I love testing new gadgets and products. It’s an obsession.

For The 4-Hour Chef alone, I tested well over $100,000 worth of gear. OCD + Amazon Prime = expensive.

Why on earth do I do it? Simple–I love sharing the 5-10 things out of 500-1,000 that really work. Strange fetish, perhaps, but I get off on it. Readers seem to enjoy it, too.

In the first ever 5-Bullet Friday newsletter, I recommended my favorite all-purpose sandals, and more than 100,000 people clicked on the link within the first 48 hours (!). This type of click-through assault was nicknamed “the hug of death” by one Facebook fan. It crashes websites, wipes out inventory (e.g. Mizzen+Main, sardines at Whole Foods), creates nutty pricing spikes (e.g. used books going for $1,000 after the Sacca podcast), etc.

Below are 10 recent purchases that have given me—and continue to give me—value, joy, or both.

They are from a handful of 5-Bullet Friday newsletters (here’s a full sample). For the data nerds out there, I’ve listed the below products in descending order of click-through rate.

I’ve provided two sets of links for each.  The first link (usually the name of the item) is often an Amazon affiliate link, if you’d like to chip in a few pennies to support my compulsive gear-testing habit. The second link, labeled “non-affiliate link,” is exactly that—a plain old link where Uncle Tim gets to fend for himself in the wild. I’m cool with either. Some items lack affiliate links altogether, as I was too lazy to search.

Here we go… (and what the hell is it with you guys and shoes?)

Vans Unisex Classic Slip-On (Gumsole) Skate Shoe (Non-affiliate link)

This makes me seem like one of the grups, but I love these shoes. Not for skating. My criteria: great for airports, zero-drop soles for restoring Achilles mobility, usable at semi-casual but nice dinners, and small enough to pack in carry-on luggage. I’ve worn these for everything from business meetings to canyon hiking (in a pinch), and they’ve held up beautifully.

My elixir for warm-weather sipping

Here’s one of my favorite rosé wines in the US, perfect for summer sipping: The Wolffer Estate Rosé from Long Island (many years are good).

[I’ll also give you a cold-weather alternative: YakTrax, for modifying normal shoes when you need to walk on snow and ice. They are amazing and fit in a jacket pocket. I bought the basic “Walk” model, but there are many options.]

My preferred oddities…

Many of you have asked, so here’s my favorite gear for podcasting, coffee, everyday carry, and survival gear (some ridiculous).

Rumble Roller (travel size) (Non-affiliate link)

I’ve tried every foam roller imaginable, but this is my new favorite for opening up hamstrings and IT band prior to AcroYoga and other gymnastics practice. That front lever is still eluding me, but I’ll keep at it. WARNING: This will smash you 10x more than smooth rollers. I got overzealous my first session and, the next day, felt like I’d been leg kicked by Buakaw (my fave kickboxer, BTW).

Mini parallettes (“p-bars”) for travel (Non-affiliate link)

These are small enough to stick in carry-on luggage. I use them primarily for pushups, planche leans, and L-sits for time. If you want to make a homemade version out of PVC that can live in your garage or living room, here’s another option.

Original Buddha Board (Non-affiliate link)

A zen-minded Etch-a-Sketch. Use the included brush to paint designs onto the board with water. As the water evaporates, your image fades, all within 30-60 seconds. This is a great tool for learning to let go… or rekindling your artistic side. If you have 60 seconds a day, you have time for the Buddha Board.

Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB mic (Non-affiliate link)

I had to highlight this one. This is the best bang-for-the-buck USB mic I’ve found. I use it for all phone interviews for my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. It’s traveled with me around the world. With this, ear buds, and ECamm Call Recorder, you’re set. For my more complete gear list, see the podcast bullet above from Kit.com.

Wild Planet Canned Sardines in Olive Oil (Non-affiliate link)

I’m sitting in the Bahamas as I type this [back in December, at least], and 24 cans of sardines are sitting next to me in my suitcase. That’s my MO. I open one can upon waking, drizzle about half the oil over my dog’s kibble (which she sometimes refuses to eat dry), and then consume the fish myself. My skin and her coat have never looked better. Hat tip to the incredible biochemistry beast Dom D’Agostino, PhD for intro’ing me to these beauties.

Epsoak Epsom Salt (39.5 Lbs.) (Non-affiliate link)

I take hot baths every night when at home in SF. Nearly always, I add epsom salt (typically 4-8 cups), which facilitates muscular relaxation and recovery. Rather than buy small boxes at CVS or Safeway, I buy in bulk and store it in rolling dog-food containers. This is a good use of Amazon Prime.

Nayoya Gymnastic Rings (Non-affiliate link)

These are super portable (easily fit in a small backpack) and incredibly durable for the price. I’m using them for mostly dips and muscle-up progressions. The Nayoya allow me to leave the rings outdoors. BUT: If you’re going to travel without chalk, I highly suggest wooden rings.

