Archive for February, 2008

I was reading The Four-Hour Work Week (Timothy Ferriss) the other day at Borders. I read a chapter about offshoring your tasks to a “virtual personal assistant” and I was intrigued: Could I take a set of tasks that I either don’t have time (but need to accomplish) or are taking too much valuable time away from living and pass them along to a paid assistant?

By using a service in India called “Get Friday” (part of Your Man In India), I can pay $12/hr for up to 10 hours a month (+ $14/hr additional hours) for a ridiculous number of tasks (they can handle virtually anything, but their Web site lists a lot of standard stuff – and odd tasks I wouldn’t have thought of). Here’s what I cam up to justify:

If I use a 40-week year for working, multiply that by 18 hours a day (all waking hours), times seven-days a week, I get 5040 hours of waking time that I should be earning.

Now, take my personal salary and divide that by the 5040 – $14.82 an hour is my “living salary.” That is how much each hour of my time is worth.

It’s easy to see the $12/hr is less expensive for me to get things done – even more so if the tasks have been causing stress or have gone incomplete (such as some application development research and marketing documentation I need to build). Add on the paralegal services and I’m sold!

I’ve already sent an inquiry to Get Friday regarding the application development documentation, a one-sheet promotional kit and some legal documentation I need – all tasks that are very important but just can’t seem to get anywhere with on my own. Five minutes after I submitted my inquiry, I got an e-mail reply and a voicemail. These people aren’t messing around, and I am totally enthralled.

Now I just have to convince my wife to add to the budget. If I show her that by taking these tasks off my plate, we’re actually saving $2+ an hour, and adding back to the available time I have for her, family, and “real” life.