The hidden cost of convenience and the myth of optimization.
Italians in general know how to live. There are reasons why phrases like “la dolce vita” are not even translated and adopted directly from Italian in English. Of course if you actually live in Italy, the Italians themselves don’t see it (unless by chance they’ve lived in other cities in the world). They simply live it. They almost cannot believe that you’d call their daily suffering with incompetent fools that comprise the public service sector “la dolce vita”, their high taxes, high cost of living, low wages and inability to be ‘taken seriously’ by the rest of the world as “la dolce vita”. They’re totally blind to it because it’s completely embedded into their culture.
I’m not talking about the delicious food. I’m not talking about the 2 hour lunch breaks with wine. I’m not even talking about the beautiful clothes or the genuine ability to appreciate artisan offerings. more about that another time. Today I’m talking about taking time do small tasks and I’m wondering if perhaps there is a piece we are missing when we fully endorse this concept of buying back your time and banishing all these pesky little tasks that can be outsourced away.
Having been efficiency focused my whole adult life (possibly also prior when I imagined I could multitask), always fine-tuning my rituals, my habits to get the very most out of my time, calculating s.t.’s (standard times) for production of items in manufacturing, optimising costs in the company, and constantly trimming the fat, this Italian concept of time was very, very, very difficult to get accustomed to. Trimming the fat? Living in Italy is like life completely rolled up in a long piece of buttery, glorious lardo.
So “what do you mean by buying back your time?” The idea is if you value your time at $x/hour, then any tasks that are not either enjoyable or dependent on you specifically to carry them out should be outsourced if it would cost you less than whatever your time is worth. That way you can spend all your time doing only what you can do. eg. if you value your time at $100/hour then get a person to do housework for you for 4 hours a day at $15/hour and that frees up 4 hours for you to recharge, regenerate or make even more money. I think I was so obsessed with this concept that it became second nature. Actually I still believe that in building a business this concept is quite crucial to understand whether you’re a boss or in any position with subordinates.
However after stepping away from corporate life, this concept had me mentally in a bind because it became hard to enjoy life when I was doing mundane tasks around the home. I saw every task as a number with a dollar sign. And if it was a low one, I didn’t want to do it. Fuck no. I noticed my (very successful) father-in-law do menial tasks around his home… thinking, why? My husband making the beds in the morning or cleaning up at the end of the evening. And I just couldn’t understand it. I’d think – let the cleaner do it. Relax! What a waste of energy. What a waste of then having a cleaner come in and pretend-clean to cover her hours. Or do you have some kind of cleaning OCD? Are these chores enjoyable to you?
It was only after some time that I realised what it was. It’s the low hanging fruit to get that dopamine hit. These odd jobs around the house, when you tidy that room, wash those dishes, throw in a load of laundry, make that bed, you get that instant sense of “achievement”. You’ve done something productive. Inconsequential in the long-run perhaps because let’s face it, it’ll likely have to be done again tomorrow or after 10 minutes. But still necessary for the operations of the household and so you get that taste of satisfaction. And that could be all you need for your own little dopamine kick especially if your real job is one where you don’t get to see immediate results. And let’s be fair, that’s in many jobs be it in corporate, or… a job like say… raising kids.
I’m not saying that I now suggest going overboard, firing your cleaner, gardener, pool boy and doing everything yourself. No, no, no. Because the worst thing is to then prioritise your time around these menial tasks that require little brain work (presuming one has a brain that can produce meaningful output in other ways). I do not suggest that. That would be a trap. Procrastination disguised as productivity. I’m just suggesting that perhaps we don’t actually need to outsource everything and buy back every second of our time. And perhaps we can shake that resentment of doing things that we see as not the theoretical “best” use of our time and the pressure we feel to continually optimize. What if that level of satisfaction you get, that dopamine hit, could be just as effective in improving your mental state as sitting in front of the TV, or overthinking and ruminating relaxing?