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So… do you enjoy these types of recommendations?

Would you like to get a short e-mail from me every Friday with the five coolest things I’ve found that week? It often includes gadgets, books, supplements, albums, articles, new hacks, and — of course — random, useful stuff I find around the world.

Achtung! You can only get “5-Bullet Friday” if you subscribe to my free e-mail newsletter.

Why not test drive it for a week? You know it’s making your temples tickle, and you can unsubscribe anytime. Click here for a taste of why “5BF” (5-Bullet Friday) usually has a 70%+ open rate.

If you have any special requests for what you’d like see more of in the newsletter, please let me know in the comments.

The post My 10 Favorite Purchases in 10 Months appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

(Photo: Alan Clark Design)

[Tim’s note: This is a guest post by Ramit Sethi on two of my favorite topics: one-shot-one-kill e-mail, and creating policies so you never repeat things. Also important to note: great VAs will use templates for answering *your* email; my assistant Amy uses more than a dozen specific templates to handle my inbox overload.]

Enter Ramit

Why is communicating with virtual assistants so hard?

When I first started using virtual assistants (VAs), I tested assistants from India, Bulgaria, and Israel. But I spent most of my time frustrated with the quality of their answers. How many times have your friends said, “Why don’t you just have your VA do that?” and you sigh because you know: they should be able to it, but you just can’t trust them to do it.

Right?

Other times, you email your assistant, saying, “Please book me a roundtrip flight from SFO to NYC from 3/19 – 3/22” and you have to endure five back-and-forth emails before it’s done… leading you to wonder why you didn’t simply do it yourself.

No one wants more email. I always try for “one and done” emails, meaning when you send an email, it should get done the first time.

Fortunately, because I’m a huge weirdo about time management, I’ve spent over 65 hours optimizing my emails to VAs. Here are three examples of emails that get you answers in one round.

After reading the templates below, you’ll be able to write a crisp one-and-done email that gets you results — the first time. I’ve used these techniques to recover those 65 hours in 3 months and cut back-and-forth emails with my VA by over 80%…

But first, let’s start with a typical email that frustrates us all.

BAD email: Dinner reservations for a date

Imagine you sent this very common email to your VA:

Hi,

Please make reservations for dinner on Friday, 11/12, in midtown NYC. Time: 7 or 7:30pm. I like Indian and Thai food.

This email is doomed to failure…or at least 5 back-and-forth questions from your VA. Take a close look at the email — do you see all the implicit messages you unintentionally communicated in your email?

What is midtown NYC? What is your budget? What if there are no reservations at 7pm or 7:30pm? Do you have any food allergies? Most importantly, what is the single deliverable you expect from your email?

Using the scripts below, you’ll see how important your level of specificity is when working with a VA, or any assistant. You’ll see why spending three additional minutes crafting an effective email can save you 30 minutes in back-and-forth time. So, without further ado, here are 3 tested email scripts to use, along with an analysis of why they work.

Tested email script: Scheduling a doctor’s appointment

Hello,

Please set up these appointments on Monday morning (12/17), when the doctors’ offices open.

Please set up the following medical appointments for me:

1. A dental appointment (annual checkup)

2. An eye checkup (annual checkup)

WHERE TO LOOK

* Please look up doctors on http://www.bluecrossca.com — my doctor must accept my medical insurance (Blue Cross PPO — Lumenos)

* Then cross-reference the doctors’ names on yelp.com to find doctors with positive reviews

* Call the doctors to see which doctors are available for checkups on the below dates

* Please confirm with the doctors that, as a member of Blue Cross Lumenos PPO, I will have 100% exam coverage (dental exam) and a $15 co-pay (vision exam)

WHEN I’M AVAILABLE

* December 17, 18, 19, 21, 27, 28

* 8am – 11am PST and 4pm-7pm PST

LOCATION

* Located near the ZIP code of XXXXX

Thank you,

-Ramit

WHY THIS WORKS:

– You start with a specific request — you want an appointment set on 12/17 — so there can be no confusion about the deliverable.

– You give step-by-step instructions, which the VA can refer to if they get lost in the details. These instructions take 5 minutes to write, but will invariably save you 5-10x that from email responses and switching costs.

– You provide ALL relevant information so your VA doesn’t have to come back to you asking about your availability, ZIP code, etc. They have everything they need in front of them when booking availability.

Tested email script: Finding the best online savings account

Hi,

Please find me the best high-interest online savings account. I’ve heard good things about ING, Emigrant Direct, and HSBC Direct, so please begin with these — but please also search for other banks that meet my requirements.

