There’s a saying “Professionals built the Titanic, amateurs built the ark”; What they fail to mention is the titanic took three years to build, and the ark by some estimates up to a hundred years.

I’ve got a similar story to tell you about: My thousand dollar oil change.

Summer had arrived

A few weeks ago I had begun preparing my motorcycle for the upcoming riding season. Prior to riding it’s highly recommended to change most fluids since the bike has been sitting all winter long. I made a few quick phone calls to some local shops and asked for some time & cost estimates — yikes! Most mentioned about a hundred dollars total (including parts) but because everyone in the entire city was also preparing their bikes & getting them on the roads it would take an entire weekend to have completed.

“Unlikely!”, I told myself. I was well aware the entire weekend was going to be absolutely stunning and I wasn’t about to separate myself from the saddle for that long because a shop lacks enough mechanics. “I’ll do it myself!”, and I did. I set to work in researching the requirements as far as what I would need tool-wise, parts, and worst-case-scenario items. I’ll admit upfront that my garage looks more like a computer palace than a garage: The sole tool I own was an interchangeable screwdriver that allowed me to open server cases. Total servers in the garage: 9. Total tools in the garage: A screwdriver and I.

This should be easy I thought.. I placed a few orders online & started bouncing from store to store…

Finished!

After a day or two the necessary filter arrived in the mail and I had already spent a few hours running back & forth picking up the necessary tools, oil and some shop towels to keep everything orderly. I set out to work & not more than an hour later I was completed in full. I took the bike for a spin and I assumed everything was swell in motorcycle-land. It must have been a Monday as things went downhill from there. Moore’s law.

It turns out that automobile oil in motorcycles is a really bad fit: You’ll wear out your clutch extremely fast due to some lacking ingredients in said oil. I must have been slightly blinded by my dunce cap while researching — I assumed oil was oil; 10w40 is 10w40.

Not quite — I ended up spending over thirteen hours running back & forth acquiring tools to fix my mess including $80 of the wrong oil and the potential loss of a $240 dollar clutch not including many hours of labor.

I still have yet to complete my oil change but I’ve learned a few things in the process…

Verdict, and how this applies to everyday things

Taking into account my time & costs I invested $1,000+ to change the oil in my motorcycle. In order to recoup that I would need to change my oil for four years just to break even to cover the costs of the tools. This same type of scenario is applicable to many tasks that we invest our time into. The skills I learn may come in handy in the future & perhaps be a bit more mechanically inclined — but is it a wise investment?

Take into consideration tasks in your own life that might be equal to my oil change. On an annual basis I’m sure you dig through the nitty-gritty with taxes, accounting, HR, web design & many others. Some of us get stuck wearing all kinds of hats. Some of those hats might not be a wise-investment for your time. Pick any single item that you’ve got on your todo list and weigh it in the balances, you may just want to consider leaving it to the professionals. The costs of your mistakes in addition to frustration could outweigh the costs of getting someone else to do it.

Are there any particular tasks you’ve been investing time into that you may want to consider outsourcing? Let me know in the comments!

p.s. No motorcycles were harmed in the making of this post.. I hope. Now, back to my second week finishing up this oil change.