I have trouble delegating. I grew up learning how to do most things myself and I’ve always been hesitant whenever I have to get someone else to do things for me.
The problem is that I like my condo clean, but doing that myself takes up a lot of time, sometimes half a day on a weekend. Precious, precious weekends.
A friend referred me to a cleaning lady who worked part time. My condo is too small for a full time maid. I called her up and she told me her rate of 500 pesos for 5 hours of housework. Labor is cheap in the Philippines.
On the scheduled day, she arrived and started vacuuming the carpet and mopping the tiles. I asked her if she was going to go home afterwards. She said she needed to fetch her child from her P.E. class first. As she continued to clean, I used the time to write and work on my goals.
Suddenly, I felt a tinge of guilt. Here I was doing what I wanted to do while she was cleaning for me. Cleaning for a living. For survival. Life isn’t fair. Why am I so privileged? Do I really deserve this?
But then I realized two things. One is that by paying her, I am giving her more income that she can use for her child’s education. The second is that I get to free up time for myself to work on things with more value to society (I hope).