I think this article misses something quite important:
The amount of time you save by outsourcing is often much smaller than a nominal analysis of the time spent would suggest. There are a couple of things at play here:
There is an interplay of fixed and variable costs that can make some marginal costs nearly trivial and others quite significant. E.g., I spend about 1.5 hours each weekend shopping for weekly groceries. The amount of time I would save by buying a single day's less food would probably be around a minute. This is less than the time it takes me to complete an order for takeout. The 15 minutes of direct ingredient preparation
I think this article misses something quite important:
The amount of time you save by outsourcing is often much smaller than a nominal analysis of the time spent would suggest. There are a couple of things at play here:
- There is an interplay of fixed and variable costs that can make some marginal costs nearly trivial and others quite significant. E.g., I spend about 1.5 hours each weekend shopping for weekly groceries. The amount of time I would save by buying a single day's less food would probably be around a minute. This is less than the time it takes me to complete an order for takeout. The 15 minutes of direct ingredient preparation
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