Do it yourself? Or hire someone? Four questions to help you decide.

Many of life’s most subtle but important lessons can be learned by reading old Calvin & Hobbes strips.

Like this one, from June 27, 1989. In it, Calvin struggles with the basics of yo-yo, then finally says, “I can’t imagine mastering the skills involved here without a clearer understanding of who’s going to be impressed.”

I feel you, Calvin.

There are a lot of times in life where you can hire an expert to do a thing or just do it yourself.

I’m not saying anyone would hire a yo-yo expert to accomplish their yo-yo goals for them. I’m talking about everyday life and work things like catering a party, publishing a book, or assembling a desk. You can do all those things yourself, or you can hire someone to do it for you.

For example, our bathroom pocket door came off its rail the other day. This is not a thing I’ve fixed before, and after I took the trim off the door I realized there was a broken part I did not (yet) know how to replace.

I had to decide whether to learn to fix it myself or pay someone else to fix it.

My decision process to hire someone else

I am quite certain I could learn to fix the door myself. YouTube exists, and the hardware store is just a mile away. No one would mistake me for a handyman (I inherited my father’s DIY home vandalism skills), but I could figure it out.

On the other hand, I know a great guy down the street who could fix this in about one-eighth the time it would take me, for not much more than I’d spend on new tools.

Ultimately, the wisdom of Calvin’s observation won out. I couldn’t imagine mastering the skills involved without a clearer understanding of who would be impressed.

That is: if I learned to fix this pocket door, I had no intention of selling those new skills in the future. The economic tradeoff was a wash. Also, I didn’t feel terribly interested in learning those skills or spending my time in that way. So… easy decision in this case.

The decision points for doing it yourself or hiring someone else

In my Get Published class, which both demystifies the publishing process and explains how self-publishing works, I highlight the points along the self-publishing journey where you could hire someone to do part of the work for you.

In self-publishing, the most-hired skills are editing, book design, cover art, publishing, and publicity. Every one of those skills is learnable. Over 30 years of professional writing, editing, publishing, and marketing, I have mastered all of them. I did them all for together, twist, and RELIT.

You can do it yourself, too. But do you really want to?

The decision to do it yourself or hire someone else often comes down to these simple questions:

1. Do you plan to sell these skills after you master them?

I don’t plan on fixing other people’s pocket doors, so the financial ROI on learning them is near zero. Similarly, people who want to publish a book to support their business (e.g. an attorney building her brand) balk at having to master so much new knowledge and skill with no intent to sell those skills later. The attorney wants to spend her time lawyering, not formatting other people’s books.

2. Will the use of those skills provide other value?

If I’d fixed the pocket door myself, I might be able to save money doing other repairs myself in the future using the skills I learned on this project. But that’s unlikely because the pocket door project is pretty specific to pocket doors. Learning Adobe InDesign to format your book may or may not be a skill you can exploit in the future for other projects.

3. How much investment is required to gain these skills?

Learning new things takes time, energy, and sometimes money. Part of ROI is the “I”… Investment. The pocket door would take time, which for me is an opportunity cost: it takes me away from working on other projects. Learning how to publish a book is a much larger investment for most people, with a lot of “I wish I’d known about that before I started” aspects.

4. Do you want to do it yourself?

Never undervalue intrinsic motivation. If it’s something you want to do and something you want to learn, regardless of the other three questions, then perhaps it’s worth doing just for that reason alone. It’s your life. Live it the way you want.

Get Published in 2025

If you’re interested in the publishing process or how to self-publish your own book, join me for my Get Published class on December 10th. Attendance is limited to 16 people to ensure everyone gets their questions answered. But don’t worry… I’ll be doing this again!

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