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE BANK ACCOUNT

* No fees

* No minimum balances required (my average balance will be around $2,000)

PREFERRED ACCOUNT OPTIONS

Things I’d *like* to have, but are not required

* High interest rate, over 1%

* Attached online checking account

* Customer service by phone available

DELIVERABLE

Please create a table and rank my choices. You should only include banks that meet my requirements. Rank them by which of the “Things I’d Like To Have” are present.

Also, please include an extra column called “Other interesting facts” for each bank, where you list the most important reasons to choose that particular bank.

This should take no longer than 5 hours. Please check in after 2 hours and send me what you’ve got. I’ll approve further work from there.

Thanks,

-Ramit

WHY THIS WORKS:

– You are explicit about the deliverable you want — a table with very specific cells. Too many people are vague about their deliverable because they don’t take 3 minutes to decide what they really want. Then they’re disappointed when they get another result. If you don’t know what you want, how can your VA?

Tested email script: Planning air travel

Hi,

I’d like you to plan a trip from San Francisco to New York and provide me the 3 best options.

DATES

Depart: SFO to NYC on May 15 (arrive in time for 11am meeting)

Return: NYC to SFO on May 19th (late afternoon)

TIMES

From SF to NY: I need to be in midtown Manhattan for an 11am meeting on May 16th. Please factor in travel time by cab from the airport.

PREFERENCES

I prefer window seats. All flights must be direct.

I would like the lowest price with the following conditions (in order):

1. Arrive in time to reach my 11am meeting on the 16th (again, please factor in travel time from airport, baggage, etc)

2. Non-stop flight (required)

3. Window seat (preferred)

4. United or JetBlue preferred

Please send me the best three flights in a plaintext email.

Thanks,

-Ramit

WHY THIS WORKS

– The total energy output of the sun cannot compare to my hatred for travel planning. That’s why you need to send explicit instructions to your VA to ensure that no details slip through the cracks, resulting in agonizing back-and-forth emails.

– In this email, you are specific about OUTCOMES when relevant — “arrive in time for 11am meeting” — so you’ve provided basic guidance VA can figure out the flight schedule on their own. However, for other areas where you don’t particularly care, you can simply say “late afternoon” and let them figure it out.

– You should never write your preferences down twice. Instruct your VA to record your preferences so that each interaction makes life easier for you.

Key learnings:

– Eliminate one-off actions and create policies. It’s ok to share your preferences once, but they should always be recorded. That way, if your VA gets hit by a bus (or you decide to work with someone else), you have a written record of your preferences. Examples: When are you available for meetings? Do you prefer aisle or window? What restaurants do you like going to for business meetings? See the ultimate example of a detailed process checklist here.

– Analyze why your emails aren’t getting the responses you want. Take the last email to your VA that produced unsuccessful results. Now show it to your smartest friend. If they can’t guess what the exact deliverable is, how can you expect your VA to?

– Specify the exact deliverable. If you don’t want to get 10 flights in 10 separate PDFs (this has actually happened to me), ask for all the info in one plaintext email. A couple extra seconds saves a lot of frustration.

– Differentiate between requirements and preferences. Ask for an easy-to-read table so you can compare. Remember, point them to an example!

– Once you automate the details, you’ll naturally get more general. Now that my assistant knows my preferences (and they’re recorded online), I can just say, “Please schedule some time for Ben and me to get together” and she knows exactly where I like to have breakfast, my calendar availability, if I prefer aisle vs. window, etc. But getting to that stage took months of training and refinement.

* * *

About Ramit: Ramit Sethi is the author of the New York Times best-seller, I Will Teach You To Be Rich. He is the founder of iwillteachyoutoberich.com, a blog on personal finance and entrepreneurship where you can learn in-depth techniques on earning more money and automating your finances.

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Afterword from Tim:

Just to emphasize: this post is not to imply that VAs are dumb. It’s to imply that most people don’t know how to send clear emails. Good VAs are smart, and — as emphasized in The 4-Hour Workweek — most communication failures are due to the person sending the email, not the recipient. Amy, one of my assistants, also emphasized:

Also, a good VA should “study” their client. For example, I read every blog post, every tweet, listen to every interview you do, read every article you write, and every Random episode, flickr update, etc. (Obviously I don’t charge for that time), but it helps me understand what you’ve got in the pipeline, and what you’re working on. A good VA should be familiar with thier clients interests.

Good VAs are like good employees, good managers, and good CEOs: proactive.

QOD: Do you have any e-mail rules that work well with VAs or employees? Or disaster stories and lessons learned? Please share in the comments!

The post How to E-mail Virtual Assistants (or Any Assistants): Proven Templates appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

If you find large-scale pranks (Super Bowl, anyone?), impersonating celebrities, and other clever mischief amusing, he’s the king of the domain. His book Prank the Monkey is a guide to unleashing your inner Loki.

