Personal Outsourcing

Personal Outsourcing: How to Get More Than $100 in 24 Hours Out of Each Day in California

Outsourcing is a term borrowed from the corporate world, that refers to taking a function of a business and having it provisioned by an external company, often overseas. Applied to our personal lives, outsourcing is about taking things that we would normally have to do in our day-to-day lives, and having someone else do it at a low(ish) cost.

The first popular mention of personal outsourcing comes from AJ Jacobs of Esquire magazine. His article, written (by outsourcers) back in 2005, was a humorous look at just how much of your life could be run by a team of Indian virtual assistants at a low hourly rate.

In terms of efficiency, personal outsourcing is incredibly valuable as it allows you to get more out of the 24 hours a day that we are all given. While you are working, someone else can be doing your shopping, your taxes and life management tasks. This article is a very basic primer to the most common things that can be (and should often be) outsourced to others, freeing up your time for higher value activities.

The Premise

The important thing to remember about personal outsourcing is that you absolutely must know how much your time is worth (usually per hour). This is the only way to find out if something is worth outsourcing or not.

Let’s look at an example. The average per capita income for someone living in California is $38,956 according to the US Department of Commerce. The average person works 9-5, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 52 weeks. This means they work 260 days, or 2080 work hours a year. $38,956 divided by 2080 is $18.73 per hour.

This means that an hour of that person’s time, is potentially worth $18.73 per hour. Now of course, there are further considerations. Real Hourly Wage encompasses more than just working hours – it factors in commute time, time spent thinking about work, time spent at company social events, overtime and so on. But for the purposes of example and simplicity, let’s go with the $18.73 per hour for the average Californian worker.

What this means, is that any task that has a cost of less than $18.73 an hour should potentially be outsourced to others. When calculating the cost of a task, you must also consider the time it takes you to complete the task compared to someone who you outsource it to. For example, it may take you the better part of two weekends to complete your taxes (assuming a minimal 20 hours, that’s $374!), but it may only take your accountant a couple of days. Plus, he or she is more likely to get it right the first time and take everything into consideration. The question then becomes: well, what do you do instead of the tasks that you have outsourced?

If you are an entrepreneur this is easy – work on your business! If you are employed, it becomes a bit blurrier. You should be spending time working on tasks that have a greater value (monetary or otherwise) than what you have outsourced – whether it is furthering your education for better work prospects, starting a side business, or just spending quality time with friends and family.

Common Tasks

There are two types of outsourcing: onshore and offshore. Onshore refers to having people in your local area or city who you outsource to. Offshore refers to having people in another geography (usually another country or state) who you outsource to. You’ll find that most of the examples below are for Onshore (or Local) Outsourcing. The reason for this is that there are limitations as to what your offshore outsourcers are capable of doing, and managing them would take another entire article to describe.

Here are some examples of things you can outsource.

• Laundry. Depending on your living arrangements, laundry is one of those things that can be easily outsourced. In most major American cities, people usually spend at least 1.5-2 hours each week doing their laundry (assuming a standard sized load – you may indeed have more). Thus, theopportunity cost of doing laundry (in addition to the cost of machine operation if any) would be about $28-37. In would be relatively simple to find someone on Craigslist to do your laundry for you at less than that amount.
• Grocery Shopping. When I lived in San Francisco, I used to visit the grocery store twice weekly, spending about an hour each time getting there, shopping and then unpacking once home. For a minimal cost, I could have had my groceries delivered (or even free if over a certain amount), thus freeing up my time to work on my business.
• Gardening. If you have a garden or yard, it is usually worth your while to have someone else mow the lawn or even water the yard. Plus they’ll have all the proper equipment, which you would then not have to buy.
• Everyday Errands. These are errands like waiting in line at the post office, calling your credit card company or even visiting the bank. Of course, there are certain limitations (especially with financial transactions) but for the most part, you simply don’t have to deal with these. Know a neighbor’s teenager that wants some pocket money? Have them take your mail to the post office for you. Have to call and discuss things with your bank/credit card company? You can find an offshore virtual assistant to do that for you for $4 an hour.
• Maid or Cleaner. This is where we start to get into the more “expensive” areas of outsourcing. Having a maid or cleaner come in on a weekly basis seems like a luxury for most people, but using Craigslist or local classifieds in your area you can probably find someone to do it for you – in half the time.
• Cooking and Food. Having a chef come in and prepare meals is pretty nice, but can get pricey. A better solution is to have an arrangement with a local takeout place to deliver you food daily. Prepay them if you can, and tell them to mix and match however many dishes you want per day… and never worry about working out what to cook again.
• Driver. If you have a long commute where you are capable of being productive, this is something you should consider. See this article by the CEO of JangoMail to find out more how you outsourcing to a driver can make your business grow.

