Of course you’ve all heard about the 4-Hour Workweek by now. Tim Ferris’ runaway best seller and internet phenomenon is one of the most talked about books of the last twelve months. My 4 Hour Workweek chronicles my progress in using the ideas in this book to streamline my own life and move closer to my ideal lifestyle.

The 4-Hour Workweek contains lots of intriguing ideas, but the one that’s gained the most traction in the blogosphere is the concept of outsourcing your life. The basic idea behind personal outsourcing is that you hire a person or firm in a lower wage country like India or the Philippines to become your Virtual Assistant or VA. In the book, author AJ Jacobs describes how his Indian VA helped with internet research, kept track of his schedule and even apologized to his wife for him and read his child a bedtime story.

Unfortunately, as I found it’s not as easy as it sounds to find a decent firm or individual VA. My own attempt – which involved hiring an Indian firm to research social activities for me – ended in a mishmash of unclear goals (my fault) and poor English skills. I’ve stopped by the 4 Hour Workweek forums occasionally, and lots of people seem to be having similar problems. Clearly, there is a better way to offload some of the tasks we all have to do but just don’t have time for.

Eliminate the Fluff
When I analyzed my experience of trying to outsource my social planning, I realized that I wasn’t all that interested in getting the task completed successfully. It was really just an addition to the things I already have to deal with. That is a big error according to the 4HWW methodology, which urges the reader to eliminate everything that isn’t necessary before trying to automate or outsource anything. As Ferris writes, “Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamline.” My problem was that I was trying to delegate a pointless task. Over the next couple of months I looked at my daily life and identified everything I could eliminate or streamline in some way.

Automate Every Possible Task
By keeping some casual time logs over the course of two weeks, I was able to do some 80/20 analysis and figure out where I was spending my personal time and compare that to what I enjoy doing. What I found is that I was spending too much time on household chores, money management, and routine information gathering. None of these things are my idea of fun, so I wanted to find ways to free up my time from these tasks in ways that are easy to maintain and affordable. Of course the first place I turned was the holder of all things good and true in the universe – Google! If anything could help me automate my information gathering, surely I would find it there.

Google to the Rescue
As a technologically savvy, Web 2.0 kind of girl I’ve had a Gmail account for a couple of years, but I hadn’t taken the time to learn about all of its capabilities. After a little hunting around, I found out about Google Alerts – a service that monitors the news and sends customized emails with links to new pages that contain the keywords you specify. I immediately set up a few alerts to keep me informed of news in my professional field, personal change and change management updates for this blog, and a couple of personal areas of interest.

I also learned more about setting up email filters and created a “Social Life” label. I signed up for email newsletters for my local music, art and cultural venues and have them all labeled and archived when they arrive. When I have a free weekend coming up (not very often!), I read the most recent and forward ideas to my friends and family members. It takes me 20 minutes at the most every other week to do what I was willing to pay a VA about $50 a month for.

Yeah For Online Banking
I’m pretty loyal to my local credit union. The fees are almost nonexistent, the service is great and the ATM network is ubiquitous. The one drawback had been the limited functionality of the online banking system. However, just as I was in the process of streamlining my personal finances, my credit union merged with another local credit union and upgraded all their systems. In the short term this was a big PITA, but now I have the ability to get my statements online, pay lots of bills automatically and a few more manually once per month, and transfer money between my local account an my online accounts. That simple change along eliminates about two hours per month from my personal finance management time.

Xpenser For My Type A Side
I have a confession to make. Since I read Your Money or Your Life about two years ago I’ve tracked every dollar that I spend every day of my life. I’m sure Tim Ferris would not approve, but I find it helpful and I’m not willing to let it go (yet). However, after I realized that it was taking me up to 20 minutes a day, plus another hour or two per month to manage this task, I decided that I had to streamline my system a bit. This time Google didn’t have an answer for me, but I was lucky enough to stumble across Xpenser. This web application is designed for keeping track of business related expenses for tax and reimbursement purposes. However, I find that it works just as well for personal expenses. Now I’ve streamlined my expense tracking to three steps:

1. Keep receipts for anything purchased with a credit or debit card
2. Email Xpenser or leave a Jott (more on this service later) to my account for cash purchases
3. Tally everything up at the end of the month

It’s still too anal, but it’s getting better

I hope this series is helpful to people interested in streamlining their own lives. If you have had any successes or found tools or applications you want to share, please tell us about it in the comments.

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