Given my interest in outsourcing and pushing the envelope with concierge services, he suggested the following post, which looks at just how far VISA will go to keep you happy. I’ve run similar experiments with American Express Platinum Card with similar results. There are no credit card affiliate links in this post, so no ulterior motives. Just eager for you to reap benefits you’ve probably never taken advantage of. Enjoy.

Please share your success stories, past or present, in the comments.

Herewith enters Sir John Hargrave.

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I recently signed up for The Visa SIGNATURE Chase Freedom card, for one reason: it has a concierge service. [Tim note: In fact, all of the “Visa Signature” cards have this concierge service, among other benefits]

A credit card concierge service is much like a hotel concierge service, except you don’t have to tip. A concierge is your own personal assistant, someone who will do anything you want them to do: make dinner reservations, book a trip to Hawaii, or shop for negligees for your grandmother.

We’re so used to being treated badly by credit card companies that it’s almost impossible to believe that they are serving you. But that’s how it works: they’re your virtual assistants, ready to help you with anything.

Anything?

I wanted to test the limits of my Visa Chase Freedom concierge service, so I spent a week making incredibly ridiculous requests, to see how they’d hold up…

TEST #1: GIANT TUB OF NACHO CHEESE

I made my first call to the Visa Chase Freedom concierge service by calling the toll-free number on the back of my card. I was connected to a concierge named David, who I pictured wearing a little bellboy hat, like a hotel concierge, though I think they just wear a telephone headset nowadays.

David spoke English, which was a nice change from my usual calls to Visa. “I’m traveling to Austin next week, and I want a big tub of nacho cheese. Make that a HUGE tub,” I told him. “Enough to fill a punch bowl.”

“Does it need to be in a tub?” he asked, taking the request with the seriousness of someone who worked for me.

“Can, jar, tub, I don’t care,” I said. “I just want liquid cheese, and a lot of it.”

“Would you like us to get back to you by phone or email?”

“Phone, please. I don’t want there to be any miscommunication about my cheese.”

“Is it okay if we have this information to you by 2:00 pm tomorrow?” he asked.

“That would be fine,” I responded, “as long as I get my cheese intel.”

“You’ll get it, sir,” he assured me. “Thank you for calling Visa Signature concierge service.”

Chase Freedom, before it runs away.

Here’s how the service works: your request is assigned a “case number,” which goes into an enormous pool of concierge requests. These requests get outsourced to overseas workers who track down the information and enter it into their system. Then you either get e-mailed, or an English-speaking worker phones you back the next day with what they’ve found.

“I have your information,” said a young woman named Jenny who called me the following day. “There is a supermarket in downtown Austin named Fiesta that sells large cans of nacho cheese.” She gave me the address, phone number, and the price of the cheese.

I went to Austin the following week, where I went to Fiesta, and I actually found the cheese exactly as she had described.

I was floored. This service was a dream come true. Just think of the ridiculous errands I could send them on next!

When I heard that the Visa Chase Freedom card came with a concierge service that would do anything I wanted, I had to put them to the test. Don’t we all want to make our credit card company work for us for a change?

TEST #2: CROSSWORD PUZZLE

“I’m really stuck on 62 across,” I complained to Maurice, the concierge who helped me the following night. I came to learn that I would get a different concierge every time I called, but they were all quite helpful, with none of the attitude that you normally get from customer service reps.

“What crossword puzzle are you doing, sir?”

“It’s the USA Today puzzle,” I said. “The clue is BLUE GROTTO LOCALE. I have no idea what that means.”

“Blue Grotto locale,” he repeated, writing it down.

“The only Grotto I know is at the Playboy Mansion,” I told him. “But this is 11 letters, and starts with I.”

“Okay,” he said. “You want to hang on?”

“Sure,” I said. He put me on hold for about two minutes—the same amount of time it usually takes me to get through to someone at Visa—and came back with the answer.

“You ready?” he said.

“What, you already got it?”

“The answer is ISLE OF CAPRI,” he said. “11 letters, starts with I.”

11 letters, starts with “I”.

“That’s incredible!” I exclaimed. “Are you like an idiot savant of puzzles?”

“You just happened to get someone who likes crosswords,” he said, modestly.

“I will call you every time I need a clue in the future!”

“Uh … okay!” he said, as brightly as he could.

How many times have you been at a restaurant, arguing with your friends about which President was the fattest, or whether Kevin Bacon has ever done a nude scene? Now you don’t need to pull out your smartphone and Google it, you can just call Visa and have them look it up for you.

Having a Visa worker do your bidding: much classier than an iPhone.

TEST #3: DAILY AFFIRMATIONS

“I suffer from low self-esteem,” I told Jamie, my new concierge. “My psychologist recommended that I give myself a daily affirmation. You know, something like, ‘I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.'”

