I have typically been a do it myself type of person throughout my life. I tend not to hire anybody to do work I can do or learn how to do myself. Challenges and learning new skills gets me motivated and it's very satisfying to look back on a completed project knowing it was your work and effort the produced the results. As I get older things are changing. Why? Time. I always feel I don't have enough time to complete what "needs" to get done. When I was younger I didn't seem to care as much and I would take as long as needed to get the result I was looking for. I saw it as an investment in my future as I knew I would be doing some of the same things and using the same skills in the future. Now time management has a big influence on me. I am a lot more organized now and I know my capabilities well enough to know what I can get accomplished in a certain amount of time. Coming to grips with this is difficult. It makes you prioritize things knowing everything won't get done. It took me awhile to realize that I am only one man and if I want to get everything done I will need some help to do things I know I can do myself. Increasing efficiency through better organization and tools helps but only to a certain point. This puts me in a spot where I need to decide what I'm going to do and what I'm going to hire out. This can be good since I can decide do the tasks I like the most. A recent example - I have wanted to create a justbigreds.com logo for some time now but just kept on putting it off thinking I might find something on the net or maybe learn Photoshop or something. One day I just went down to a local graphics shop and said how much would it cost to create a logo. Fifty bucks was the response and I said ok let’s do it. I gave them some ideas and in a week it was done. Two years ago this would not have been the case. I would still be trying to figure out Photoshop. I'm glad I'm getting better at hiring out work. I don't want to create logos- I want to restore BIG REDS and sell parts and I'm alright with that.
