Category Archives: Lifehack

Save time with TimeSvr virtual assistants

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I’ve always been a big advocate of outsourcing through the use of virtual assistants. In fact, I wrote about personal assistants back in March and had started using a service called GetFriday. I had some mixed experiences (like sending a birthday greeting when it wasn’t someone’s birthday) and decided the cost was no longer justified.

TimeSvr exceeds my expectations

Out of the blue, as I was thinking I needed to drop my assistant, I received an e-mail from the CEO of TimeSvr. He and I exchanged e-mails a bit. Let me pause and note: I was getting e-mail responses from the CEO faster than my assistant at GetFriday. I decided I needed to give TimeSvr a test run and I’m so glad I did.

Now this post isn’t meant to put down any other services (including the one popularized by Tim Ferriss), it’s to demonstrate how my expectations were far exceeded within my first day of use:

  • Web-based task tracking: with other services, you send an e-mail to your assistant and wait for a confirmation. TimeSvr provides you with a dashboard that shows all your tasks with and responses, updates, etc.
  • Timeliness of responses: the service has remained small to provide for better quality. Many of the other virtual assistant services have grown far larger than they could handle. I’ve found TimeSvr will get back to me in as little as an hour as opposed to a day.
  • Excellent English skills: it was very obvious to me that the assistants excel at the language. Some of my more enjoyable e-mails had been from previous assistants in broken English. I can actually talk to my assistant on the phone now, I couldn’t easily do that before.
  • Effectiveness exceeds expectations: every time I get a response from an assigned task I always think “wow, s/he’s good!”. I had to find a replacement kitchen accessory: my assistant placed calls to numerous retailers to find the part, the manufacturer, provided me with the warranty details, etc. I was floored with the level of detail I was handed.

I love assigning a task and getting a call back in an hour or two with my assistant and a customer service representative on the line. “Hello Devin, this is ______, I have ______ on the line with me and they’d like to confirm _________. Okay, thank you, Devin.” Wow. I didn’t even realize you could get someone on the phone from __________.

The best part of TimeSvr is the fact they probably don’t put themselves in the same category of services that I’ve used in the past (which were touted as the best, at the time):

We really don’t compare ourselves to anyone. We just saw a market underserved and decided to fill the void. -Zaki Mahomed, CEO

TimeSvr features

This is a company that “gets it”. They understand the web worker like myself, especially. You have various mediums to submit a task, no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

TimeSvr dashboard

  • E-mail: Sending tasks to the tasks e-mail will automatically get routed and assigned immediately. You can see these tasks appear in your dashboard.
  • Skype: Chat with the Skype account to submit a task. If you’re on instant messenger all day, why not?
  • Phone: If you’re on the road and need to cancel an appointment just pick up the phone and let them know.

And here’s one of the best features, if you’re a trusting person: complete your profile. Simply fill out your contact details, calendar credentials, authorized credit card number, shipping address, travel preferences, etc. Once you’ve provided all your details, the possibilities for easily assigning tasks open up.

If you don’t want to provide everything up front, then simply include it in the task. I’ve had insurance payments made, online subscriptions canceled. I even “lost” a gift certificate applied to my Amazon account. Within minutes my assistant found which item the certificate was applied to. I thought it had just expired… oops.

Try it for yourself

TimeSvr is far more affordable than any comparable service I’ve found out there. At $69 per month you receive unlimited basic tasks (book a flight, cancel this appointment) and up to 8 hours of extended (or complex) task time. The team is available 24/7 including holidays which exceeds most other service I’ve looked into.

I can’t recommend these guys enough. Go ahead and sign up today. You can try them out for three days, free.

My assistant wrote this post

Just joking. But I did ask them (in the form of a task) what they thought were the three best things about the service. They were “saving precious time”, “really cost effective solutions”, and “privacy control” (with explanations for each). I was impressed and agree. Sorry to disappoint but I really haven’t found anything negative to say about this group.

Guide to working paperless

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I think my simplest self-imposed challenge was to: go entirely paperless at the office this month. It was so simple it’s almost laughable. I’m so confident that I met my own goal I’ve posted this a week before the end of the month. So how did I do it and how did it spill over into my personal life?

I got the right (portable) tools in place

These days we all have laptops: they’re light, portable, and can go anywhere. I’m fortunate enough to have one for both work and play.

I'm taking the '100 things' challenge

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I’m sure you’ve heard of it already. If not, a bunch of people have vowed to give up everything in their life except for 100 “things” (loosely defined). This isn’t a new idea, Leo from Zen Habits talked about it almost a year ago and it’s been circulating around the web in blogs and forums before that (but thank goodness we have TIME around to popularize it).

