Last week I decided to pick up a couple of books.  The first is Rule of Thumb: 52 Rules for Winning at Business by Alan Webber  of Fast Company fame.  I can’t comment on it yet, because I haven’t opened it, I’ve been far too involved with the second book – The Four Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss.  The book has been a bestseller for quite some time, but I was reluctant to pick it up, because frankly, I like working and the premise seemed absurd.

Yet, if you follow this blog, you know from a couple of my posts:  this one – Elsewhere & Everywhere on the book Elsewhere Generation and this one – Why I read: The Blender Effect on how much time I spend reading and gathering knowledge, know that I need to find some way to make more time for everything.  Thus, I decided to pick the book up and see what it had to say.

I have to say that it is a bit of an eye opener for me, and I’m going to start to implement some of the suggestions in the book, at least the ones that I see as being practical for me. This morning, I took my first step, by hiring a Virtual Assistant from India.  I have contacted a Company called Brickwork which is featured in the book.  As Brickworks site indicates, they offer an impressive array of business only services that they can perform for you at what I am hoping is a reasonable cost.  According to the book, I’m probably looking at a rate of $15 per hour, which seems reasonable and comparable to the rates here in the US.  I may also give an assignment to Your Man in India, who can handle both business and personal tasks and has a rate structure that begins at $6.25 per hour.  I won’t lie, paying $6.25 sounds better than $15 so I’ll have to see if there is a noticeable difference in service vs. price.

Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll have some results from the first effort at hiring a virtual assistant, which I’ll be sure to post the details.  Also, I would love to hear about your experiences with virtual assistants, so post a comment and share.  Until then, have a good holiday today!