“Okay,” said Jamie, not sure where this was heading.

“But that’s a lot of work, so I’m hoping you guys can do it for me. Just call and give me a daily affirmation.”

“You want us to call and tell you you’re a good person?”

“That’s right. I mean, if you think so. I’m not so sure myself.”

“If you can hold for one moment, I can check on this for you,” Jamie said.

Keep repeating this, and you can one day be Senator of Minnesota.

I bit my lip to keep from cracking up as she went to check with a supervisor. She came back with bad news. “I’m afraid we can’t do this for you,” she said, “but we can look up services that would do this for you.”

“What?” I asked. “Why? Am I not good enough? Oh, I knew it.”

“I’m sorry, we’re just not allowed to do anything of a medical or emotional nature.”

“You can’t tell me I’m good enough because I’m not,” I moaned. “Which is exactly what I thought!”

“Sir,” she said patiently, “I’d be happy to look up other services that can send you these affirmations, and e-mail you that information.”

“Could you at least attach a little positive note to the e-mail?” I begged. “Just like, ‘Thanks for being you?'”

“Let me check with a supervisor,” she said, a little less patiently this time.

I pushed hard on the affirmation, and she asked a supervisor three times before I relented. Apparently Visa Signature couldn’t do quite anything, but I have to admit she did eventually come through on her promise, sending me this via e-mail:

Visa Signature Concierge

(This post originally appeared on Credit Card Chaser)

Afterword from Tim: In the comments, several concierge service providers were kind enough to provide their thoughts, and one was kind enough to list some of the cannot-do’s. Here are a few:

1. We cannot get you an interview to work for a sports team.

2. We do not have special access to confidential government reports.

3. We do not have discounts for venues, restaurants, or services not included on the website http://www.visa.com/signature.

4. If a hotel is completely sold out and booked, we cannot reserve a room there; however we’d be glad to check other hotels nearby.

5. We cannot research your school paper, or do your job for you.

6. We can’t run personal errands or call your friends for you.

7. We can’t plan your wedding, but we can help you find a wedding planner.

8. As far as what’s considered unethical behavior, consider this an example: If child prostitution is legal somewhere, we won’t help you find one; however if you’re in Nevada and want to make an appointment for a rendezvous at the Bunny Ranch, we’d be glad to help you check rates and availability.

9. We don’t have access to your credit card account information or rewards program.

Please keep these not-so-unreasonable limitations in mind when you give us a call. We’ll hear from you soon.

Elsewhere on the Web – Odds and Ends:

Tim Ferriss on Angel Investing (video) – TechCrunch

How I answer the question “How should I monetize my blog?” (3-minute video)

The post How to Make Visa Obey Your Every Desire: The Credit Card Concierge Experiment appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

The Wilburns have used freelancers in India, Israel, and Britain. (Photo: Dana Smith)

Here is the beginning of a worthwhile article in the current issue of Businessweek called “Mom-and-Pop Multinationals” [ed. note: please allow extra load time, as this link now goes to the Internet Archive]. Ever wondered how much personal outsourcing really costs? How to divide and delegate the various tasks that consume your time? This article includes several useful case studies:

From the outside, the gray Victorian with the stained-glass windows on a gentrified block in Dorchester, Mass., is a typical middle-class dream house. But it also is the headquarters of what you might call a micro-multinational. Randy and Nicola Wilburn run real estate, consulting, design, and baby food companies out of their home. They do it by taking outsourcing to the extreme…

Read the entire article here [ed. note: please allow extra load time, as this link now goes to the Internet Archive]. I was not aware I was featured until my agent sent me the link.

The post Mom-and-Pop Multinationals: How to Go Global appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Will he discover the secret of India’s success, or that sending jobs overseas is an unstable gamble?

The videos below share his incredible experience. It’s a fascinating and humanizing portrait of real Indians in Bangalore, the “Silicon Valley of India”.

This inside look shows how ridiculous it is to throw around terms like “slave labor” and “stealing jobs” without understanding the realities of this unusual world where best jobs start at 6pm and end at 3am…

Three suggestions:

1. Keep in mind which jobs are displacing foreign workers and which are not.

2. Notice the level of complaining among Indian workers. It’s almost non-existent.

3. Give the videos a minute to load. Patience, young Jedi.

This is hard-to-find coverage that will change how you think about “your” job. Highly recommended.

[Ed. note: the videos were originally sourced from truveo.com and are unfortunately no longer available. The clips were from the 2nd season of Morgan Spurlock’s “30 Days” TV series, episode 2, “Outsourcing.” The DVD is available at Amazon.com (https://www.amazon.com/30-Days-Season-Morgan-Spurlock/dp/B000WGYMII/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20).]

