Why You NEED A Personal Assistant | Ali Abdaal on All The Hacks
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - I think everyone should have a part-time
00:00:07.460 | personal assistant.
00:00:08.300 | And that's an absolutely life-changing productivity hack.
00:00:11.260 | - So I do not have one, and I've struggled in the past.
00:00:14.220 | And like five years ago, I tried.
00:00:16.140 | What kinds of things do you have this person do?
00:00:19.340 | And do you ever get too caught up in,
00:00:22.020 | I wanna make sure that they're doing them
00:00:23.400 | the exact way I would do them,
00:00:24.400 | and then it ends up taking more time?
00:00:26.280 | - Basically, everything that I don't wanna do myself.
00:00:29.740 | So a lot of emails, so my assistant, Dan, is remote,
00:00:34.740 | but he's based in the UK, so we've met in real life,
00:00:36.860 | which I think is really useful.
00:00:39.580 | A lot of people try and hire a VA in the Philippines
00:00:42.280 | for $5 an hour,
00:00:43.120 | and then they're surprised when it doesn't work.
00:00:44.840 | But if you have the ability to hire someone
00:00:46.620 | that you can potentially work with in real life
00:00:48.840 | some of the time, or at least meet in person,
00:00:51.640 | it's just really nice.
00:00:53.680 | But anyway, Dan basically goes through all my emails,
00:00:55.520 | he deals with all my scheduling,
00:00:57.060 | things like scheduling this podcast, for example,
00:01:00.220 | I have basically outsourced the management of my calendar
00:01:03.060 | to Dan, so he deals with it.
00:01:05.400 | And it means that as emails come in and stuff,
00:01:07.400 | I'm actually not the first person to see an email.
00:01:10.200 | I'll see the superhuman notification on my phone,
00:01:11.940 | and if it's something really interesting or really urgent,
00:01:13.740 | then I'll reply to it there and then.
00:01:15.620 | So yes, scheduling and emails is a big one.
00:01:18.380 | But just beyond that,
00:01:19.420 | there's a lot of random admin tasks in life.
00:01:22.700 | Like for example,
00:01:23.620 | I knew I wanted to get a cleaner for the house,
00:01:25.960 | kind of a bit of a first world problem.
00:01:27.640 | But I don't want to be the one
00:01:29.840 | calling up random cleaning agencies in London
00:01:31.680 | and trying to find a cleaner
00:01:32.640 | who can be there at the same time that I want
00:01:35.300 | and do some of the ironing and change the sheets.
00:01:39.100 | So I just said, "Hey, Dan,
00:01:40.020 | can you find me a cleaner for the house?"
00:01:41.980 | Basically, if they can come in on a weekday morning
00:01:43.600 | and do all the things including ironing, that's what I want.
00:01:46.520 | And he was like, "Cool, I'll call around,
00:01:47.780 | I'll ring a few agencies."
00:01:48.700 | And he found someone and now we've got a cleaner.
00:01:51.820 | Things like, I remember when I first got an assistant,
00:01:54.500 | I was just sort of like hanging around to be like,
00:01:56.200 | "Huh, what are all the things I could delegate?"
00:01:58.700 | I was like, you know,
00:01:59.540 | I wanted to learn how to play the ukulele.
00:02:01.160 | I said, her name was Elizabeth at the time.
00:02:03.700 | I said, "Hey, Elizabeth,
00:02:05.500 | can you find me a ukulele for under like 200 pounds
00:02:07.800 | and just find some reviews and just order it?"
00:02:10.000 | And she was like, "Cool."
00:02:11.340 | The next day, a ukulele arrived at my house.
00:02:13.060 | And it's like, I'd been procrastinating
00:02:15.420 | from again, playing the ukulele for like two years,
00:02:17.180 | because all it would have taken was for me to sit down
00:02:19.020 | and spend five minutes searching on the internet
00:02:20.560 | for what's the best ukulele for a certain budget.
00:02:23.140 | But it's in a way so much easier
00:02:24.620 | to be able to say that to an assistant
00:02:25.980 | or to a voice note that you can then send to an assistant.
00:02:29.420 | Right now, Dan is hunting for a new property
00:02:32.180 | that we're moving into.
00:02:33.020 | We're trying to move to studio spaces,
00:02:35.240 | ringing up estate agents and dealing with
00:02:36.900 | like booking viewings and arranging viewings.
00:02:39.500 | Dan is doing all of that.
00:02:40.420 | And he's just getting them to send us WhatsApp videos
00:02:42.320 | so that I can spend my time doing things
00:02:43.620 | that I actually want to be doing,
00:02:44.460 | like talking to you on this podcast
00:02:45.700 | or like making videos or like writing
00:02:47.180 | or things other than dealing with the hours
00:02:49.700 | and hours of admin it takes to book viewings
00:02:51.520 | for a property in a market where properties are moving fast.
