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Last week, I published a post as part of the My 4-Hour Workweek series describing how I’ve begun using Sandy as an electronic version of a Virtual Assistant. I began a discussion thread about this topic at Personal Development Partners and Patricia, one of the most articulate, thoughtful, and active members of that community posted a short reply “in defense” of her profession, which happens to be working as a VA! Here is an excerpt from that post:

Well… what can I say… your post has been extremely interesting to me! I have just learned by reading it that I may turn jobless any day!

I have been a Personal Assistant for years and today most of my work is virtual … but there are tons of other things I do that a program can’t do.

I hire personnel, I teach personnel and fire them when necessary, I go shopping, I look for the best possible services: from repairing appliances to doctors or fireworks. I organize parties for 10, 20 or 50 people. I choose and rent houses for the summer and many etceteras.

You can have a program to remind you today is someone’s birthday, but it’s a little bit more difficult to have a program suggesting presents and wrapping them nicely.

I thought Patricia made some excellent points and invited her to write a guest post to explain more about what a “real” VA does and how one can help you grow your business. This is a topic of much talk and probably even more confusion since people like Tim Ferris and AJ Jacobs have published material talking about VAs organizing their dating lives and reading bedtime stories to their children. Like all trends, some people are trying to push it as far as possible. The result is that lots of average Janes and Joes (like me) are unsure about how to create a proper working relationship with a VA. Patricia does a great job in shedding some light on this issue. If you like what she has to say and find yourself in need of the services of a great, experienced VA, you can contact her at much.happiness (at) gmail.com.

There are words or expressions which have a certain and definite content, which meaning is more or less limited and all of us get approximately the same idea when we hear them. One example would be the word “sugar”. Although there are, of course, different types of sugar, and sugar means something different to a person who suffers diabetes than to a person who is healthy and can eat as much sugar as she wants, still there is no much room for misunderstanding when talking about sugar.

The expression “Personal Assistant”, however, gives place to a baffling array of interpretations, depending on the employer. Yet, adds are placed in classified sections and people go to interviews, expecting to get the job.

But what is the job like? What does a Personal Assistant (PA) do? It depends on the person she assists!

• Some employers demand their PAs to answer the phone, bring coffee, type letters & make bank deposits.
• Other employers demand the above plus correcting in 24 hours a report which took 3 months to be written by other people. “Oh yes, time is tight, but you can do it. And please make sure that there are no mistakes present as the report is decisive for the enterprise’s survival next year.”
• Other employers demand the above plus reminding them of their spouse’s birthday or buying Christmas presents for their children and their spouse. No! Not any present. It must be something that shows that he has long thought about them and he knows them well. But, how? Does his PA know his family so well? Of course not, but she’s efficient and these are the perfect opportunities to demonstrate it.
• Other employers demand the above mentioned tasks plus: finding a house to buy in 10 days; finding the perfect employee for that difficult task overnight; delay the departure of a vessel because his merchandise is not there on time; translate the fridge’s manual; heat his lunch; make an appointment with that famous doctor for this afternoon; water the plants; respectfully and politely receive his visitors; organize the office celebration making sure no one at the office realizes about it; buy that exclusive leather bag which can only be found in Paris… but make sure the cost is reasonable and it reaches the destination on time; organize that business trip… making sure that the branch Manager is there that day and that the hotel room is number 241… “Oh! is it already reserved? You’ll find a solution! You are so good.”

All this on the same day and with a smile on your face that shows how much you appreciate and love the job, because attitude is crucial.

The possibilities are infinite, and when that PA believes that he or she has seen it all and there’s no probability to get surprised… then comes the request to get a copy of the yet unpublished Harry Potter last book, to use one example from the movie “The Devil Wears Prada” which illustrates one of the realities a PA can face.

Can your Personal Assistant be replaced by a computer program?

If your answer is yes, then you have full responsibility on your life, you like managing your own stuff, and you enjoy finding your own solutions to your own problems. The only thing you need is some window opening at your screen reminding you there’s something to remember today at this time.

As far as decision-making is concerned, a computer program cannot do that, no matter how politely the reminder “You must have lunch today!” gets to your screen.

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 Part 2 I discussed alternatives to hiring a Virtual Assistant. In this installment, I’ll address using the 4-Hour Workweek at home.

One of the overarching purposes of applying the 4-Hour Workweek is to reduce the amount of time you spend on tasks that aren’t important or interesting so that you can focus on activities that enrich your life in some way. This is really important to keep in mind when trying to streamline things at home. As Cindy explained in her awesome guest post, The Business of Family Living, there are definite limits to what most people want to eliminate and automate. For example, I don’t think most of us want to outsource our relationships!

In my quest to apply the 4-Hour Workweek to my personal life, I’ve tried to keep this idea in mind. I don’t want to become super-efficient at the expense of activities I enjoy, but I don’t want to keep doing tasks just because I’ve always done them. I have also been trying the weight costs vs. benefits and not spending more to streamline a task than my (or my SO’s) hourly wage.

Now, in a perfect world, I would just go out and buy myself a robot maid like Rosie from The Jetsons. Then, my laundry would always be done, my kitchen would be clean, and I would have a sandwich waiting for me when I got home from work. Unfortunately, technology has not yet brought us flying cars or the automatic shower conveyor belt (actually, that one didn’t look so fun ;)), so I’ve had to find other ways to adapt. In a nutshell, I’ve analyzed a lot of tasks and broken them up by:

• What to Batch
• What to Do Immediately, and
• What to Outsource

The main guideline I used to analyze what task goes where is: What will take me the least amount of time, while maintaining my quality of life? So, if it won’t take any more time to leave something for batching and won’t drive me insane (like leaving dirty laundry piled on my floor), I’ll batch it. If delaying will take more time or cost more money in the end, such as ignoring a household repair, I do it immediately. If it takes me too long, I don’t know how to do it, or I can get someone else to do it cheaply, I outsource it. Here’s some more detail on each.

[Read more →]

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.

[Read more →]

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. [Read more →]

My thanks to Cindy Posey for this guest post. Cindy is the author of Go Workout Mom, a blog for mothers to find time to make physical fitness a priority in their lives. By providing knowledge and tips, moms gain support and motivation to live a fit life. Cindy is a mom to two toddlers, wife to a fantastic husband and a certified personal trainer (CI-CPT).

Raising a family is a business where family dynamics are relationships among members and home dynamics are responsibilities to keep the home functioning. Because of the complexities of schedule management, church commitments, school, practices, chores, finances and more, a family benefits from applying successful entrepreneurial systems. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris is a complete system on how to establish a lifestyle through effective use of time. Here are my thoughts on applying Tim Ferris’s system while managing family and home dynamics.

Step I: D is for Definition

Tim outlines 10 Prominent Rules which help define mindset. His illustrations may focus on business, but we’re going to replace that concept with family. I felt that five rules worked well with family and home management.

Rule #4, Timing is Never Right urges us to not wait for the perfect moment. Do parents have to sacrifice personal ambitions and desires because they have children? Why do moms wait until children are in school or go to college before focusing on themselves? These questions are typical with parents of young children. Children do require work, but the excuses made to not seek personal improvement are unnecessary. Tim states, “Someday is a disease that will go to the grave with you.” (33). Self reflection and analysis of the current lifestyle will help break the mold of someday thinking.

[Read more →]