A Blurry Line

We’ve mostly looked at the simple, everyday things that you can outsource. But there is so much more. Some people ask where the line should be drawn – if you have a boring and monotonous office task at work, can you outsource that to say an assistant in India who will do it for a fraction of the cost? Well, it’s really up to you. There is of course the issue of professional accountability and responsibility. Where you draw the line has become increasingly blurry in today’s world.

Quick Tips and Tricks

• Consider non-monetary trades and barter. Parents do this with their children all the time – do your chores and then you get to go play for an hour. You can do this with your roommates, family members, neighbours or friends – say trading waiting in a laundromat (where you can do something productive like read a book) for them picking up some groceries for you weekly.
• Try to find local people. For most tasks this is necessary due to the necessity of a physical presence, but in general, is easier due to direct face-to-face communication and there is less potential for misunderstandings.
• Clear instruction and communication. Make sure your instructions and communication with your outsourcers are crystal clear, and that there is no potential for misunderstanding. There is nothing more annoying than having to have someone repeat a task because they didn’t ask a simple clarification question first.
• Get creative. There are probably a bunch of tasks (like going to the post office) that you would think that other people wouldn’t do. But you’ll be surprised. It may seem unconventional to you, but it may be perfectly normal for someone else. The only way to find out is to ask, and see if someone’s willing to do it!

Resources

There are a number of resources you can use to find “outsourcers”.

For local tasks, the number one, at least in the US, is Craigslist. It will take time to filter through applicants and postings, but can be well worth it.

For professional tasks, the most popular online marketplaces are Odesk and Elance.

For miscellaneous remote tasks (and some fun), check out Fiverr – it is fairly amazing to see what people will do for $5.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, check out TaskRabbit.

Next Actions

• Work out how much your time is worth per hour.
• Think about the things you do weekly, but really don’t like to do or would rather have someone else do.
• Post up some ads on Craigslist looking for people to fill those things.
• Start enjoying the extra time you now have – and put it to good use by doing something productive!

By Asian Efficiency

Morning Rituals Revisited

If you haven’t heard our amazing podcast on the importance of morning rituals, we highly recommend it. It’s a great introduction that explains what morning rituals are, and shows you how to set one up the right way. What follows here are some refinements that we’ve made since we recorded that – based on the experiences of other Asian Efficiency readers and our own friends and acquaintances.

There were a number of common issues that people came up against when trying to formulate their own morning rituals, so we decided to cover everything in detail in a text-based article. Some of these issues included length, knowing where the boundaries of the ritual were, and what sort of activities to include, and of course, how disciplined/strict you have to be to really see results from an effective morning ritual (or what some people call a morning routine). Let’s get into it.

Essential Morning Ritual Components

The first thing to reexamine are the essential component pieces of a morning ritual. We found that lots of people would try to cram in as much as they could – and ended up with morning rituals that exceeded 1.5-2 hours in length. Here are what we consider the essential pieces:

Water

Water is probably the most crucial part of your morning ritual – it really is the difference between going through the motions of starting your day and still feeling tired at the end, or going through your ritual and feeling ready-to-go.

We recommend 500ml (16 ounces) of water first thing in the day.

Bathroom

This should be pretty self-explanatory: keep good hygiene.

Movement

One thing that AE Thanh introduced me to was the concept of having some sort of physical movement to tell your body that the day has started. He does some light stretching exercises and a couple pushups. I prefer some simple joint rotations and then a quick alignment of my posture against the wall.

We’ve also met people who do a couple of sun salutations, or a quick 5-minute walk on the treadmill.

Breakfast

As good as it looks... not what we'd recommend for breakfast.

