Can one overscheduled, overburdened,
toast-burning woman find true happiness in the warm embrace
of a can-do personal assistant?
About a dozen years ago, I discovered what I wanted most in
life. The lightning bolt struck from my television set. I was
watching
Woman of the Year, an old Hepburn-Tracy movie about
a woman newspaper columnist who falls in love with a brash
sportswriter. But I fell in love with that columnist's assistant,
Gerald. He screened her calls, kept her calendar, carried her coat,
drove her around the city, even listened in on her telephone
interviews and took notes. She only lifted her manicured fingers to
write her column and to accept the award for which the film is
named. I wanted my own Gerald. I wanted to, when the Spanish
ambassador phoned, call out, "Gerald, get on the line and take down
every word!"
That was when I was single. I need a Gerald now even more. I'm
married with one child (eight) and two stepchildren (16 and 19). My
husband and I both work. My daughter is on a
basketball team, takes
guitar lessons and jazz dance, participates in
chess club and
robotics class. We have a house in
Vermont that's half dismantled
by renovation. We have a house in
Hamilton,
Texas, that's been
under contract for a number of months. We have a town house near
Austin, where we live during the school year because I'm getting a
graduate degree nearby. In other words, I live the typical,
overscheduled, hard-to-manage American life. My brain is so
overstuffed with the undone, I've been known to prepay for gas and
drive off without pumping.
Every day I want to do more than I possibly can, and, often, the
things I don't get done simply complicate my life even more. I
forget appointments. I lose hours searching for keys, files,
notes, books. I have addresses and phone numbers in several
address books: one electronic, one in the back of my 2005 daily
planner, one in my old Filofax, one in an old Day-Timer, more on a
wedding-invitation list (and I got married eight years ago). There
are more addresses on envelopes from last year's
Christmas cards,
even more in a stack of business cards. A directory of students in
my graduate program has been misplaced. Every time I call my
dentist, I look up the number in the phone book. I do have my
psychiatrist's number memorized. But I've been so busy, I haven't
had time to call him.
Thus overwhelmed, I often retreat into the myth of Gerald, his
business suit stronger than Achilles's armor, his manner efficient
and forbearing, his arm always ready for my coat. Gerald would
simplify my life. He'd call my dentist for me. He'd remind me of
appointments and make sure I pump my gas. He'd handle the pile of
miscellaneous jobs that hovers over my head like the sword of
Damocles.
Suddenly, though, Gerald the idea turned into personal assistant,
the reality. I tried outsourcing my life to a few different Gerald
types - and let's just say I didn't pull it off with Katharine
Hepburn's grace, at least at first. But now that I've had my taste
of Gerald, my life will never be complete without it.
WHERE ART THOU?
Gerald proved an elusive commodity. But once I finally knew the
vaunted Gerald was on the way, I felt the need to prepare. My
behavior was akin to that of a pregnant woman just before birth: I
cleaned out my closet, made lists, shopped, researched.
I thought I was ready.
Linsay Kolar,
Temporary Nanny Manager
Rate: $15 an hour, including agency fee
Found: Mom's Best Friend (a household-help agency)
Before dispatching Linsay to my employ, the owner of MBF Agency
tells me I'm a typical client: new to the
Austin area, in need of
temporary help, so busy I'd have to sacrifice time with my family
to have a clean, well-run household (needless to say, my house is
neither clean nor well run, except for the hour after my
housekeeper leaves each week). "I just saw a poll of women CEOs,
and they said the secret to their success is outsourcing household
functions," says the owner, Kathy Dupuy. "We're seeing the same
thing." As CEO of my self-employment, I'm expecting productivity
that
Alan Greenspan would be proud of.
Waiting for Linsay the next morning, I burn four pieces of toast
before I get one out on time. Smoke fills my kitchen and floats
into the living room. I turn the vent on high and go over Linsay's
list of things to do. I think I'm ready. She'll start with the
laundry and move on to wrapping some overdue gifts.
Once she's at work, though, I see I'll need to buy some supplies
for her other tasks. So I go to the hardware store, the best
one-stop-shopping spot in my small town. An hour later, I'm back at
the house, and Linsay, finished with the laundry, is now sorting
through my daughter's art stuff. I sit at my desk. I'm going to
work now.
But, checking my Master Outsourcing List, I see I need filing
supplies for tomorrow's organizational binge. I drive off toward
the nearest
Office Depot, about 45 minutes away.
Three hours later, with a trunkful of office supplies and one less
overdue DVD in my car, I walk into my house muttering my to-do list
under my breath. Linsay either doesn't notice or takes for granted
that I'm crazy. She's wrapped a bunch of packages for shipping;
organized my CDs and DVDs; made appointments with the carpet
cleaner, family doctor, and dentist; and unloaded and reloaded the
dishwasher. Next on her list: Take magazines and catalogs to the
recycling center. I gather those catalogs and magazines, write out
directions to my daughter's school and to the post office, and send
her off. My plan: Spend the quiet time writing. Instead, I use 40
minutes to clean out the drawers in my sideboard and distribute the
Barbie shoes, pot holders, screwdrivers, photographs,
Legos, and
crayons to their proper homes.
