This article shares ways you can outsource elements of your work or entirely automate it in order to save yourself time and effort and help you get more done/spend more time at home.
How Much of Your Work Can You Outsource or Automate?
For most of us these days, work simply means moving information around. This is very true of course for anyone who works in administration, data entry, or coding, but it's equally true to a lesser degree for people working as designers, musicians and writers. What is a piece of artwork or design if not a piece of information that manages looks attractive on the page?
But seeing as most of our work amounts to little more than that, you might be forgiven for thinking that it would be possible to either automate or outsource that work elsewhere. According to writer, investor, entrepreneur and author of 'The Four Hour Workweek' Tim Ferriss, that's actually highly true. So much so in fact, that Tim claims it's possible to avoid doing pretty much any work of your own in a lot of cases.
Of course this concept doesn't apply to everyone, and the amount of your job that you can avoid doing in person is going to depend very largely on the nature of that job to begin with. Still though, with the right strategy, it's most likely possible for at least some of your job to be outsourced or automated no matter what you do. Read on and we'll take a look at how much of your job you can probably outsource, and how much of your life you could get back as a result.
E-Mail :
Regardless of what you do, chances are that you will spend a fair amount of time responding to e-mails, which probably eats up a lot of the time that could be better used elsewhere.
The problem with answering e-mails is that it's reactive. In other words, we answer e-mails because we have been interrupted and have been asked to do something. This then leaves us floundering and struggling to get back into a productive 'flow state' and means we have less time to direct towards useful tasks.
A simple solution is to use autoresponders, and better yet, autoresponders that look for keywords. Thus you can have urgent e-mails forwarded to you, but have an automatic response set up for the others that will inform them you're busy and will attempt to reach them by the end of the day. You can even use a smart autoresponder looking for keywords in order to attempt to answer common questions, or write your own script that will deal with regular issues thereby saving yourself a lot of time and effort.
VAS :
VAS stands for 'Virtual Assistant Service' and is one of the big tools that most of these outsourcing gurus recommend. Virtual assistants often work from overseas while you're sleeping and can carry out almost any task that doesn't require their physical presence. That could mean collecting e-mail addresses for you, it could mean responding to your e-mails, it could mean arranging meetings, or it could even mean setting up events. Using a VAS you can potentially save yourself days' worth of mind-numbing work every month.
Cloud Systems :
There are many cloud systems you can set up that will automate some of your more time-consuming tasks. Take IFTTT for instance – a service that sets up relationships between various media accounts you have online. You can use this to automatically upload or download images to and from Facebook, to sync your social media and even to report back on weather reports and more.
Online Workers
Of course another way to outsource is to simply look for people who are willing to do your jobs for you at a reasonable rate. Perhaps the best way to do this is by looking at online marketplaces such as Gumtree, Craig's List, ODesk or Fiverr. One guy in the Four Hour Workweek allegedly hired someone to cook for him every night using Craig's List. You could get people to send e-mails for you, enter data for you, design websites for you or help with your managed IT services.
The question is, what will you do with all your free time?
Author Bio
Nancy Baker, is a freelance blogger who is currently writing for, mbc, reputable providers of managed IT in Markham. She likes to practice yoga to stay healthy and fit. You can also follow her on Twitter @Nancy Baker
Filed Under: MISCELLANEOUS
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