125. 10-Minute Task: Time the Task

How many times do you outsource something then say, "It shouldn't take you that long"? Do you actually know how much time it will take for someone to do it the "correct" way? If not, if this 10-Min task is for you. The goal here is to bridge the gap between expectation and result, and I think it will help many of you look at the bigger picture and feel good about some of the projects you haven't found a solution to... yet.

Transcript

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Over the years, I've worked with a lot of cleaning clients. And though people who want organizing do something similar, it's the cleaning clients that tend to say the same thing over and over again. And that is, it shouldn't take you that long. Right? And I know a lot of you have said it, and I understand why you say it to people. If you hire someone to come in and do a job, sometimes it's better to take the time to find the right contractor than to hire the cheapest person and try to instruct them. Or maybe you have hired someone that's a little bit more expensive and you're trying to rush them through the process because you're trying to get the best, but you don't want to pay as much. And again, I know some of you are like, that's not what I'm doing. But that is at least what it comes across to us as contractors. And so what I encourage you to do today for your 10-minute task is go find a task that you would normally outsource to someone else. And maybe you currently do. Maybe you outsource your cleaning to a crew. And when they come, they always miss one part of a room. Maybe sometimes they touch on it, but not every time. Maybe their reasoning is that it just takes too long. For instance, I always tell people, I've said this for years, glass shower takes an hour. Now that's not necessarily maintenance cleaning. There have been times where I've gone out and I've cleaned a bathroom and it's had a really big glass shower and it has the two shower heads, you know, like on opposite sides of the shower. And then you've got all of that stone that needs to be cleaned. You've got the grout, which the grout you don't have to clean every single time on the walls. On the floor, certainly, yes. But you also have showers that go clear up to the ceiling as far as being tiled or having stone. And so I do tell people there are different versions of what you're gonna get when someone comes out. If you are hiring for a deep clean, then certainly glass shower takes an hour. For sure. For sure. If someone has never been there before, or you just have a really, really dirty shower and it's big, why would you want someone to come in and quote unquote clean it and be able to do it in 10 minutes? If that's all you want, it's more to do with your communication of what's expected than the actual person doing the work. Now, why am I talking about cleaning today? Well, it's all connected. And like I said, I do have organizing clients that do this from time to time, especially with pantries, because they know that one of the first steps is throwing away expired food. And they're thinking to themselves, oh, I should have thrown away the expired food. I know that that's the first thing she's gonna do, and I can't believe I'm paying someone else to do that when I could do that myself. So I know that that's what happens a lot of times is that people think, oh, if I had just kept up with the shower, all they would have to do is come in and just clean the floor this time and spray down the fixtures and wipe those off, and then spray the glass doors, clean those, buff those. So I know what people are thinking when they say it, when they do it. The reason I wanted this to be a 10-minute task is because I think a lot of people forget. They forget exactly how much time it takes to do something well. Not just do something, but do something well, do something professionally. Because the thing is, if you hire someone to come in and they clean it like you do, meaning quickly, you may be a fabulous cleaner, but what you're expecting them to do is to come in and do it well and do it fast. And being slow is a completely different thing. There are some people that just move slowly, they don't spend a lot of time on things, they're just kind of sluggish. And yeah, you don't want that kind of contractor working on a project of yours. But I'm someone that moves super quick. I'm very detailed, I'm a perfectionist. And over the years, I have had to sacrifice certain things in projects because I knew that if I truly did it my way, I would be there for hours in one room. And if someone calls me out and says, Listen, I want you to clean my house the way you would clean your house, then I would have to clarify, okay, but just so you know, there's going to be certain things that I cannot do today. I don't do baseboards as part of a regular clean. I don't do blinds as part of a regular clean. And some people don't like that. But unless they've done it themselves, they don't know how much time it takes. Like with the little cheapy blinds. If you take a little swiffer and you sfer those and you kind of like knock them out, you will get a lot of dust that falls from them and they will be a little bit cleaner. So I will tell people, okay, I'm gonna swiff your blinds today very quickly. It's gonna take me like 30 seconds to do that window. And I can even pull them up and kind of swiffer the window sill. But if you want me to do the glass, if you