Outsourcing Isn’t Indulgent—It’s Strategic

by Claire L. Brady

This is the first installment of Protecting What Powers the Work blog series that reflects on the small, often invisible choices that help sustain leadership, family life, and the work we care deeply about.

For a long time, I carried a quiet belief that outsourcing was something you did after you’d “made it.” Once the business was bigger. Once the schedule calmed down. Once life felt less full.

That’s backwards.

If you work in higher education—or adjacent to it—you already know this truth: the work expands to fill every available inch of your time, attention, and emotional bandwidth. And for many of us, the work doesn’t stop at 5 p.m. It travels with us. It shows up in hotel rooms, early mornings, late nights, and weekends. It shows up when we’re doing intensive client work from a home office that’s supposed to feel like a refuge, not another pressure point.

I work out of my home. I’m also on the road a lot. And when I’m home, the work is deep, cognitively demanding, and people-centered. Add in family life—and a household with multiple neurodivergent humans—and it became very clear that “doing it all” wasn’t a badge of honor. It was a recipe for depletion.

The Budget Line That Changed Everything

Here’s the unglamorous truth: my husband and I realized we were spending a lot of money on coffee, tea, boba (so much boba!), and little “treat yourself” moments that added up fast. None of those things were the problem on their own. But collectively, they weren’t actually giving us what we needed.

So we did something simple—and surprisingly clarifying. We took that money and hired someone to clean our house twice a month.

This isn’t a blog post about hiring a cleaning person. It’s a blog post about what happened because we did.

Time Is Not the Only Scarce Resource

In higher ed, we’re trained to think about budgets in dollars and cents. But the scarcest resources for most professionals I know are energy, attention, and peace.

My time—including weekends—is precious. Not because I’m “too busy,” but because I’m intentional about where my best energy goes. When I’m home, I want my home to support recovery, creativity, and connection—not become another to-do list. And in a small house with a lot of neurodivergent folks, systems matter. Stuff needs to be in its place. Visual clutter is cognitive clutter. When the environment is off, everything feels harder than it needs to be. Outsourcing this one thing removed a constant background hum of stress. It wasn’t about cleanliness. It was about cognitive load.

What Outsourcing Really Buys You

Here’s what we gained—not hypothetically, but in practice:

• Less weekend friction about who was going to do what

• Less mental energy spent tracking chores and dividing labor

• More space to rest, reset, and actually enjoy being home and together

• A clearer boundary between work intensity and home recovery

• Fewer “I should be doing…” thoughts when I wasn’t working

• More time to spend visiting my parents, brother & his family, hobbies, and last minute adventures around Orlando.

In higher education, we talk a lot about protecting student capacity. We’re less good at protecting our own. Outsourcing—when done thoughtfully—isn’t about opting out of responsibility. It’s about making values-aligned choices with finite resources.

This Is Bigger Than Housecleaning

The point here isn’t that everyone should hire help. The point is that many of us have never been taught to budget for our humanity.

• We budget for conferences.

• We budget for software.

• We budget for professional development.

But we rarely budget for:

• Reduced friction

• Emotional regulation

• Energy conservation

• Peace at home

Capacity to show up fully for what matters most

For some people, outsourcing might look like meal prep, lawn care, childcare support, virtual assistants, grocery delivery, or even just fewer “convenience” expenses redirected toward something that actually lowers stress.

The question isn’t, “Can I justify this?” The question is, “What does this make possible?”

A Leadership Skill We Don’t Name Enough

As leaders and professionals, we’re constantly asking our teams to prioritize, delegate, and focus on highest-impact work. Yet many of us refuse to apply that same logic to our own lives.

Protecting your peace isn’t selfish. It’s not indulgent. And it’s not a sign that you care less. It’s a sign that you understand sustainability.

When you’re clear about what drains you—and what restores you—you make better decisions everywhere else: at work, at home, and in the relationships that matter most. And sometimes, the most powerful budget decision you can make isn’t about saving money. It’s about buying back your energy.

*Image created using ChatGPT