Most of life involves choices or tradeoffs: if I do A, I can’t also do B. For most of us, these tradeoffs happen so frequently that we barely notice them. After all, making choices and sacrifices is part of being an adult, and we know it. We have to get up for work tomorrow, so we have to go to bed at a reasonable hour. We want to fit into a special outfit, so we order a salad instead of macaroni and cheese. We need to drive home, so we either appoint a designated driver or are very, very careful about our alcohol consumption. (Here in Connecticut, the legal blood alcohol limit will be lowered as of next January, from 0.08% to 0.05%. For some people, this means that having just one drink puts them at risk of being stopped for driving under the influence.)

Today, I made a choice to protect my writing time.

My day job involves doing research and writing for other lawyers. I usually work on discrete projects. Even though I often never meet my client’s client, all the confidentiality and record-keeping that goes with being a lawyer applies to me. As a result, after a project is over, I have to retain certain portions of the file for seven years after completion of the work.

Back in the days of faxes, my files were often inches thick. As a result, I had to be diligent about weeding files out of the cabinets in my office, purging them of material I didn’t need to keep,and moving the stripped-down files to storage boxes in the attic. Gradually, as clients grew more adept at scanning and emailing documents, I had less cause to stuff my files with printouts. I occasionally receive a large envelope or a box containing exhibits I need to review for whatever motion or brief I’m writing, but for the most part, the only physical parts of the file are those I print for my own reference, plus my handwritten notes about telephone calls or research. Accordingly, it became less urgent to do the periodic purge of my file cabinets, because I wasn’t running out of space as quickly.

Of course, in the past few years, Tuxedo Cat Press began to take up space in my office. My file cabinets now include not only legal files, but materials I use for book events. Two drawers are filled with inventory, i.e., copies of my novels. So recently, I realized that I needed to completely reorganize my files, including purging outdated legal files from the drawers and moving them to the attic.

This, in turn, reminded me that it had been a long time since I’d purged the files in the attic. The rules require that I keep files for seven years, but I knew it had been much longer than that since I’d last had a file clerk to clean out the attic files. So, for reasons I can’t quite articulate, I decided that it was high time I got all the old files out of the attic and shredded or recycled them, depending on the contents, and I decided that today was the day for this activity.

It was a noble plan. My first organizer, my dear late friend, Dottie, would have been proud. Since today is Memorial Day, I took the day off from billable work. After a bit of procrastination, I put in my earbuds, turned on Whoopi Goldberg’s new memoir, and started to work.

It didn’t take long before I discovered that my plan had several significant flaws. The first was the sheer number of boxes. I hadn’t counted at first, but as it turns out, there were thirty-three bankers boxes of documents in addition to the boxes of old Practice Books. (I keep those because for some bizarre reason, there’s no way to research the old rules if you don’t have the old books.) I began by picking up a box of files and carrying it down the attic stairs, which revealed the second flaw: these boxes were heavier than I anticipated. The third flaw emerged quickly thereafter: once I got downstairs, there wasn’t much room to stack the boxes.

I stacked three boxes in the kitchen before conceding that this wasn’t feasible, so I shifted to Plan B, i.e., fill a contractor bag in the attic with the documents to be shredded. When I’d pulled documents from four boxes, removed all the paper clips and binder clips (because they can’t be shredded), and crammed them into the contractor bag, I shoved the bag down the stairs, after which I tossed down the boxes that now contained only manila file folders and redwells. I followed, hauled the half-full bag out to the front porch, and filled it with the documents from the three boxes I’d already brought down. Then, I sorted out the manila folders and redwells into separate bankers boxes and fashioned reasonably neat stacks of file detritus.

In the end, I managed to dispose of only seven boxes. And it took me more than four hours to do that much.

So, this left me with two alternatives. Choice A: I could continue as I did today. At four hours to clear seven boxes, that would mean devoting another sixteen hours to this project—plus the time to haul the bags to wherever the shredding will happen—not to mention the physical effort in hauling the boxes and dragging the bags (because there’s no way I can lift them).

Which is why I opted for Choice B: hire help.

On Wednesday, my neighbor—who is young and strong—will come over. Yes, I’ll need to spend a bit of time explaining the job, but I can then return to work while he sorts and hauls. Eventually, I’ll be involved again—he’ll put the bags in my car, I have to drive to the shredding place, and he’ll carry them inside—but making the choice to hire help instead of doing it myself will save me an enormous amount of time. Yes, it will cost money I wasn’t planning to spend, but the tradeoff is worth it, because the sixteen hours I don’t spend cleaning out files will be sixteen hours I can spend writing.

And that’s how I protected my writing time today—by making choices.