Mowing the lawn

I grew up in rural North Carolina on a track of land that measured around five acres. Much of it was wooded with maybe around an acre and half of grass. I have fond memories of fighting my brother to get dibs on mowing it, and it was so exciting for about a month, then I absolutely hated it. From then on I let him cut it.

All that worked fine until we became adults and the first home I bought had a lot of grass. I thought being older I’d enjoy it more but quickly found out that wasn’t the case. I went as far as buying a huge z-mower with a 60″ cut to try to get done faster, but nothing mattered I despised it.

Finally, when I sold that house one of the goals with the next was a smaller yard, and with that came the ability for me to hire out the mowing. After about four weeks I realized how dumb I’d been all my life and it reminds me so much of this quote I saw by Sam Altman:

I don’t think most people value their time enough—I am surprised by the number of people I know who make $100 an hour and yet will spend a couple of hours doing something they don’t want to do to save $20.

It reminded me that logically I should have made this decision 10 years ago, but because of cost, I assumed it was advantageous to just suck it up and keep going.