There's something oddly satisfying in accomplishing things by working with your hands. Something that has a definite start and finish and can be seen by others. The experience in doing projects with your hands are something that stick with you for a long time. Today, the fix to the next problem is a phone call and $300 quote away. With that, the satisfying feeling of doing shit yourself becomes better. Of course, you should always value your time and look at the opportunity cost of investing time into doing something yourself vs paying a professional to do it. But there is a point where you break even and are better off doing it yourself.

Most males today work 9-5 weekday jobs and binge video games, social media, tv shows, porn, and whatever else chumps do on the weekends. Today's society makes it more lucrative than ever to get into a trade like plumbing, woodworking, automotive, construction, etc. Why? Because society is creating lazy men. I'm not sure if it's the environment I'm in (university frat life), or if this is happening everywhere. My experience has been that many people are quick to shell out hundreds of dollars to someone else to fix something without EVEN looking at it themselves! They'd rather lay in bed scrolling through their phone while a technician makes a few hundred bucks off of them.

When I first moved into a house with 6 other frat bros, I was amazed that our dishwasher was broken and no one had even attempted to fix it. The landlord takes forever to do anything, and the dishes were stacking up in the sink. 15 minutes, a YouTube video, and a screwdriver later and I got the dishwasher up and running. Two of my roommates were amazed that I fixed it and asked how I got it working, that they would have never figured it out. I just vaguely told them that I had a knack for fixing things. Truth is, I had never touched a dishwasher prior to that in MY LIFE. But I'll tell you what I didn’t do: I didn’t go into my room and play video games for hours and wait for it to fix itself.

Being in a house full of 6 other men, I thought some of the guys would be at least a little handy but I was quickly proven wrong. Some dumbasses made a bunch of holes in our walls from all the parties they would throw. I'm not talking about small holes, these things looked like there was a WWE wrestling match in our house. One of our roommates had his uncle quote us $500 to get them patched up. Well, he didn't even follow up with his uncle about fixing them and our landlord was coming to check out the house in the next few days. I'll be damned if I lose my $500 deposit because these lazy fucks weren't going to do anything. $100, YouTube, and a few hours later and I patched all the drywall good as new. I had never messed with drywall, sheetrock, any of that in my life. I had no clue what I was doing to be honest. But the walls looked great and I charged everyone $200 for materials and labor and bought myself some beer. I should have charged them more for ruining my Saturday night plans.

This weekend, this girl I've been seeing came over. Her car window got smashed in and the insurance wasn't going to cover it. The quote to fix the window was + $300. Well, $36, YouTube, a trip to the junkyard, and a few hours later and she had a brand new window. I've never installed a window before. Are you catching onto the big idea now?

There are countless times when I was a kid that I would be pissed at my father for turning off my Nintendo so I could help him fix shit around the house, change the oil in a car, etc. Despite having no formal education and working 12 hours 6 days a week, he liked to build or fix everything on his own and would make me help him. I'm now grateful for the lessons this has taught me today.

Look, I'm not telling you to go be Bob the fucking builder. But you will be amazed at the amount of men who shell out hundreds of dollars on something that’s probably a $20 fix. Value your time and know when it's best to hire someone else. But more often than not, it's probably better to do shit yourself. I sure don't make $100 an hour so the time invested to fix drywall or a car window was definitely worth the 2-3 hours it cost me to do it. Plus, it’s attractive to women. I'm curious to hear everyone's experience on this subject.

TL;DR: Attempt to fix shit yourself before paying someone else hundreds of dollars to do so. Most of the time it won't cost more than some YouTube research, an hour or two, and the cost of materials.