Meaningful Returns

Have you heard of this channel on cable called HGTV? It’s a very strange channel. Like, don’t ever let an adult with cable tell you they don’t watch cartoons anymore, because HGTV is just cartoons for adults. It’s the kind of channel that you can watch and suddenly have a revelation that you can’t remember when the TV got turned on, or who turned it on, or whether you’ve actually been watching it, or perhaps even what day of the week it is outside. I haven’t seen the new Harry Potter play, but I believe HGTV appears as an example of the intersectionality of Muggle Studies and Defense Against the Dark Arts. SPOILER ALERT.

I’m mostly kidding, TV doesn’t really have that effect on adult humans. Right? But anyway, the initialism HGTV begat (or at least popularized) another initialism, DIY, which stands for Do It Yourself. That could be a really ugly thing to say to someone who asks for help moving a piece of heavy furniture, but it’s generally used in the context of home projects, and therefore in a less ugly way.

Here’s a piece of public confession: I am useless with my hands. Not entirely useless, because I can shoot a basketball decently well, and play the guitar and the cello, and type numbers really fast on a ten-key, and build with Legos, and my handwriting is neater than average. And also, I can do the Vulcan salute as good as anyone. But the colloquialism “He’s good with his hands” in no way applies to me. And, while I sometimes lament this, I generally am 100% okay with it, because most of the activities that come to mind as falling under “good with hands” are not activities I enjoy doing at all. Maybe this is a bit of a Catch-22 since I suppose it’s possible I would enjoy them more if I was better at them, but the thing is, I don’t particularly want to get better at them.

It’s taken me a long time to come to grips with this reality, but it’s nice now that I’ve arrived. So what I want to tell you is, maybe YOU don’t actually like DIY projects? Maybe you’re incredibly talented with your hands, and if so, bless you. The world needs people like you. But the question still remains, Do you find the time you spend doing those projects to be worth it?

Many people do these DIY projects because generally DIY projects are cheaper, but let me be clear that they are only cheaper in one sense. They are actually quite expensive in more than one sense. They are cheaper in the dollars sense, because you aren’t paying a professional to do the job for you. But they are also more expensive because while you might save some dollars, you most certainly are spending lots of time. And so I’ll ask the question again, in a different way: Are the dollars you’re saving worth more than the time you’re spending?

Of course, I can’t answer that question for you, but I’ve already told you how I answer it for me. And I will leave you with a parting shot (from a recent study on whether time or money contribute more to our happiness) that should at least make you think twice before diving into the next DIY project:

In our pursuit of happiness, we are constantly faced with decisions both big and small that force us to pit time against money. Of course, sometimes it’s not a choice at all: We must earn that extra pay to make ends meet. But when it is a choice, the likelihood of choosing more time over more money — despite the widespread tendency to do the opposite — is a good sign you’ll enjoy the happiness you seek.