Outsource your life

In an article from the Christian Science Monitor, Timothy Ferriss (book and blog) discusses the latest iteration of outsourcing: individuals outsourcing their personal business. The author himself outsources all of his e-mail correspondence and schedule making to India and the Philippines, where a few dollars per hour will buy you a highly efficient anglophone personal assistant:

The return-on-investment (ROI) is hard to ignore. Estimate your hourly income by cutting the last three zeros off of your annual income and halving the remaining number. If you make $50,000 per year, for example, you make about $25 per hour.

If you outsource a time-consuming task, business or personal, for $5 an hour, that is a minimum of 400 percent ROI. Reallocate a small amount of your investment money – say $30 to $100 – to a "quality-of-life" offchoring fund on a trial basis.

Start with a basic digital concierge service such as AskSunday.com and then graduate to providers such as Elance.com, where you can implement more ambitious plans. I'm now at the point where I outsource all e-mail and convert more than 500 requests and messages per day into a once-daily 10-minute phone call with a virtual assistant.