Now, finally, seven hours after Linsay arrived, I'm writing this. I
give myself an F for outsourcing today. I spent more time getting
ready to delegate than I did doing actual work. Every messy
surface or drawer distracted me. Would I get better at it if Linsay
worked for me regularly? I rationalize my poor performance this
way: If I had regular help, no directions to school or post office
would be necessary. To-dos wouldn't stack up. My helper would know
me and the house, so she'd know which jobs to tackle.
Now I'm looking out the window every 30 seconds to see if Linsay's
back with my daughter.
Did
Katharine Hepburn and Gerald go through an awkward,
unproductive getting-to-know-you period? Maybe she forgot to tell
him to carry her coat to the car or took her own notes for five
minutes before remembering she'd hired help. Maybe burning toast
filled her kitchen with smoke too.
Somehow I doubt it.
Lorie Marrero,
LivingOrder organizing and
productivity consultant
Rate: $75 an hour residential
Found: Google
Lorie Marrero is a slim, polished woman whose oversize shoulder bag
contains a mini file drawer. Seriously. She wouldn't get to the
video store only to realize she'd left the overdue DVD at home,
because it's filed under D. Opening my front door to her, I'm
overwhelmed with inadequacy. I feel better after my dog rubs
against her legs and leaves white hairs on her navy pants.
I open my office-in-an-armoire for her inspection. Like a doctor
looking down a patient's throat, she says, "Ah-haah." Then she
interviews me and discovers all the inefficient ways in which I
store things, manage e-mail, waste time, etc. My multiple to-do
lists on scraps of paper don't qualify as a calendar at all. Ditto
for my contact management (those various, unsynchronized address
books). She lectures me about my lack of a computer-backup system.
(One of LivingOrder's clients had a laptop stolen out of her house.
No backup. All files had to be re-created from scratch.) Ditto for
my lack of a shredder (my dog doesn't count). Ditto for my
mismanagement of online passwords. My ego is destroyed.
Just in time to be rebuilt in a new, more organized image.
She makes a list: Things to do per Lorie. Put all contacts in one
electronic database, with notes for searching by keyword. Get a
good shredder. Arrange daily, overnight, off-site backup, plus CDs
as backup of the backup. Make a password-protected spreadsheet for
all login info. Take one or two hours each week to review progress
and plan.
Finally, she tells me I need a comprehensive master list of
everything that needs doing: work, home, family, school. People who
try to keep little tasks in their heads - "got to call Aunt Rita"
or "e-mail new contact from the conference" or "the piano needs
tuning" - only distract themselves. Those nagging thoughts are like
flotsam and jetsam of the brain, clogging free-running thought.
"You can be more creative without them," she slyly suggests. Okay,
master to-do list it is.
Now we tackle the desk. The goal is to sort objects, using Lorie's
"Action, Reference, or Trash" system. Everything to be kept,
including staples and every scrap of paper, is then categorized as
A, B, C, or D. The A and B stuff will stay around my desk
(
Ace and
Best?). C and D stuff goes upstairs to a
filing cabinet or bookshelves.
Clutter and
Detritus,
say.
From one desk we extract four mail bins of extraneous C and D
stuff. With the help of Lorie's handy-dandy label maker, where her
fingers dance like
Fred Astaire's feet, we file the important
papers, shelve the important books, create a spot for supplies. My
desk is a thing of simple beauty. I wonder if I can work there.
As Lorie leaves, I am on fire with the love of organization. Which
is a good thing, because she left me a list of about 10 more things
to do and a dozen things to buy. I consider staying up late to
create C and D files or shelve C and D books (how can Faulkner be
Detritus?). Instead, I go to sleep and dream that my uncle has come
over to categorize my bookshelves. (All golf books,
here!)
For most of the next day, despite the presence of the temporary
personal assistant I'll describe next, I organize. I can't walk
past an unruly drawer without applying "Action, Reference, or
Trash" to it. I sort my daughter's school papers and artwork, and
store them in bins Lorie told me to buy. I sort crayons from
markers from pencils. I shelve C and D books. In a forgotten milk
crate I find the Filofax I've been hunting for for the last two
days because it's one of those yet-to-be-synchronized address
books. I find my daughter's lost birth certificate. I toss a lot of
junk into a trash bag.
Since I started outsourcing, I've filled two large garbage
cans.
The unalphabetized, uncategorized bookshelves annoy me.
The bin full of C and D files-to-be-created weighs on me.
I hear myself repeating Lorie's advice:
Never say, "Put it here
for now" - find a permanent place for it. Is this rolling pin a B
object or a C object? Does Tylenol count as an A object when you're
so organized it gives you a headache?
I'm so busy organizing my work, I'm not working. Wasn't outsourcing
supposed to free me to be more productive? What's happening?
What's happening is I'm seriously considering buying a label
maker.
Christene LeDoux,
Part-time Personal Assistant
Rate: $12 an hour
Found: Craigslist
Christene loves my daughter. Loves my dog. Loves my cat. On the
first day she works for me, she drops off dry cleaning, organizes a
drawer, buys materials for a new laundry-room shelf, buys hooks for
my bathroom doors, drops all my trash at the transfer station,
takes four boxes of donations to the thrift store, finds a handyman
to fix a broken bureau drawer, and brings me a latte. I love
Christene.