The post Trading Places with Indian Outsourcers appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Berkshire Hathaway vs. Nasdaq (orange), 1984-2004

I met David Hassell in Omaha at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting, and he asked me an interesting question:

Do you think that the value of time can compound like interest?

Three glasses of wine into a post-event party with Cirque du Soleil performers, I didn’t have a good answer, but David recently sent me a thought-provoking e-mail I thought I’d share.

Compound what?

How might better use of your time compound? David explores:

Bear with me, this is somewhat rough at the moment — my initial quandary was whether time, like currency, could be invested to produce a compounding effect. After a bit of thought, my conclusion is that the value of ones time could experience a significant gain, and perhaps a compounding effect over time, given an investment of [that present-state] time in knowledge, skill or other capacity, and a reinvestment of future gains (just like currency).

Money and currency — accumulated excess money — represent one part of your capacity to transact in the marketplace, and can be exchanged for help from others in the form of products or services, including “things” like consumables, depreciable and appreciable assets. Similarly every action you take, whether it be transaction-related or not, requires the expenditure of some amount of time, which is roughly fixed for all of us (say 10,000 working days between the ages of 22 and 62).

Much like currency can be exchanged for appreciable assets that can grow with a compounding effect over time if the gains are re-invested, my theory is that time can be thought about in a similar way, which may lead to more effective action.

To put this in terms of your thinking from your book, lets say you work 40 hours per week simply performing tasks requested by your employer, none of which produce any additional future potential for generating income for yourself.

This is the equivalent of spending your money on consumables or living expenses. It’s single use, and gives you no real future gain, aside from whatever currency you might earn in the moment. Now, you decide to outsource 50% of your tasks to India, producing the same outcomes with 50% of your time. You just doubled the value of your time compared to before (less the additional expense for the help). Now, with that free time, you get more rigorous about working out, studying, and building your networks. You increase your energy, skill, and capacity working with others and manage to produce yet the same results that were taking 50% of your time with only 30%. If you keep reinvesting some of your time in additional gains in your capacity to act, you can theoretically have a compounding effect with the value of your time (rather than time itself). Just like investing currency, the earlier you start this process, and continue to invest in your capacity, the more time your capacity has to compound, and the greater outcomes you can produce during your lifetime.

The post Lifestyle Investing: "Compound Time" Like Compound Interest? appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

This is Tim Ferriss. The real Tim Ferriss.

This is the first time I have written a post on this blog since March 30, 2007, 366 days ago, when I penned “How to Live Like a Rock Star in Buenos Aires.”

In the meantime, a virtual pair–Vanhishikha “Van” Mehra and Roger Espinosa–have taken my blog to the Technorati-1000 (around 600 at best) and had their content featured, under my name, in media from The New York Times to CNBC.

I’ve suggested topics and asked explicitly for some when I had photos or video to post, but Van and Roger are the short answer to the common question: how can you work four hours a week if you spend so much time on the blog?

The answer is: I don’t.

The impetus was an on-stage challenge at the 2007 SXSW two weeks earlier, and I resolved to demonstrate just how well the concepts in 4HWW could work. This is one of several pending year-long examples…

Here’s how my longest-term outsourcing experiment to date was executed:

1. Preparation: I used Elance.com to post an online editorial position, and I asked for three writing samples of 250 words on the topics of travel and productivity. There were 11 qualified applicants and four finalists, who further submitted a single 750-word article each.

2. People: Two of the four were selected on a trial basis to produce blog content as a pair.

The first, Vanhishikha “Van” Mehra, an undergrad and computer science major in Bangalore, had an impressive ability to choose topics and spot trends, but her English–learned through private schooling with non-native speakers–contained both British colloquialisms and mistakes common to Indian learners of English. She would be the content originator.

Roger Espinosa, the second, was raised in Chicago until 17 and then educated in Manila to become a systems administrator. He didn’t have the same knack for original content as Van, but his writing was native in appearance and not only grammatically correct but also idiomatically correct (e.g. “peanut butter and jelly sandwich” vs. “jelly and peanut butter sandwich”). He would become Van’s editor and publisher.

3. Process: Roger had sole rights to publish via WordPress, and their collaborations were were initial proofread by my Canadian assistant Amy, then later spot-checked by her via RSS. There have been fewer than half a dozen corrections after publication. I will often suggest topics on Mondays after checking e-mail and sometimes explicitly request posts that will allow relevant photos and video to be posted.

4. Van is paid $20 per post and Roger $15. Both get 100% performance bonuses if a given post front pages on Digg but must follow a “best practices” spec sheet to avoid violating user rules and getting blacklisted. I offered to increase the bonus to 200% for Van if it was directly applied to private English lessons with a tutor of my choosing, to whom I would remit payment directly. She has elected this since month 3, and it contributed to a more than 20% increase in front paging on Digg and other social ranking sites in the subsequent six months.