I started cataloging all the items I have around the house and was quite surprised; I think you would be, too. But first, here are some of my initial thoughts:

  • You should define a “thing” at first. I did consider a collection as one “thing.”
  • Pay attention to all the things on all your shelves, in the closet, etc. You forget about things.
  • List your things in the room or area they belong, this helps recognize where stuff clutters.
  • That box sitting there that you haven’t touched since you last moved? Go ahead and get rid of it. No! Don’t even open it.
  • Make sure you’ve considered every part of the house. Food didn’t make it on my list.
  • I have nearly as many “things” in my office as my bedroom. But I only spend a few hours a week in the office!
  • As I went through and cataloged things I made a pile of stuff I don’t want on the list (and will get rid of immediately), this is immediate gratification!

Now the point isn’t to simply remove things from your life (even though that’s a big part of it). The point of the (arbitrary) number, 100, is to keep a sense of value in mind. What is it that makes it into my top 100? What can I limit myself to? How do I prioritize the “stuff” that is tied to my name?

After a couple hours of rummaging around this morning I easily dropped my list down to 108 items. Thaaats right. There are only 108 things in my house. These things include:

  • Bed
  • iPhone
  • Lint roller
  • Umbrella
  • Golf clubs
  • Big green fern
  • Spindle of CDs
  • 24″ LCD monitor

Once you get into it, 100 is a very reasonable number. What are some of the things I’ve done to minimize my “thing footprint”?

  • Digitize things! Documents, photographs, important receipts. Paper does not need to add to your list.
  • Keep the digital needs simple! One thing I’ve tried to do is decrease the number of gadgets / chargers / toys I own. The iPhone is awesome, it’s my phone, calendar, mobile internet device, etc. The Sonos is great, its my house-wide sound system (no need for PC speakers, for example).
  • Minimize the knick-knacks. I try to be very intentional about the things I put on ‘horizontal surfaces’. A lamp here, a fountain there. I had clutter and ‘simple’ is so much more pleasing. Some cool knick-knacks I’ve kept are from around the world (India, New Zealand, Mexico)
  • Clean out the desk. I found a lot of junk I don’t use (I don’t have a tack board, why do I have tacks!?) in the many drawers around my house. Don’t think, just toss. If you feel bad about it, throw it all in a box and check back in 6 months. Didn’t open it? Nuff said.
  • Turn your hangers around. To minimize the amount of clothing in your closet you don’t wear simply put all your hangers in backwards. Then when you wear something for the first time, turn it around (thanks Peter). Every few months I take the unworn to Goodwill. Easy.

Now its nice becuase, no, I don’t own my own place. My roommate is the owner of the plates, knives, forks, etc. But that’s fine, if you use the ‘collection rule’ you’ll see you’ve only got a dozen more things than I do.

I’m staring at my list. These eight things aren’t going to go without a fight.

Have you tried minimizing the ‘stuff’ in your life? How do you declutter?

GMail Todo List

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I’ve been keeping another secret from you guys. I have a genius way to keep track of my ‘todo’ list. GMail is so powerful I don’t know if people really realize it. Thus, my mini-guide to making your own todo list in GMail. (Hmm, before posting this I realized someone else has done this same thing, but hey, I still thought of it and it’s still worth sharing).

Create a new ‘todo’ filter for your todo email address
Simply click “Create a filter” to the right of the search bar in GMail. The only field you need to define is the “To:” field which should be your email address with a +todo appended to the left side of the email address. In other words, [email protected] or even [email protected] (if you’re using Google for Domains). Click ‘Next Step’

Create a ‘todo’ label to tag all your todo items
This is simple, click the ‘Apply the label…’ check box and create a new label called ‘Todo’. You can also choose to do something like set the filter to ‘Skip the inbox’ in order to do some clever categorization. For example, all new todos will go straight into the archive as ‘unread’, thus you’ll have number next to the Todo label. You could use this to let you know how many total todo items you have. You could also use unread items to mean todos that haven’t been started. Or, they could represent the high priority todos you have. Anyway, those are just some ideas..

Send emails to yourself
Now if you ever need to add an item, just compose a new message to ‘Todo’ and off you go! What’s nice is I can now send items to my list from my cellphone and they’ll be available wherever.

If you live in Google products as much as I do (if I suddenly lost GMail and Calendar I’d probably be disconnected from my own life) then this is a great solution. Now I can see, at a glance, I have 5 “priority” Todos and they’re all right there with my email (a todo list in and of itself). I’ve tried a bunch of todo list products out there and this is, by far, the most convenient…

Hopefully this was useful to someone, let me know your thoughts or any other suggestions you have to tweak this…

Update: Be sure to use the RSS feed to it’s fullest potential as shown here.

Update 2 (6/28/08): Look into Remember the Milk as they have a great Firefox plugin to add your todo list to your Gmail page. I use RTM with my iPhone and Gmail and it’s a great way to have my todo lists all in one place.

Biphasic Sleep (Napping) FAQ

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I keep getting asked a few of the same questions so I thought I’d take a post to gather my thoughts on biphasic sleeping, also known as napping.

