The host explores how people mistake busy work for productivity, wasting time and money on tasks they could outsource. A $40 lawn service versus two hours of DIY effort, or his mother's elaborate plan to fix a couch leg for $20, show how clinging to doing it yourself creates stress without real value. Question your actual purpose before spending time or money.
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Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. There is a self-limiting mindset that many people have when it comes to their time and money. They feel that saving a few bucks and, quote, doing the work themselves is key to their happiness and success. Sometimes they are way off the mark, and they put in the time and effort even when it's obviously working against them. Why? Because they're keeping busy. It gives them a sense of accomplishment. They're a hamster on a wheel, not really going anywhere, but they sure did get their heart rate up. I often use my own personal example of lawn mowing to illustrate my point. I haven't mowed the lawn in many years. I have a guy who does it for me. He has one of those super fast riding mowers, one of those with the two handles that can turn on a dime. He drives through my lawn at lightning speed, and then he rolls that sucker back up on his trailer, and he grabs the weed whacker, and he trims around the sidewalk and the landscaping like a skilled surgeon. After all is done, he grabs a leaf blower and he skillfully cleans up everything so it looks like he was never there. He does all of this in a matter of around 20 to 30 minutes. For his time, his expertise, and the use of all of his equipment, I pay him $40. If I were to do that with my own push mower and weed eater, it'd probably take me around 2 hours to do it. Or I could go spend thousands of dollars on a fancy riding mower and the gasoline and the blade sharpening, the oil changes, the filter changes, the spark plug changes, practice a few dozen times, and then get to that quick 20 to 30 minutes that Lawn Dude does. You know, I've done the math and it makes no sense. I have no desire to spend that much time either pushing my own mower around for 2 hours, you know, because I can make more than $40 in a couple hours it takes to mow the lawn, and I can do so from the comfort of my air-conditioned office. Nor do I have the interest in devoting the money and time it would take to learn how to become super fast, super skilled expert that my lawn guy is. No, I'll just Venmo my lawn dude the $40 and give him a big thank you. My neighbor, on the other hand, he sits on his very expensive John Deere mower every week and he looks like he's about to die out in the sun. I don't know, maybe he enjoys it. Maybe he feels obligated as the man to do the job of taking care of the lawn. Maybe he looks down on me and everyone else for never putting in the work in our own lawns. But whatever, as far as I'm concerned, Neighbor dude looks like he's about to die from heatstroke. And it seems to be all for the reason of, "Hey, I mow the lawn. That's what I do." I recently endured another perfect example of this self-limiting mindset. My mom, who may be the most anxious and neurotic person on the planet Earth, is also extremely frugal to a fault. She was raised poor, so she has some deeply embedded behaviors and thought patterns that tell her to hold on to a penny at all costs. She was also, ironically, an accountant for many years, so she presumably understands the value of time and money. Yet we have instances like what I experienced with her the other day. My mom is getting up there in age. If you can't tell by looking at her, don't worry, she'll let you know. When she was diagnosed with osteoporosis, she couldn't wait to tell everyone. The diagnosis has also led her to making changes around the house, like having her shower remodeled. Well, the other day she called me to let me know that her couch is too low to the ground and it makes it difficult for her to get in and out of. It's a struggle to stand up once she's sitting down. So her solution? She wants to make the legs of the couch taller. Me: Okay, cool. We can order new legs for the couch and I'll put them on for you. And so the new legs came in the mail. I drive over to her house, I flip the couch over, and I realize that there is a fifth leg that sits in the middle of the couch. It helps to hold the whole thing up and keeps it from sagging in the middle, presumably. Well, now we have four long legs and one short leg in the middle, and it's not going to touch the floor. To complicate matters, that middle leg is attached to the couch differently than the other four legs. It's a thick rubber material that is attached via a bolt. So I put my brain to use and I got on Amazon and I found an adjustable middle leg that will work out perfectly. The catch? It cost around $20. This immediately turned my mom off. After all, she just spent $40 on 4 new legs for the couch, so she wasn't about to spend $20 on just one more. She started concocting a scheme that would take a piece of wood that she had to the hardware store, get it cut to length, have them attach a bracket to it so that she could bolt it onto the couch. It was just crazy talk. She was going to take hours out of her day and probably end up spending more than $20 when it was all said and done. I listened to her plan and I calmly explained it didn't make any sense. We could just spend 20 bucks, wait one day, get the new part from Amazon, and put it on. But for some reason, the thought of forking over $20 to Amazon really made her anxious. After all, she had this big chunk of wood already, and she was convinced it would be perfect for the job. I told her, look, I'll buy the dumb middle leg for you. Don't go wasting your time with the hardware store and all that. Trust me when I say that doesn't make any sense. Me telling her that she would be wasting her time really set her off. She says, "Yeah, to people like you that may be wasting time, but not for me." In other words, she was saying, "What the hell else do I have to do with my time? Sounds like a productive outing that will make me feel like I'm accomplishing something." Perhaps she has a point. At this point in her life, having something to do is more important than her actually making financial sense. While I may see it as banging her head against the wall, she sees it as her actually trying something, doing something, even though we all know it won't work. I think many of you are in the same kind of mindset. You're doing stuff, but it may just be a colossal waste of time and energy. You could spend the $20 on the proverbial couch leg, but many of you tell yourself, Well, then what the hell am I going to do otherwise? Next time you find yourself embroiled in some anxiety-producing task or some time-sucking activity, stop and ask yourself why you are doing it. Are you doing it out of guilt? Shame? Are you actually avoiding what should be done? Do you recognize that there is an alternative, but that alternative means shifting your entire worldview and taking away the busy activity that has given you some false sense of purpose all these years. For you entrepreneurial types, being more efficient and effective with your time and money is hugely important. You don't have the comfortable paycheck coming this Friday. Every little thing you do needs to have a dollar attached to it. It's either a dollar leaving your pocket or a dollar coming in. If you're not producing in that moment, you better have a damn good reason for doing so.