We’ve written about it before, but your productivity is based largely on your physical capacity to perform. And the fuel for this, is food. Make sure you eat a solid breakfast. What you eat will largely depend on your other health and fitness goals.

Whatever you do, don’t skip breakfast – the productivity consequences of that are extremely punishing.

Goals and Review

You want to make sure you set your goals and outcomes for the day as part of your morning ritual. You can do this in your task management system, or in a journal entry, or however you like. There is the assumption that you have longer-term goals written out already (go ahead and write them if you don’t).

To do this, you want to reference:

• Your goals.
• Your schedule for the day.
• Your task management system.

It may also be worth creating a small outline for what your day is going to look like.

Social Contact

Here at Asian Efficiency we like to place a large emphasis on the social aspect of productivity . Not a lot of productivity writers like to talk about it – I mean after all, aren’t we supposed to all be chained to our desks working 24/7?

To get the social parts of your brain going for the day, indulge in a small Facebook/phone check. I personally think the longer you can delay this the better, but if you must, checking your Facebook and email on your phone over breakfast isn’t a bad way to go.

Common Issues

Start and End

The start of your morning ritual is your 500ml of water. The ritual ends when you begin your most important task for the day.

Length

Ideally, morning rituals are supposed to be short and efficient – no more than an hour. If you workout in the mornings, it’s a good idea to treat that as separate from your morning ritual.

It may take a while in the beginning, but once you’ve gone through the ritual for about 30 days, it’ll be come second nature.

Skipping Rituals and Steps

Don’t skip your morning ritual when you travel. You may not be able to do everything (e.g., eat an ideal breakfast), but do your best.

It’s OK if you skip steps accidentally when you are learning a new morning ritual. A good way to make sure you don’t however, is to print out a piece of paper with a checklist of everything, for example:

1. Water.
2. Stretching.
3. Bathroom.
4. Breakfast.
5. Goals and Review.
6. Facebook and Email.

You can then carry this around with you, or stick it on your dresser to remind yourself every morning.

Implementation

It takes about 30 days to form and solidify a habit. The more you do it, the better you’ll get at it. And once you’re used to it, you can start swapping in and out extra components to the ritual.

By Asian Efficiency

Managing Your Email More Effectively

The Simple Guide to Managing Your Email More Effectively

Managing your email has become an important part of modern knowledge work. As common it is for everyone to have email, most people still do not know how to properly manage their inboxes. People often complain that email is one of their largest sources of distraction, and that using email ends up wasting a lot of valuable time.

One of the best things you can do for getting your email under control is to apply a folder structure and have a specific workflow that you can use. We are going to introduce to you a workflow has been proven to be very effective for managing email. Shoutout to Merlin Mann for coming up with the foundation for these ideas, upon which we have built.

For the sake of this article, I will use Gmail as an example on how to use folders for managing your email. This idea can be applied to any other email providers too (Yahoo!, Hotmail, and so on) or email clients (Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, etc). So if you use something else than Gmail, don’t panic. You can use the same ideas for your email provider or application.

We’ve provided a video to demonstrate how the workflow well… flows, but to understand how it works we first need to dive a little into the basic theory of email management.

Inbox Zero

The first idea I want you to understand is the idea of what some people call inbox zero. Most people see their email inbox as the place where all emails are stored, but I want you to start looking at your inbox differently.

View your email inbox as a temporary holding place where you need to start processing emails. Put in another words, only unread emails are in your inbox. Processed and read emails are not in your inbox (they go somewhere else, as I will show you in a bit).


Each time you process your email the objective is to go through your inbox and get the count to zero.

Each time you process your email, the goal should be to have your inbox count at zero. Psychologically it is much better to know that you have managed your email and that you only have to process whatever is in your inbox. When your inbox is full of email, it makes it very hard to look for certain messages that you need to reply to, especially if you have to scan through hundreds of emails. And looking for emails you are awaiting for a response to is a pain with your inbox count is at 235346. There is a simple solution for this as we will see later.

Again, I cannot stress this enough. Start looking at your inbox as a temporary holding place of emails you still need to read and decide on what to do with. Each time you process your inbox you want to get it to be zero.

