Get a Personal Assistant

We've all heard about the whole 'outsource jobs to India' craze that has hit almost every sector of the US economy. The latest one that I've heard about is outsourced personal assistants. Believe it or not, this thing sounds pretty cool!

The LA Times featured an article recently about how well the model actually worked for the writer. The personal assistants obviously can't run errands for you or pick up your kids from school. They can, however, do a LOT of things. Services offered include:

• Schedule doctor appointments
• Book travel
• Give you directions
• Find local service providers (maids, gutter cleaning, whatever)
• Do your online shopping
• Look up phone numbers
• Settle an argument by looking up something for you

The list goes on. Basically anything that you do over the phone, the India-based personal assistant can do for you. They are reachable 24 hours per day and can be reached via website, email, and US-based phone numbers. The two primary sites offering the service are:

AskSunday.com is probably the largest of the companies in this space. Plans start at $29.00 per month. For this fee, you get 30 requests per month. Each request can take no more than 30 minutes to complete and must be able to be accomplished from a distance. Sign-up online, give some information about your service providers, location, etc. and you're ready to start using your own personal assistant!

GetFriday.com is another big player in this space (apparently these companies like to name themselves after days of the week!?). The service works in a similar way - contact them via email and/or phone and they will do administrative tasks for you - things like online research, daily wakeup calls with weather reports, reading bedtime stories to your kids via phone (!?), etc. Their service appears to be a bit more expensive ($10.00 per month and then $15.00 per hour) but they do have more plans and payment options. One of the services they list is Document Creation. I'm assuming that means that they'll create documents for you - not that they'll document how creation happened. I suppose you'll have to ask that question for yourself after you sign up.

If you don't want to pony up for the India-based personal assistant but you could use some reminders and help with your schedule, IWantSandy.com could be what you need. This FREE service is a new web-based service that emails you reminders based on what you tell it to do. You email Sandy things like:
"Remind me to refill my prescription tomorrow" or "Remember that Joe's birthday is 4/14" and Sandy will email you to remind you of things. You can even manage your entire calendar on the site. It allows you to opt in and out of emails, manage lists of things to remember, etc. on the site and then all you have to do is sit back and get email reminders. Pretty nifty little service - and I think that Sandy might be related to Archie's girlfriend Veronica!

So...if you need some help getting life organized, give India a call or see if Sandy can help!