00:02:54.380 | So almost anything within reason
00:02:56.860 | can be outsourced to an assistant.
00:02:58.860 | - Have you done a blog post or a video
00:03:00.740 | on how to use an assistant
00:03:01.980 | and all the tasks you could use for them?
00:03:03.300 | - No, we're working on it.
00:03:04.740 | I have this course idea in my mind
00:03:06.780 | that we've sort of fleshed out.
00:03:07.820 | It's gonna be called something like
00:03:08.900 | the life-changing magic of a personal assistant.
00:03:11.180 | And I wanna make videos and blog posts and tweets
00:03:13.340 | and all of this stuff about it at some point soon.
00:03:15.780 | - And for someone who hasn't gone down the path
00:03:19.180 | of how much this could cost,
00:03:21.600 | like you mentioned, you could go to the Philippines,
00:03:24.120 | it's super cheap, you don't need someone full-time, right?
00:03:27.460 | This is something you can kind of start
00:03:28.920 | at a pretty low cost and add a lot of scale.
00:03:31.560 | - Yeah, I've been telling all my friends,
00:03:32.600 | four hours a week will completely change your life.
00:03:34.800 | And if you can find someone for like,
00:03:36.800 | someone local here in the UK, 15 pounds an hour.
00:03:40.520 | So that's like $20 an hour for four hours.
00:03:43.400 | That's like $80 a week.
00:03:44.900 | And people are always like,
00:03:46.320 | "Oh, that's like $320 a month.
00:03:48.640 | "That's so expensive."
00:03:50.220 | And I ask, "Okay, this is not for students who are broke.
00:03:53.440 | "It's for people who have real jobs."
00:03:55.020 | It's like, A, what's your actual hourly rate?
00:03:57.780 | Like you're doing the whole Naval thing
00:03:59.140 | of what is your actual hourly rate?
00:04:01.660 | Should you really be the one to do this thing
00:04:03.260 | that you don't wanna do?
00:04:04.520 | But also the other way of thinking of it is like,
00:04:06.060 | if you could free up four hours of your time to,
00:04:08.500 | for example, spend with your family,
00:04:10.140 | how much would that be worth to you over the long term?
00:04:12.100 | It's like, okay, probably worth more than $20, right?
00:04:14.900 | So now that it gives you an idea
00:04:18.040 | of how much it would potentially be worth
00:04:19.760 | hiring an assistant for.
00:04:21.460 | I'm so bullish on the part-time personal assistant thing.
00:04:23.800 | I think it's great.
00:04:25.120 | - I got this email from someone this morning.
00:04:28.200 | I'm gonna butcher the name, but Lee Aaron.
00:04:30.280 | And they were like, "Hey, can you do an episode
00:04:31.720 | "on family life?
00:04:32.560 | "I know you've talked about it a little,
00:04:33.740 | "but like, I have no time.
00:04:35.120 | "Like, how do I maximize my time?"
00:04:37.020 | So this is a great example to Lee Aaron,
00:04:39.200 | who wrote in something to consider to buy back some time.
00:04:42.920 | And I'm a big fan of buying time.
00:04:44.400 | Like, to the extent that you can find a person
00:04:46.500 | to do a thing that you don't wanna do,
00:04:48.460 | or not that you don't wanna do.
00:04:49.520 | I used to love cooking.
00:04:51.000 | And before kids, cooking was like in lieu
00:04:54.280 | of sitting on the couch doing nothing.
00:04:56.000 | And that trade-off was good.
00:04:57.320 | Now cooking might be in lieu of spending time with your kids
00:05:00.640 | or working or doing these other things
00:05:02.940 | 'cause you just have less time.
00:05:04.240 | And so, you know, it's not that I don't like it.
00:05:06.360 | It's that I now have different priorities
00:05:08.120 | because there are more things on my plate.
00:05:09.960 | And so whatever's at the bottom of that list,
00:05:12.640 | I find that we often are doing those things,
00:05:14.720 | even though we might not actually prioritize them
00:05:17.680 | because they have to happen.
00:05:18.760 | But to the extent you can hire someone to cook or to clean
00:05:21.420 | or to do whatever task it is on your list,
00:05:25.000 | it sounds like I need to test out one of these VA services
00:05:27.440 | or find someone.
00:05:28.780 | I keep procrastinating.
00:05:31.320 | I keep procrastinating.
00:05:32.320 | I gotta get something very clear
00:05:35.300 | of what I'm gonna do next and get it in motion.