1. You sleep… when exactly?

I sleep twice in a day. The first time being sometime in the early evening (around 8:30) and this block of sleep is only for 90 minutes (at least, thats the plan, see #4). After my first block of sleep I’m extremely refreshed and ready to go another few hours. I set myself to be back up by about 6 so I either go to sleep again at 1:30a or 3a. Note these are in 90 minute increments again.

2. What does 90 minutes have to do with anything?

The 90-minute cycle actually refers to one complete sleep cycle. This includes going through REM sleep; the most important part of sleeping. Since I don’t force myself to wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle I’m much more refreshed and it’s much easier to actually get up.

3. Is it hard to get up at 6 every day?

Surprisingly, no. I used to have trouble getting up at 8 or even 9 every day. I’m convinced it was because I was constantly pulling myself up out of the middle of a sleep cycle. Our brains get stuck down in ‘sleep world’ and have a hard time unnaturally coming back up.

4. Do you ever screw up your sleeping schedule?

On occasion, yes. It’s funny but sometimes I’ll mis-set my alarm and find myself taking a 3 or 4.5 hour nap. I actually wake up naturally at 3 or 4.5 hours. I smile because people who thought I’d be ‘back in a few’ or would ‘call them in an few hours’ end up going to sleep that night slightly confused. They know its something nap-related. Oh well. I just adjust my second sleep period. For example, last night I went to bed at 9:30p and woke up at 2a. Oops! I ended up working until 5a, slept until 6:30 and, well, here I am! I had a midterm at 9:30 and have felt fine all day.

5. Do you ever sleep in?

To me, “sleeping in” is anything more than 6 hours. My body is pretty good at waking itself up automatically after a REM cycle (end of a 90 minute increment). On Saturdays I treat myself to 7.5 or 9 hours of sleep. People who advocate 8 hours of sleep are nuts. Seriously.

6. Does this interfere with your (social) life?

Nope. If I’m not in a place where I can’t just decide to take a nap then I simply don’t that day. I will just sleep 6 or 7.5 hours that evening and pick back up the next day. It seems like the simplest solution and hasn’t given me any problems. I do start to yawn quite a bit though as the night wears on..

7. Are there any side effects?

Increased productivity, smaller todo piles, less magazines to read on my bookshelf (hopefully this will carry over to books). But seriously, there have been no medical side effects whatsoever. This is far from anything radical like polyphasic sleeping.

8. Would you try polyphasic sleeping?

I’ll try anything. I don’t see it as something feasable for me at any point in my life. I may be wrong though. If I ever have the ability to control my schedule like that (30m naps every 4h) then sure, I’ll give myself a month or so to try it out.

9. Where did you even hear about this?

I find neat stuff online. This happens to be one of those things…

Biphasic Sleep Update

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I’ve survived week one of my biphasic sleep schedule. Before I started my new routine I would get probably 8 or 9 hours of sleep per night. Last night I settled with 4.5. Here’s how the last 7 days looked:

Day Nap Sleep Total
1 8:30-12 2-6 7.5 hours
2 6:30-8 2-8 7.5 hours
3 7:30-10 2-6 6.5 hours
4 8:30-4 * 7.5 hours
5 7-8:30 2-6:30 6.0 hours
6 8:30-10 2-6 5.5 hours
7 1-5:30 * 4.5 hours

As you can see I started to get less sleep… then day 4 hit me. I got back from skiing that day and went to take my nap… and didn’t wake up until 4am. That was fine, I woke up and proceeded to begin my day. I guess I was pretty exhausted, though.

Yesterday (day 7) I was very busy. Up at 6, class at 8 then work until 3:30, group project, meeting, dinner, meeting and I was finally home by 9. The problem was I had not started any homework and it needed to be done. So, I worked through my nap time and just decided to do the one block of sleep. That went pretty well. I woke up this morning but was a little drowsy. I lied down and watched MTV until about 6:30.

…and here I am working through my nap again. Oddly enough with 4.5 hours of sleep and no nap yet I’m feeling great. A little more irritable (thanks computer!) but not tired at all. I intend to repeat last night’s schedule and then go back to naps tomorrow afternoon.

I really recommend trying this sleep schedule. Waking up is easier. My dreams are more memorable, vivid and lucid (I feel like I control them, it’s weird). Working during the peace of night is great, too. I caught up on 12 magazines, I’ve started a new web project (looking forward to sharing that soon) and watched some good movies. Life is good!

Sleep Cycles

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I admit, I got a little burned out at work today (8 hours in front of the monitor, no lunch, pretty tough). So, I took a break and read a bit about polyphasic sleep on Steve Pavlina’s blog. I then dug around more and more and read some wikis and all sorts of articles. I’ve decided to embark on Glen Rhodes’ bi-phasic sleep pattern and see how it works for me. I’ve never been much for sleeping a lot, but I’ve never really understood why I’m tired one day and just fine another. I’m looking into how I can schedule a routine 90-minute nap every day and then get 6 hours of sleep every night. The sleep cycles seem to make sense. If I get up at 6:30 every morning I could probably get a lot done in a day. Look out breakfast, I’m making a come-back..