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.

In Part 1 of this series, I shared how I streamlined tasks in my personal life and automated in several places. In this installment, I’ll share how I have found alternatives to hiring a Virtual Assistant.

One of the Holy Grails of the 4-Hour Workweek community is having your own Virtual Assistant, or VA. Thanks in part to the book’s popularity, there are hundreds of firms in India, the Philippines, China and Eastern Europe offering to screen your email, do your Internet research, and wait on hold on the phone for you. Sites like Elance, Guru.com and Odesk are swimming with individuals providing business and personal assistance. Frankly, it’s very overwhelming and there are a lot of stories on the 4-Hour Workweek forum about the struggles of finding a decent VA.

Based on my own previous experience, I decided that there had to be other alternatives.

Get Sandy
Meet my new personal assistant. She’s prompt, reliable, never gets sick, and has a great sense of humor. I don’t pay her a dime, but she shows up at 7:00am every morning, ready and willing to help. Her name is Sandy. Isn’t she cute?

Did I mention that she’s a web application?

Sandy is a member of a growing genre of web apps that is designed to keep your appointments, to-do lists and contacts organized in a way that is a lot more intuitive and user friendly than a standard calendaring app. Remember the Milk is another popular site in this genre, but I prefer Sandy because “she” has, well, personality.

When I thought about what I’d like a personal assistant to do – virtual or otherwise – I realized that most of what I want can be automated as I shared in Part 1 of this series. The rest included things like helping me keep track of birthdays, random tasks, contact information, and the other little bits of info that tend to get lost in the shuffle in my life. Sandy can do all of that and more, and with style.

I can send messages to Sandy through email, SMS, her own website, and – with integration through Jott – by voice. If I tell Sandy “remind me to complete my expense report next Wednesday @work” she’ll know to tag my task as work, and will send me an email reminder to complete my task on next Wednesday morning. I don’t even have to tell her the date.

Sandy can send a text message reminder for whichever tasks I choose. I have this bad habit of forgetting to show up for my haircut appointments. To prevent this, I can ask Sandy to send me a reminder text message 30 minutes (or at whatever time I’d like) before my appointment. Do you forget to pack your lunch in the morning? Take your medication at the proper time? Shave? Sandy can help you out with that, too.

Sandy can share information with your contacts and integrates with Google Calendar. It’s such a full-featured service, that I’ll just let Sandy tell you all about her other fine attributes here.

For me, the best feature of Sandy is the daily digest that she sends. I find it useful, informative and pithy. Here is a slightly edited version of a recent daily digest I received:

Hello, Maria!
Here’s what’s going on today.
Friday, 2/29/2008
————————————————–
#1 Fri, 2/29 Backup blog
- Email reminder at 7:00am
- tagged with @weekly
#2 1:00pm Clean your desk
- Email reminder at 12:30pm
- tagged with @weekly
#3 5:00pm Party like a rockstar

- Email reminder at 4:45pm
- tagged with @weekly

To-dos
————————————————–
#4 Mon, 3/3 Pay Your Dealer
- Email reminder at 8:00am
- tagged with @monthly and @todo

————————————————–
Make today your own!
Sandy

Try to find a Virtual Assistant with that much wit and flair!

Call Your Personal Concierge
As much as I love Sandy, let’s face it. There are some tasks only a human can do. Some of these tasks are potentially time-consuming and the outcome isn’t all that important, in the grand scheme of things. This is the perfect type of task to outsource.

When I did a little analysis on the type of tasks that I have in my personal life that fit into this category, I realized that most of them revolve around going somewhere, buying something, or eating something. In other words, they’re usually related to recreation and travel. When I browsed through the archives of Tim Ferris’ blog, I was really intrigued by this post extolling the virtues of the American Express Platinum Card. The card comes with an impressive array of services including 24/7 concierge service. Unfortunately, it also comes with a hefty annual fee ($450 at the time of this writing). Even with the other perks, I just can’t justify getting this card at this time.

I am already a Visa card holder, so I decided to see if Visa offers a similar type of program. After a little digging, I found the Visa Signature card, which includes unlimited access to the Visa Signature Concierge service. The array of services they offer includes all of the usual things like making restaurant reservation, booking flights, finding tickets to sold out events (for a price, of course) and sending the occasional invitation to member events. After checking with my bank, I discovered that I could upgrade my regular old Visa Platinum card to a Visa Signature card for no fee.

That means that I now have unlimited access to all of the concierge services for free. I love free

In the month that I’ve had the card, I’ve only had a couple of occasions to use the services, but I’ve been very pleased with the results so far. Here is an excerpt from an email I received from the service after I requested a listing of vegetarian restaurants in Sedona, Arizona.

Dear Maria,

Thank you for requesting dining recommendations from Visa Signature® Concierge. Based on your request, we’ve provided several options below.

If you would like to make a reservation, or have any questions, please call Visa Signature Concierge toll-free – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – at 800-953-7392.

Option 1
Restaurant: The Heartline Cafe
Location: 1610 West Highway 89A; Sedona, AZ 86336 USA
Phone number: 928-282-785
Website: http://www.heartlinecafe.com/

Type of Cuisine: Continental
Dining Style: Casual Elegant
Dress Code: Casual Elegant
Average Cost: $21.00 to $50.00 per plate
Description: Offering innovative presentations of pasta, fish, chicken, and a variety of meats, grilled or roasted. Many vegetarian dishes are offered, some of them are green-only dishes. The pleasures of the meal are all represented, from appetizers to dazzling desserts, with soup, salad, sandwiches, and great entrees in between.

The complete message listed a few more options as well as a repeat of the offer to book reservations. I estimate that it would have taken me at least 20-30 minutes of web browsing to select a few decent sounding restaurants. Instead, all I had to do was send a 2 minute email and choose from the list. By the way, I ended up going to a raw vegan restaurant that made the list and it was great.

These services are more limited than a firm like AskSunday offers. As far as I know, Visa concierges won’t read your child a bedtime story, find people to break in your new jeans, or send sarcastic emails to your friends (you’ve got to read the book to understand!). However, I haven’t tried to push the boundaries yet. If anyone has found unconventional uses for services like these, I would love to hear your stories, in the comments or privately.

Solutions That Fit the Problems
I’ve shared all of this to show that outsourcing your life doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition. At this time, I don’t need an army of VAs running my entire life for me. I’m not even sure I ever want that. For the present moment, I have defined my needs (the crucial first step in the book) to include streamlining as much of my life as possible at the lowest possible cost. This is a means to the end of freeing up more of my time to pursue activities that I find more interesting, rewarding, and fulfilling.

If you have stories of outsourcing, or resources to share, please let us know about them in the comments.

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