On the second day, she gets stuck in traffic on the way to my
house, and I spend the first hour of her time here searching for
tools she can use to install the laundry-room shelf. She installs
said shelf slowly and with some difficulty. Same with the hooks on
my bathroom doors. I realize, at the end of the day, that we should
have asked the handyman to install the shelf, so that Christene
could have worked on combining my address books. But I still love
Christene.
As I'm falling asleep that night, insight jolts me awake: I'm
making many of the same mistakes businesses do when they outsource
(see "Outsourcing Trip-Ups," at right). Having edited a half-dozen
stories about those pitfalls, I should have been able to avoid
them. Nope. Management 101: Knowledge doesn't necessarily lead to
execution. To lull myself to sleep I open my laptop and tinker with
the next day's to-do list.
The third day, Christene sells a crate of my old books to Half
Price Books, picks up my dry cleaning, ships some packages, checks
the mail, prints photos from a CD, drops another box at the thrift
store, takes more trash to the transfer station, and brings me a
latte. Then she sits at her laptop and starts typing my contacts
into a database. I sit at my desk and write. When I leave for a
classroom party at my daughter's school, I feel like part of me is
still working. I'm wondering whether Christene could be a
semiregular help around the house. I wonder whether she'd consider
changing her name to Gerald.
After Christene leaves, I realize I've done about an hour's worth
of paying work and six hours of "Action, Reference, or Trash." I'm
seriously failing at this outsourcing thing. But all my drawers are
organized. Would my editor, who's just e-mailed to ask for the
story I owe him, be impressed? Nope. Would he be impressed if he
knew that I stay up late turning business cards into
electronic-address-book entries?
Nein. That the next day,
Saturday, I spend my free time applying "Action, Reference, or
Trash" to more boxes and files, and that, in the process, I find my
own birth certificate and my parents' wills? Not likely. I'm hoping
that turning in this story early will make up for it.
PARADISE LOST?
About halfway through the Week of Gerald or his Reasonable
Facsimile, I wonder whether my dream is permanently shattered. Can
I go back to dreaming of the perfect personal assistant, knowing
the difficulty of managing that mythical person? If not, might my
psyche be permanently damaged?
Now that it's over, I'm not so worried. I think I've learned how to
deal with Gerald, in whatever form he manifests himself. Part of
him now resides in the me who recites "Action, Reference, or Trash"
at the smallest provocation. The rest is out there, ready to be
hired at a moment's notice. In fact, I'm thinking that, in a couple
of weeks, when I've caught up on my work, I'll get Christene over
to put seven years' worth of photos into the photo albums I just
bought. That way, I can strike a big task off my new comprehensive,
master, everything-including-the-kitchen-sink list.
And what's after that? Woman of the Year, of course.
Happy Returns
Money spent on outsourcing: $525
Temporary nanny manager 145
Organizational specialist 260
Part-time assistant 120
Money spent as a result of outsourcing: $303
Shelf supplies 63
Filing supplies 81
Wrapping supplies 15
Lightbulbs 7
Plastic bins 21
Carpet cleaning 65
Handyman 25
Filofax refills 26
Time spent looking for outsourcing help: 8 hours
Time spent preparing for outsourcing help: 14 hours
Cleaning closets 6 hours
Making lists 3 hours
Shopping for organizing gear 5 hours
Time helpers will spend helping me: 22 hours
Value of time lost to outsourcing prep and/or obsessive
organizing:
$1,225 (and counting)
Value of finding third cousin's address the first time I looked for
it:
you know.
Outsourcing Trip-Ups
If I were a corporate vice president contracting work out to a
vendor, I might stumble into some of the same traps I came upon at
home. "Outsourcing requires an ongoing relationship that has to be
managed proactively and measured to achieve what is expected," one
expert at the technology research and analysis firm Gartner's told
CNET news. "Outsourcing is hard work, and it takes a lot of
preparation." I learned that firsthand. Mistakes are for learning
from, though, and here's my newfound wisdom.
Get ready, get set. Without the necessary information, your hirelings can’t do the job. If you don’t know exactly what you want them to do, it’s hopeless. Analyze your work carefully, prioritize, and put all the info together before you hire out the work.
Expect training time. My nanny-for-a-day didn’t know how to find my daughter’s school, the post office, or anything else in town. I had to write directions for her. After a few days, she’d learn. Don’t think your helpers can work independently until they’re trained.
Match the person to the job. I should have asked Christene to delegate shelf installation to the handyman instead of doing it herself. Faster, cheaper, more time for Christene to bring me lattes.
Hands off! Once you hire and train your vendors, get back to where you belong: at your own desk, doing your own work. Let them come to you with problems. Check in occasionally; expect reports. But don’t expect them to do everything exactly the way you would.
Don’t get distracted. You’ve hired people to make your life easier, not harder. Let them focus on doing their jobs while you focus on doing yours. Don’t let their work change your to-do list.
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