Leverage A Virtual Personal Assistant : SOMEWHAT FRANK

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October 19, 2007

Leverage A Virtual Personal Assistant

Frank Gruber

Virtual assistant sites Finding the ability to do everything you want to in your 24 hour, 7 day week can be a struggle. As the use of Web productivity tools has risen, many of us still try to do MORE with the time we have freed up from leveraging these tools. Email, Instant Messenger and mobile device usage has caused us to look for more instantaneous actions and reactions. How can you get everything done? An intriguing approach that I have recently seen on the rise is the usage of a virtual assistant. This article will look at a few of the current online personal assistant options.

The following services offer virtual personal and executive assistant services and may be worth giving a try:

Brickwork India - offers executive assistance for a number of research and analytical tasks that could make your day easier with pricing on a per client basis.

YourManInIndia - for personal tasks where prices and completion times vary per task (see pricing example).

AskSunday - for minor task management which offers flat rate pricing at $29 per month for 30 tasks for $49 per month for 50 tasks.

GetFriday - offers a number of minor tasks and services and is priced at $15 an hour, plus $10 a month (see pricing grid).

With all that life demands, it might be better to outsource some of your more trivial tasks. With Tim Ferris preaching the ease of "The 4 Hour Work Week," the idea of doing less has become more of a rallying point. Interestingly, this somewhat echoes 37 Signals' "do less" battle cry. Understanding you cannot do everything all the time on your own is an important first step. However you can prioritize your workload with a number of to do list products and methods (here is a good sampling of to do list products). The next step is determining which items can be easily outsourced. That obstacle aside, once you get the proper management strategy you could save yourself lots of time thus making room for more time to enjoy life.

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