Folder structure

This workflow requires you to create 3 folders: Reply, Waiting and Archive.

Create the folders (or labels as Gmail calls it) Reply, Waiting, and Archive.


Reply: all emails go in here that take longer than 2 minutes to respond to.

Waiting: All emails go in here where you are waiting for a response or want to process later.

Archive: all other emails go in here that you want to be able to access later.

With email clients, you need to setup these folders. In this article I will use Gmail as an example. Within Gmail, they use folders too but they call them “labels”. Here is how you set them up:

1. Top right corner, click on the Settings Gear image and then click on Mail settings.


Go to Settings Gear > Mail Settings (top right corner once you

2. Click on the Labels tab.


Click on the Labels tab to create the labels / folders.

3. Create the new labels Reply and Waiting. Gmail already comes with an Archive folder called All Mailso you don’t have to create one (but you do in your email clients and other email providers).

Create the labels/ folders in Gmail.

Some typical emails that belong in the Reply folder:

• Someone is requesting you to do something (with or without deadline).
  • Examples include submitting reports, verifying something, and taking on any task.
• Someone is asking you to respond to something but it requires more deep thoughts from you to respond.
  • Examples include people asking for your opinion or asking about your availability for an event.

After you’ve replied to emails in the this folder, you then move them to the Archive folder. Within Gmail it’s easy, you remove the Reply label by clicking on the X next to the label name.

Removing a label from an email in Gmail

Typical emails that come in the Waiting folder:

• Tracking codes for UPS or Fedex packages coming your way.
  • Examples include shipping tracking numbers from online shopping.
• You delegated a task and are waiting for a response / result.
  • Examples include emails from virtual assistants, employees, and anyone you are waiting to hear from.
• Confirmation from someone.
  • Examples include asking another person if he/she received something from you (like a package).

The Two-minute Rule

Another golden rule of managing your email is what I call the 2-minute rule. It’s really simple: if it takes longer than 2 minutes to process or reply to an email, reply to it later and put the email in the Reply folder. Otherwise, reply right away (somewhat similar to Getting Things Done’s rule).

When it comes to managing your email, you want to apply the productivity principle of touch it once. Do not reread the same email – that’s just a waste of time. Especially when you have to deal with dozens or hundreds of emails every day.

The value in this rule is that you go through your inbox really fast, and initially process only what is necessary. If someone needs a quick response, you’ve taken care of that. If an email needs more attention, you can work on that later and prioritize which email gets the most attention (after your inbox is processed and at zero).

What most people tend to do is process emails one-by-one and sequentially handle each email as they receive it throughout the day. This is a very inefficient way of managing your email, because you aren’t prioritizing. Let’s say you have 10 unread emails in your inbox. How do you know if email #2 is more important and higher priority than email #9? You don’t know if you spend a lot of time on each email. That’s why this time limit rule is so effective because you will soon find what emails will provide you the highest level activities.

Now 2 minutes is the limit I’ve set for myself. Adjust this for yourself based on how much time a day you want to spend on email and the volume of emails you get. Personally, I want to spend less than one hour a day on managing my email. At my current volume, I receive fewer than 50 emails a day, and with the 2-minute limit I get to manage my email daily in less than an hour.

As a guideline: the more emails you get per day, the shorter your time limit should be.

I cannot stress this enough, but when it comes to managing your email you really want to apply the touch it once rule. You will waste a lot of accumulative time of rereading emails over the span of weeks.

Workflow

As you process your inbox, you want to apply the inbox zero and 2-minute rule. These are essential to this workflow and now let’s tie all the pieces together. Below is a simplified diagram of the workflow.


Email Management Workflow Diagram

Once you have your inbox at zero, that’s when you can effectively start managing your email. By default, you know that all emails in the Reply folder require your focus and attention (they require more than 2 minutes of your time). When you apply this workflow this is what happens: as you process your email, you will have responded to all the messages that didn’t require much attention from you. Anything that was important is in the Reply folder, and you can work on it later and prioritize accordingly.

Once your inbox is zero that’s when you can decide how you are going to prioritize your emails in your Reply folder. You should be able to process your inbox fairly quickly by scanning the email content, decide what the next action is and process accordingly. After your inbox is at zero, usually you want to process your Reply folder next and treat each email with focus (because you know they require more attention hence why there are in the Reply folder).

