What do you do when you can’t create more time, but have more to do? That’s the topic we try to tackle on ProductivityCast. From enlisting virtual assistants to hiring productivity consultants to professional organizers to handyman services and everything in between, we discuss personal outsourcing to get more done.

Note: Art Gelwicks was with us for this episode, but unfortunately a technical problem means that his audio is left out of this episode.

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In this Cast | Personal Outsourcing: How to Increase Productivity When You Can't Make More Time

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Personal Outsourcing: How to Increase Productivity When You Can't Make More Time

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

FreshlyHellofreshBlue ApronInstacartRed ButlerFancyHandsLongerDaysIFTTTZapierPlatedBabelcubeFiverr Upwork (formerly eLance)100 Personal Outsourcing Ideas

Raw Text Transcript | Personal Outsourcing: How to Increase Productivity When You Can't Make More Time

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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25And we are going to be talking this week about personal outsourcing. And this is the idea of how do we actually create more of ourselves? How do we get more done in the same amount of time, as we've talked about many times on the on the podcast before, really doing more in less time is not really the ultimate definition of productivity. For many of us here on the cast. We really do believe in being able to get the right things done with the right effort, the right resources, and so on and so forth. And so it's about having the right direction yet there is a reality that we all need to figure out how to get more done in the time that we're given the same 24 hours per day. And so how do we do that? And one of those ways, is through personal outsourcing. And so what I wanted us to do today is to first define personal outsourcing what it really means to outsource ourselves. And then the other parts are figuring out what types of services are available to us what kinds of things can we outsource to professional professionals and to professional services. And then finally, a little bit of discussion about technology and technology's role, replacing ourselves in getting some things done that we may not need to do ourselves physically, mentally, in the course of our days. So let's start off with defining what personal outsourcing is. I'm going to start with some of the characteristics of determining whether to use personal outsourcing one of the first ones that I think is one of the most important and also the one that people Have to become the most aware of in their everyday life is what I call emotional landmines. And emotional landmines are really, when a task has a, a strong negative emotional resonance, some kind of negative response that you have to that thing. And many times it's that thing that's been sitting on your list for several days, maybe weeks, maybe even months, and years. And so if it has some kind of negative negative attachment emotionally for you, it's going to kind of it's a landmine in the entire task list or projects list. And it may just blow up the whole system, you may avoid your entire task list your entire projects list because of this one particular potential landmine, and many times what you could do is you could just have someone else get started on that project. And that can be a huge relief for you in being able to move forward and getting things done. Next up is what I call the knowledge, skills gap characteristic. Is it better to have someone else do this thing? That is? Do they have better professional knowledge or skills to handle that project? Or is it better for you to learn the knowledge or skills going forward? Is it something that you're going to have to do on a regular basis and it's just best for you to get the education now, to be able to do that thing so that you can go ahead and get it done. The third criteria are typical characteristics of personal outsourcing. You know, tasks or projects are repeating chores. Is it something that is repetitive and rote that you can easily hand off to someone else with proper instructions, and they could probably do it as good or better than you and remove you from the process which can be really a huge time saver. Fourth, the mundane and while in getting things done proper GTD method We frequently talk about handling the mundane. In reality, if a project is or task is so mundane, you're unmotivated to start it, it could be really helpful to outsource that item to someone else, so that they can handle that for you. And then finally, I talked about the time is money characteristic and time is money is to the effect that is your time. If you take your own personal personal billable hourly rate, and if you don't have one, it's time to come up with one then what can you use? What How can you use that time better on something more strategic, that is if you have a project that is revenue generating and you could be working on that as opposed to something that is not revenue generating and therefore is is taking up your time? It's it's basically a time for money trade, you can you are going to have a cost benefit and the plus by doing the work that's strategic and billable versus the work that is not strategic and not billable, but is going to cost you less money to have someone else to do it than for the time that you need to be billing. So even if you again are not handling billable hours, you should absolutely create a billable rate for yourself, how much are you worth per hour? And once you determine that, then you can have some basic schema for being able to determine if I outsource this to someone, i X dollars an hour, and I'm worth this dollars per hour. Can I do something else with that time? And is it going to be more worthwhile than doing this other thing, and that's the time is money characteristic.

Augusto Pinaud 5:42In top of what you said there is a couple of other important things I need, how much clarity you have on what you're trying to use the service for, you know, one of the biggest barricades I found when I when when people start getting into the service and getting into the workplace. assistance and getting into this kind of delegation is on really an understanding of what it is, as you were saying sometimes is, did you need to find out more before you can get there. And it is hard because the people who normally is looking into these solutions is people who's already doing a lot. They tend to be overworked and already and tend to make the mistake of slowing down to think to see what they're going to delegate, you know, when I, when I coach with people, or one of the mistakes I see with delegation is they start delegating little, little, little more and more and more and more, but they actually have don't have necessarily an idea of what they're delegating, or what happened if the person they're delegating, disappear or change, stop working with them any of those little resources. So, all those elements are also important to take into consideration is not only what The reasons emotional obstacles, but how prepared are you to do that?

Francis Wade 7:06I like your for your four criteria. It sort of helps me organize my own thinking. I've used quite a bit of help from different people, mostly online to do single jobs. Know when they get out have someone repeat a task, depending on the nature of the task. And right now I'm actually looking going to be start looking for someone to do some data entry. I got some information from a client, a spreadsheet, a printout of a spreadsheet, which has approximately 900 data points in it. The minute I saw it, you know, my, my eyes just glazed over and I said, Well, I hope I'm not the one who has to go into this so it falls right into that mundane category that you mentioned. And to know find someone I mentioned the service in a few minutes, but find someone who I can trust Probably be someone I haven't used either lately or have never used because I haven't done any data entry. I have delegated that recently. So I have to describe the job, I have to go through a few steps or two quality checks to pick the right person. And then there's the verification of the job, that they did a good job after the fact. So there's a few different steps that I believe we're going to be discussing. But getting all the steps done is a big part in delegating. Because it's, it's not finished until it meets my criteria for satisfaction,...