Cost of Convenience

I'm on an unplanned trip to China for work with 12 hours notice to get on a plane. Its been a mad dash to make travel arrangements and given there has been no time to prepare Ive been been paying some premiums to get this accomplished.

Some premium services I'm paying for:

Last minute transpacific flights
Express visa services through the hotel concierge.
International calls and SMS texts on my cells phone for loose ends I wasn't able to clear up before leaving.
A neck pillow at the airport since I wasn't able to grab mine before I left.
Premium laundry services at the hotel since I wasn't able to wash clothes before I left.
Child care arrangements back home for my daughter during times my wife was working

My employer will in the end be paying these premiums (except child care), but like my personal situation - time appears to be in very short supply and is more frequently worth the premium at times.

On the flight over to China I was thinking more about how to balance paying a premium for time. I've continued to struggle with finding a better balance, feeling very time poor and feel less productive overall as I can't keep up. I recognize finding the right balance is going to boost our productivity as I've found we are less productive overall when we feel overwhelmed.

A positive development on this is we now have a plan to start getting our house professionally cleaned monthly. We waited until we found the right opportunity that makes economic sense for us. We found a house cleaner for $15/hour (which is a good outsourcing opportunity for us) through an old neighbor that we tried out and are happy with. We'll evaluate after a couple months and see how its going and if we are continuing to get a good value.

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