For more intermediate and advanced readers: You can make every email in your Reply folder an action item on your to do list. This is actually what I prefer but it requires that you use a to do list or task manager (which I highly recommend!). By the mere fact that emails that go to the Reply folder, I want to make it an item in my task manager. A common mistake people make is that they see their email inbox as a to do list manager. Rather, you want to keep a to do list manager separate. You rather want to view your email inbox as another source of where tasks might come from. Just like your boss might give you a task, or a phone call, so is email another source. By keeping all your tasks in one place (your to do list manager) you will find it much easier to get work done. Again, your email inbox is not your to do list.

Email Management Workflow Diagram (Advanced)

It also is not uncommon that a request in the email requires you to do something that might be a (big) project. Your boss might say, “Hey I want you to research what the 3 hottest stocks are in precious metals and recommend to me which one has the best prospects. Please send it to me within 5 days from today.” Now this is an extreme example, but I hope you see what I mean. With such emails you have to create an action item (or even a project), work on it, finish it, and then reply to that email.

A simpler example might be that a friend is asking if you can join her for a concert in two weeks. What you can do is respond right away saying you’ll look into it, create an action item and figure it out later. Three days later, after you figured out your schedule, you reply saying “Yes I’ve checked my schedule and I’m available. Let’s do it!” and put a check mark on your to do list action item.

A big source of distraction comes from email. It’s common to read an email, click on a link, read something interesting, click on something else and before you know it you’ve wasted an hour. By creating action items you force yourself to stay within the email client (or on the same website) and you prevent yourself going off doing something else.

Workflow example

The key to make this system work is that you have to review your folders regularly. A good habit to this workflow is to check your email twice a day at fixed times. That means going through your inbox twice in one day and where you apply the inbox zero concept and 2-minute rule. As an example, I will show you how I manage my email.

• Mon-Fri: process email at 11am.
• Mon-Fri: process email at 4pm.
• Fri: review hold folder at 4:30pm (usually after processing email).



This is roughly how my days look like where you can see when and how long I manage my email.

I process my email only twice a day and at fixed times. Once in the morning after I’ve done my most important tasks (never check email first thing in the morning, it will kill your productivity). By the time I’m processing my emails, I have already done my highest level activities and anything after that is nice to complete.

Between the time I process my email inbox the first time and second time, there is a gap of time I can use to get work done. This work may include tasks that I got assigned through email earlier that morning. As I’m processing my email inbox the second time, I can update my task list again and prepare my to do list for tomorrow (if I got any emails with assignments and tasks handed to me). By checking my email again at the end of the day, I can setup what my most important tasks are the next day and following days.

Before the weekend hits, that’s when I review my Waiting folder. I do this once a week. I treat it like a separate inbox and go through it as fast as possible. If I didn’t get a response from someone within 48 hours, I’ll send a quick reminder. In case that package arrived, I can remove that email from the folder and put it in my archive.

What I really like about this workflow is the sequencing of doing your most important tasks first, then checking email, and then planning. Since I’ve already completed work between 9 and 11 (I usually start working at 9) without the distraction of email, by the time I’m checking my email I’ve already done the most important thing I could do that day and whatever tasks I might get my way through email can be done later that day or some other time.

• 9-11am: do highest leverage work (can be stuff from email of yesterday)
• 11-11.30am: process emails
• 12.30pm – 3.30pm: do other work (that include new tasks just processed from emails earlier in the morning)
• 4pm – 4.30pm: process email
• 4.30pm – 4.45pm: manage to do list based on tasks worked on today and the last set of emails

This is especially a great workflow for people who work in an environment where email is the main communication medium.

Now this was a lot of theory and examples. It can be overwhelming to learn, but experiment with and implement this workflow of managing your email. Here’s a quick video of how this workflow works where we tie all the pieces together.

Next Actions

1. Create the 3 folders: Reply, Waiting and Archive.
2. Move your current inbox into the Archive folder.
3. Starting now, follow this workflow.
4. Figure out how many times a day you want to check your email and at what times.
5. Review your Waiting folder every Friday.

By Asian Efficiency