The person who can't afford a cook and maid now needs to full those duties, cooking and cleaning, the person who can doesn't. The food is already made, the house is clean, the laundry is done, the kids are bathed, the fridge is full. They have time to decide what to do with. Sure, they could cook or clean, but that's now their choice. The activity is optional and can be prioritized instead of being mandatory.

There are certain tasks that people need to do every day that take time and, if you can afford to have someone do those tasks, suddenly you have more time you can do other things with.

The people I know who accomplish a lot of things also cook and clean for themselves.

Of course paying someone saves you time.

But the question is whether that’s the key differentiator holding you back from X, Y, and Z. And no it’s not. There are people who do X, Y, and Z and don’t have a maid.

Maybe on some psychological level getting help is the only way you personally will have time (feels true for myself), but you have to recognize there is significant personality and skill difference when it comes to being busy.

> But the question is whether that’s the key differentiator holding you back from X, Y, and Z. And no it’s not. There are people who do X, Y, and Z and don’t have a maid.

As with a lot of things: individually, yes, this is the only useful way to look at it. Statistically? Over a population? No, of course high levels of unpaid obligations keep people from accomplishing things, in the sense that if you ease those up they accomplish more.

More to the point, I didn't make this about how it was "holding people back" so I'm now seeing why you're so resistant to it, since you think that's what I was getting at: no, it's about attitudes from executives who live life on easy mode then complain that their underlings are lazy.

I think his point is that such people exist, and they're on the upper end of some "distribution". The experience you're describing is more of the median experience.

Perhaps he's simply pointing out that with the right set of skills, you (or others) could also move yourself up (down?) the bell curve, and that your position on the curve isn't necessarily fixed. Treating it as such is inherently limiting.

I'm not saying that people can't do X, Y, and Z, there are people who are just that driven, or people who have a spouse that fills in those roles, but it's far easier for people who the necessities of life are optional, and when you're surrounded by people for whom it's all optional, they are going to assume it's optional for everyone and no assume why everyone isn't doing more.

People with enough income have a whole list of things that do not fill their time unless they want them to, that aren't really optional for people without enough money to pay to make them go away.

Laundry, cleaning, cooking, shopping, lawn work, home maintenance, car maintenance, hell even managing your schedule—for an awful lot of executives (among others) much or all of that is optional. They have more freedom with their time because they pay to make a bunch of problems go away (and if they don't, it's a choice). They come home from work and choose what to do—they may still be busy, by choice! But they have far fewer demands on their time. The people who work for them come home from work, work two to four more hours, then, maybe, choose what to do. And you better believe they work weekends, too.