5. The “Odds and Ends” updates and miscellaneous are usually selected or created by me but transcribed by Amy after our once-daily 10-minute action item calls.

So, dear reader, there you have what I’ve been dying to tell you all for the last year, but I wanted to see if it was possible to make it to the 365-day mark.

Some of you have noticed TOEFL-esque phrasings here and there, and more than a few have noted the strange inflection of a few comments (Roger has written about 75% of my comments).

Please don’t be upset by this, and I encourage you to view it as I intended it: a major example of how well personal outsourcing and “offchoring” can work.

I’ll be writing at least once per week for the next two months, and we’ll see if my posts are half as popular as Van and Roger’s If you have any topic suggestions, please let me know in the comments.

Much more to come,

The Real Tim Ferriss

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Important Postscript!

Happy Japanese April Fool’s Day!

Man, oh, man. I was going to wait until tomorrow, but this post has kicked up some dust, so I wanted to own up. Yessir, it’s an April Fool’s Day prank. Sorry for any confusion! It would have been too obvious on April 1st in the US, so I used the alternate time zone. More to come tomorrow, but I write all the posts (minus attributed guest posts) myself. As _Jon put it in the comments: “a personal blog shouldn’t be work, it should be a passion. If you need to outsource it, you have the wrong motivation.”

I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I’m here writing the posts, including the stupid ones (man crush anyone?).

This little prank has been in my head since Jan. 10th, when the infamous Tucker Max suggested a much better version that I was unable to pull off due to this London trip:

“BTW–I had a hilarious idea for what you need to do for an April Fools prank: Write a post, complete with video, about how you have taken outsourcing to the next level. You’re paying people to workout for you, to eat for you, sleep for you, watch TV for you, do literally everything. The vid would show you sitting in a chair in a white room,

cutting intermittently to people doing things with shirts that have “I am Tim Ferriss” on them. It would be f*ing HILARIOUS. You have to do this.”

The post The Grand Illusion: The Real Tim Ferriss Speaks appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Be careful what you ask for.

GetFriday, a personal outsourcing firm in India, was thrust into the limelight when The 4-Hour Workweek hit #1 on The New York Times bestseller list, and their client numbers jumped by almost 1000%. Outsourcing your life was now in fashion.

It’s not simple to handle unexpected massive demand, and this was reflected in complaints from new users who were frustrated with waiting lists, response time issues, and mistakes. New personal outsourcing services popped up to fill the demand, and the niche industry of personal outsourcing is now big business.

I asked the CEO of GetFriday, Sunder Prakasham, to explain the problems and address the criticisms. Below is his letter to me, an excellent description of the growing pains many of you will face if you become “overnight successes” or get sudden primetime exposure.

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Hi Tim,

Here is an analysis of all the negative posts that went on your blog about GetFriday. (attached excel sheet)

As you would see all of them relate to 2007 when there was a wait period and we were playing catch up. And there are going to be complaints if customers have to wait.That is gone since 1st Jan.2008. We are now taking on clients immediately though we have kept a sane ‘within 5 working days’ as the upper limit to take on clients. So that issue is non-existent now. There is a team that keeps collecting feedback information on the web, so that we can address it if the issue is genuine.

Coming to talk about developments at GetFriday and the key challenges we are currently facing:

DEVELOPMENTS

GetFriday has ramped up its manpower and infrastructure at an extremely fast pace in the last 2 months, so much so we are now ahead of the wait curve and can now take on customers immediately. We have invested huge sums of money into IT infrastructure development and a world class CRM system that places us, leagues ahead of any others in the pack when it comes to delivering on any kind of tasks on a large scale. Small teething problems are expected when something new is implemented and some customers are going to bear the brunt of such issues and may go away unhappy. We have tried to keep all our customers informed of all the changes happening internally from time to time, so that they understand that it is all for the better. New office spaces have been added and we have decent spare capacity to be able take on work on the fly. We have a good management team in place that can handle further growth. A lot of development took place in a very short time, just like a lot of growth happened in too short a time. So there are going to be problems we need to contend with, here are some of them.

CHALLENGES

Culture and Relationship

I have reviewed a lot of feedback on the web myself and understand from customer feedback that one of the biggest issues facing GetFriday is that of understanding culture. Now this is a real issue and no matter how much of training I give about the American culture through classroom sessions, reality is that we live in different cultural zones. At no point of time has GetFriday professed that we use Indian assistants who are ‘American’ or any ‘other culture’ ready. We do our best to ensure that we train people and try to set the expectations right with the customer. The basis for a successful relationship lies in understanding at the outset that we are different and then work towards sharing each other’s culture and making ‘work’ work. How successful that will be shall depend on whether the people who transact, the client (American or any other culture) and his assistant (Indian) are open about it. I think the culture thing is being given too much emphasis, because though I may not understand my Israeli client’s culture thoroughly, if I have a good relationship and we are open about diversity then I should be able to understand the pulse of the customer and deliver on the client’s needs. That is fundamental for any cross cultural working relationship. It worked for us when we started GetFriday and I think that is the way we would like to keep it going. And BTW, we should have clients from 30 different nationalies being served by GetFriday at this point of time.

