The title of this post might be misleading. I am not inviting you to get rid of all the unnecessary items that clutter our lives (although that might require some attention too...) rather, I am often looking for ways to simplify and make our days more efficient (endless to do lists I have you in mind as I write this!) and I'd like to share some latest tips I have come across.
Have you already happend to hear of the `The 4 hour week` one of the New York Times best sellers? If you haven`t, I suggest to start by checking out its blog.
I found it an interesting read and while of course not everyone will be lucky enough to make millions while reducing their 40 plus hour week into a 4 hour week, there are certainly some good tips and useful suggestions in here that we could consider.
For example, how many hours a month do we spend to de-clutter our desks, at home and at work? We will talk about the physical clutter in a separate post, but what about all those emails, reservations, bills, planning that needs to be dealt with? For private home administration or for those of you who are their own boss, how much could we do with the help of an assistant?
What about trying to`outsource life` and use that extra bit of time in our hands for anything more pleasurable than dealing with paperwork and admin?
The good news is, there is a lot of help at hand for a lot less than you might think. The not so good news is, where do I start from? The positive experience of the author was not enough for me so I did a little bit of digging around, asked for feedback on some of these companies that offer online assistants and the likes, and finally contacted a few and chose one.
`Brickwork` was my choice and can I say so far I can only agree with the positive feedback shared here.
What did I choose to outsource? I made a list of tasks that fill my to do lists, split them in two, those that it would be a lot more of a hassle to outsource, and those that, after a proper introduction via a Skype call and detailed instructions via mail, could be monthly outsourced. Research for a few personal projects, holidays, updating files, sorting pictures, recurrent updating of websites, etc.
Another name on my list is Guru, freeing up some time is appealing enough to give these companies a try!
M.