Outsource Your Life Balance? - Revisited

By David B. Bohl | May 2, 2007 | No Responses Yet

I needed to revisit the topic of outsource your life balance because I don’t think I was clear in my first post, Outsource Your Life Balance, due to the comments and responses I received. I don’t mean that outsourcing tasks in and of itself is a bad thing. We all do it, from sending our clothes to the dry cleaners to making repairs in and around our homes. What I mean is that what concerns me is when those offering their services, such as personal assistants, assert that outsourcing is the secret to life balance.Judging by the responses and comments I’ve received, it appears that maybe I wasn’t very clear in my post Outsource Your Life Balance?

My point isn’t that outsourcing tasks is in and of itself a bad thing. We all do it, from sending our clothing to the dry cleaners to making repairs in and around our homes.

What concerns me is when those offering their services, such as personal assistants, assert that outsourcing is the secret to life balance.

Sure, it may help in the short term with time management, depending upon how much preparation work is needed bringing someone in from the outside to perform a series of personal errands and everyday jobs.

Balancing one’s life certainly includes time management, but it’s so much more than that.

It also includes determining what’s truly important to us - spending the time to figure out where we’re going and why we’re going there.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Dr. Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said that one of the biggest problems people face in creating life balance is that “the person has not yet sufficiently paid the price to get very clear about what matters most to them.”

No amount of outsourcing is going to help us to truly define and create well-balanced, fulfilled lives.