Given the spate of work that has come our way, most of our assistants had focussed on pure delivery of tasks and not much on the relationship management aspect. This we found was the biggest problem for us and hence we have taken steps to fix that problem. Am not giving out specifics of this because we have seen other services blatantly copy everything from tariff to processes to our manuals once it is on the web.

Quality of Service

Keeping the quality of service really high as we grow rapidly has been a huge challenge. There were some bloopers here and there, which happened in the past. It was really a choice between losing the client on a wait period to taking them on sooner (because they wanted it immediately after reading Tim’s book and couldn’t wait) with a little compromise on quality (because the assistant was not trained enough). Was a Hobson’s choice though we did our best to tell clients that waiting was better. Now with the capacity crunch being handled and well within our control, we have really been focussing on improving the quality of service. A good quality of service needs to meet client’s expectation to a reasonable level. People who have been with us for more than 2 months, stick with us for a long time. There are customers who are as old as 2 years still using our service. It is the initial period that is the most trying, both for client and for the assistant. We have put a fix for this problem as well recently. In order to continuously provide a good quality of service, we take feedback from customers plus we have internal systems that rates the quality of tasks selected on a random basis.

Clone sites

There were many clone sites that started service after seeing the popularity of GetFriday and thought that there was an incredibly quick buck to be made. Some of them whom I don’t wish to name but are referred by users on your blog are sites which are complete clones. I couldn’t help laughing my head off when I came across a site that had copied and put up our user manual verbatim on their site. Someone had used the find and replace technique efficiently, but apparently forgot to remove our support email id. Another one is trying to gain popularity through using our brand name in the headline of all their free web PR releases. They are listed high in google because of the word ‘getfriday’ in it, but I can’t see how customers would bite and try out a service that uses such unethical means.

For the moment, we focus on real feedback on our service from real clients. And we ensure we listen to them and fix them. The rest, we would rather ignore.

On the whole, I think GetFriday is in a lot better position than most others to understand the challenges and tackle them head-on.

If a client is open-minded and willing to invest a little time in the relationship at the beginning, he/she will reap a lot of value over a period of time with GetFriday.

If you have any further concerns, please do let me know.

Regards

Sunder P

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The post GetFriday and the Cost of Success: Exclusive Letter from the CEO appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

This past Tuesday, I was part of a segment on the CBS Early Show on personal outsourcing called “Average Joes, Janes Outsourcing Tasks.” Check out the video, one of the best I’ve seen on the topic, here. It includes case studies.

Two of my favorite articles on personal outsourcing — one from The Wall Street Journal and the other from the NY Times — compare different tasks and common problems.

I’ve outsourced everything from hardcore business functions to personal chores, emptying my inbox, and even online dating (see my “extreme outsourcing” article for the last).

One big question still remains for most:

Where the hell should I go to get started?

All personal outsourcing companies are not created equal…

Some only do research, while others do actual work, and still others screw up everything you give them. I haven’t seen a good ranking of customer satisfaction for different services, hence the following survey for readers here, who have more experience than most in personal outsourcing.

If you have used any of the following services and been satisfied, please vote for them here (multiple services is fine). There are dozens of new upstarts, so I only included those I’ve used or heard good things about. If you have other recommendations or questions, please leave them in — you guessed it! — the comments. If you haven’t used personal outsourcing yet, what’s holding you back?

The competitors are:

Elance

American Express Platinum Concierge

Ask Sunday

ODesk

Get Friday (Your Man in India)

Do My Stuff

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

Craigslist

Workaholics for Hire

Brickwork India

iFreelance

Scriptlance

Guru

Agents of Value

Tell us about your experiences (or reservations) below — ideally focusing on what has worked so others can duplicate it — and don’t forget to vote here for your favorites!

Results will be posted next Friday. [Update: Here are the results]

The post The Personal Outsourcing Olympics: Bangalore Butler or American Assistant? appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.

Envision the 5 books that have most impacted your life. How would your life be different if you’d never read them?

How would your options be affected if you could never again read a book, menu, or sign?

Here is the huge competition I’ve been promising. It’s the biggest I’ve ever done, and there are some incredible world-famous people involved. You won’t be disappointed:

If you’d like to support this idea, please take a second to vote for it here. Be sure to see the “prizes” section — how could you get into the 10K Club if you had to?

The post LitLiberation: How to Travel the World–and Get a Personal Assistant–for Free appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.