Outsourcing Is Not For Everything

Outsourcing simply means to contract out a job or service to someone else. Many companies outsource work to cheaper locations as part of cost saving measures.

Outsourcing can be a really useful strategy but it has its place. You can’t outsource everything in your life.

Growing up, a number of people lived with us and looking back, I can describe some of the scenarios as a form of outsourcing.

There were parents who sent their children to us when they felt they couldn’t effectively parent them. This was often because the children were going off the rails and out of desperation, they turned to my father, a man they believed could help turn them round.

In a lot of cases, these children were straightened out and able to return home.

As good as outsourcing is, it is not meant for everything.

We can’t outsource friendships, relationships, critical thinking, personal growth, faith or learning.

Outsourcing and Personal Growth

Someone once reached out to me on social media saying he found me inspiring and wanted to work with me. He asked me to tell him about myself. I asked him what he had found out from my LinkedIn profile and other online platforms.

It turned out he had not bothered to do that and I told him all he needed to know was already widely available. That was his first coaching session.

If I wanted someone to mentor me, it’s my responsibility to find out about them. I shouldn’t outsource that task by attempting to push it to them.

They should really only need to provide information that’s not readily available through any other sources.

Outsourcing Relationships and Friendships

We can’t outsource relationships as they come out of intimacy. How strange would it be if you outsourced your relationship with your spouse?

Some of us want to outsource the effort it takes to get to know someone else as we are unwilling to put in the effort ourselves.

We rely on others to put in a good word even when we move in the same circles and could have, at any time, connected with those people.

There’s no substitute for us spending time with the persons we want to know to build the relationships we want to have.

Outsourcing and Critical thinking

Too many are too busy outsourcing anything that requires critical thinking and problem solving.

Voters don’t always do their own research instead opting to be confused by half baked figures made to appear as the truth.

People look for who they can pass their problems to even when they have not bothered to do anything about it themselves.

It’s time to rein in our outsourcing of critical thinking and problem solving. We have the ability to work by ourselves or with others to come up with solutions to the problems we face.

We can’t expect others to be more concerned about the issues we face if we can’t even be bothered to invest ourselves into finding solutions.

Outsourcing our Faith

It sounds insane but how many times do we attempt to outsource our relationship with God. We ask someone else to talk to our Creator for us when we have the same time, opportunity and access as they do.

In the same manner, I quite often see people who regularly outsource their prayer requests to others.

There are times when we need others to pray for and alongside us but many just want those who will pray on their behalf – aka outsourcing, while they go to bed.

It’s no doubt that one of the biggest problems we have today is that of people who are easily misled because they can’t be bothered to know God for themselves or to understand what His word says.

Many wrong ideologies today have spread because people have outsourced their pursuit of the Truth. This is one outsourcing that we need to rein back in.

As we start a new week, let’s take a moment to think about what we may have outsourced and ask the simple question:

‘Am I outsourcing the right things?’

Thank you for reading and sharing my posts. See you next week.