakfast.
- **Virtual Assistant**. I've always wanted to experiment with hiring a part-time freelance VA to do miscellaneous work tasks for all my different projects. Stuff like collating online research, posting on social media for some project accounts, doing low priority low value work which slices up mental bandwidth by a thousand cuts.
- **Commuting**. I don't drive or own a car. Travelling from point to point takes up lots of time, even for a public transport system as good as in Singapore. I think there's some journeys where spending more money to commute by cab is a good choice (when there's no traffic jams, when there's less transit changes).
- **Tools and tech**. Spending money on a Twitter scheduling tool like Zlappo was such a huge productivity boost. Before I got it, I was RT-ing manually. Crazy idea. Now Zlappo auto-RTs when I'm asleep. Frees up time and mental energy to track the RTs. I need more tools and tech like Zlappo. A few areas I can imagine - LinkedIn scheduling and analytics, Canva for designing social media assets.
*What other high ROI-low cost things can we spend money on to save time?*
> People tend to get wealthier as they get older, which is like everything becoming cheaper as you age.
>
> But time just gets more and more expensive. We start out as time fat cats and end up in time poverty.
>
> So the older you get, the more it makes sense to spend money to save time.
I'm currently nowhere near any definition of "wealthy" for sure, but I am richer than when I was a time fat cat six-year-old (or 20-year-old for that matter). More disposable income, but more than half way through my life. I'm definitely moving into time poverty zone.
It's just make sense to consider spending more money to save time. What's some high ROI areas where spending even just a little money will bring back so much more time? Especially time on chores or tasks that I hate, that I do grudgingly, or just low value, monotonous, boring, doesn't help me progress on my goals?
Brainstorming a list here:
- **Cleaning**. Paying someone to come to my house to do a massive clean-up once a month had been a huge time saver. I think we can do this even more often for better quality of life and cleanliness!
- **Groceries**. There's some items in the grocery list that repeats itself every week or month. Supplements, fruits, snacks, detergents, toiletries. I should just create a recurring buy list on repeat for them! Hack inspired by [@dickiebush](https://twitter.com/dickiebush/status/1612071130436698116).
- **Cooking**. Ordering delivery on some days of the week for dinner helps save time cooking. Otherwise I mostly fast or eat light dinners. I also go for recipes that are easy to cook and clean up after, e.g. scrambled eggs and butter for breakfast.
- **Virtual Assistant**. I've always wanted to experiment with hiring a part-time freelance VA to do miscellaneous work tasks for all my different projects. Stuff like collating online research, posting on social media for some project accounts, doing low priority low value work which slices up mental bandwidth by a thousand cuts.
- **Commuting**. I don't drive or own a car. Travelling from point to point takes up lots of time, even for a public transport system as good as in Singapore. I think there's some journeys where spending more money to commute by cab is a good choice (when there's no traffic jams, when there's less transit changes).
- **Tools and tech**. Spending money on a Twitter scheduling tool like Zlappo was such a huge productivity boost. Before I got it, I was RT-ing manually. Crazy idea. Now Zlappo auto-RTs when I'm asleep. Frees up time and mental energy to track the RTs. I need more tools and tech like Zlappo. A few areas I can imagine - LinkedIn scheduling and analytics, Canva for designing social media assets.
*What other high ROI-low cost things can we spend money on to save time?*