D.I.Y. vs. Delegation

I originally posted this a year ago. I’m posting it here though because the Squarespace website experiment is coming to an end. The reason this is still worth keeping around or even reading now? Because I reference it in my next post and I need to be able to link it for my next post. So if you never read this, or need a refresher, here you go!

I’m the kind of person who has a hard time asking for help. I also have a hard time spending money on services I could perform myself. This is complicated further by the fact that, unless you pay a premium for a service, you are typically better off doing it yourself (D.I.Y.). As a result, in those few occasions when I found myself in a leadership role, I typically tried delegating work to others until they took too long too many times and then I just did it all myself.

What kinds of services should I pay other people for, and which ones should I do myself? This is a basic time-energy question: How much time do I have in a week or month and, more importantly, how much energy will certain tasks demand over others?

Let’s take a recent example: Should I code my own website? On at least five occasions I’ve needed a website built — each time I tried to go through other people and, by the time I had it in working order it was too late. Volunteers or low-paid “favor” type services having proven insufficient, I then had to choose between learning to code or paying for a premium service.

So in November, 2020, I decided to learn how to code, so that I could program my own website from the base up (or, in HTML, from the “head” down through the “body”).

I paid a friend to teach me some basic HTML and CSS for a couple of days that I took off from work. It was like a miniature code boot camp. However, when I returned to this task a couple of weeks later, I spent days trying to program relatively simple functions into my websites, only to realize in frustration how much time gets sucked away troubleshooting and conquering new learning-curves in the development of code languages.

In December, I sat with a friend for a couple of days as they gave me a crash course on some more HTML and CSS. Three times since I started to try to learn code I have tried to program a website. While I’ve had a lot of fun and now have a basic sense for these two languages of code, I have more importantly gained a healthy and strong sense of appreciation and respect for those who actually code well. Amazing skills, everyone. Much respect.

These last few months have taught me that, if I am to learn to use HTML and CSS fluently, it will be sometime down the road. For now, I don’t have the time-energy or head rental space for the sustained development of these language-skills.

In a few hours of labor I can earn enough to pay for Squarespace. While it doesn’t offer me the privacy or independence I would prefer, the fact is it will be reliable and easier to keep up while working or writing.

Existential navigation of possible horizons in the 21st Century is all about learning when to do it yourself vs. when to delegate to others (either by purchase of labor power through the medium of exchange we call money, or by asking for help). In the case of programming, I will delegate, so that I can spend more time either making money, or using my precious time-energy in the week to read, write, and spend time with loved ones.

The exciting realization to come out of this is that I’ll have a lot more time-energy than I have for the last few months. I was so busy writing my book and trying to learn to code that I really couldn’t do anything else.

Well, now I have a website. Subscribe if you want to keep in the loop when I post to the blog or send out newsletter updates about upcoming events, the book, or new videos.

Related posts:

I can still see the words of Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, “Drop the storyline.” With a confused look on my face, I tried to process what she was saying. What does drop the storyline mean? And, what…

I love my space. I don’t always want to be around other people. My depression can make me antisocial, and my anxiety makes me wonder if people really want to be around me. I overthink about how much…

Anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) is a hormone produced by the small follicles in a woman’s ovaries. It is a useful indicator of a woman’s ovarian reserve, which is the number of eggs she has left. AMH…