want me to actually wipe down the blinds because they're like a a wood or something a little bit thicker, then that's gonna be a separate project. And so coming back to the 10-minute task today, I want you to go find a task, one thing. And I'm not talking about like dusting a lamp because obviously that's not gonna take you 10 minutes. I want you to find something like cleaning out the microwave or wiping each shelf of the refrigerator or cleaning your tub. You don't have to do the whole shower if it's a combo. And if you just have a shower, we're talking about actually scrubbing your floor. And tell me how much time that takes you to do it right. Now, if you just went and cleaned your whole house, this doesn't apply to you because you're gonna be able to go in and just do a little scrub scrub, freshen up, and then you're done. I want you to find a project that you have either outsourced in the past and you weren't happy with how someone did it, or something that you were going to outsource and now you're going to take care of it today because it's gonna give you more perspective as far as how much time it takes. And I know what's gonna happen. I know that probably 40% of you are gonna start this and you're gonna get frustrated and you're gonna be like, see, this is why I wanted to outsource it. Because I don't really know what I want to do with this. With the organizing projects, I really don't know where I want to store these, how I want to clump them together, I don't know what I need. Or if it's a cleaning project, oh, I hate this because it takes me two or three passes to truly get this clean. Okay. And I'm not coming down on everyone and saying, okay, you guys are horrible clients. I think in the bigger scheme of things, it is really good to have an honest perspective of what you're actually dealing with. And it's also going to teach you to work on one little project at a time and give yourself one little win. Because at the end of the day, you're not gonna outsource every little thing you want to do forever until the end of time. And you know this. And you know that I know this. And so I think for today, finding one area, even if it's cleaning out your coffee maker, because you've got to take out all the little parts, you gotta pour vinegar in it, you've got to wipe out the little reservoir if you've got like a Keurig. And so a lot of that stuff takes time. I know a lot of you already do some of this yourself, and you're like, oh, I already know how much time it takes. I'm not even gonna do this 10-minute task because I have someone do it for me and I appreciate them and I don't complain and I pay them well. And so I am good. I'm gonna go find another 10-minute task. And that is actually what I encourage you to do if you fall into that latter category, because this is a teaching moment. And again, it's not about coming down on people. It's about if you rarely do projects yourself and you outsource a lot, but you're still not happy with the work that's being done. I think sometimes that's a matter of perspective. Yes, there are lazy people out there. Yes, you will hire a contractor that you're not happy with. If you keep hiring contractors that actually go do the task, but you're not happy with the outcome. Sometimes it's a matter of, hey, I don't mind you spending longer on that project. I'll pay you more to do it right. And then they may say, oh, okay, I was just trying to squeeze it in because you threw it in last minute, or I didn't want to spend the full five or six minutes it's gonna take to do that when I'm trying to do the whole room and the whole house. And so some of it is a communication issue, but some of it is a perspective issue. And it's about truly timing yourself. So when this episode is over, I want you to stop it. I want you to go find your project. I want you to turn on your timer, and I want you to include the time that you're thinking about it. Okay. Meaning that when you get to the project, turn on the timer and then sit there and stare at it if you're not sure where to start. You don't have to turn on the timer when you're trying to decide what project to do. You're turning on the timer when you actually start looking at it and contemplating what you're gonna do with the space. And that's a lot more of the organizing side of it than it is the cleaning side of it. Unless every time you clean it, you're unhappy and you're not sure if the products you're using are right or the accessories. Or, you know, maybe you're like, I didn't want to do this until I purchased such and such cleaning tool on Amazon. So maybe you spend your 10 minutes going to Amazon and purchasing that so that in a day or two you can actually try it and see if it saves you time and money and it's something that you can no longer outsource because you've taken care of it, you know how much time it takes, and then you can outsource the bigger things to the people who are coming in and helping you. All right, I hope this episode was helpful. Please make sure to subscribe to the bonus content. The minimum contribution is only $3 a month. It is not a contract. You can listen to all of the previous bonus episodes that I have recorded for the past two and a half years in one month, and then you can cancel if it's something you don't want to continue with. Please make sure to follow us on YouTube, labeled organizing, as well as Instagram, labeled organizing. Thank you so much, and I will see you in the next episode.