I got a comment yesterday on the January 18th post titled Pass on Sven and a Smartphone and after looking at my analytics, I can tell a lot of people have been hitting the site from searches related to Sven and his smartphones. Pamela’s comment was:

I have plenty of anti-Sven tips. But I also have 6 kids, 2 -17, an executive for a husband. I homeschool. We do swimteam: 1 event, same practice schedule, same competition night, everybody but the 2 year old participates. My daughter is a hobbiest breeder of Westies. Only 1 extra driver, and he works. 1 child is a recently diagnosed epileptic with lots of dr. appts. I still need a Sven. I’m not complaining, I like my life, my children all help. But I could keep Sven busy all day. Shoot, just keeping the 2 year old from putting screws in the electrical sockets, and coloring the leather sofa with black Sharpies would wear him out, and free me up! So, anyone know of any good “Svens” for hire? Short, chubby, tall, thin, doesn’t matter. Just a good work ethic and good with details and kids.

While I do not know any Svens, I have thought about outsourcing, especially after reading the 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. Pamela, I don’t know of any services that provide drivers or child wrangling services, but some of the other things you do, like keep track of your calendar, process email, remind yourself about the shopping list, etc. From the free to the pay services: I Want Sandy, a free service from Values of N, is a Artificial Intelligence Virtual Assistant. “Sandy” will send you text message and email reminders of events, information, and keep track of your to do lists. If you use Jott, a free voice to text service, you can call Sandy, tell her to remind you, and then she will text message you when you wanted to be reminded. Sandy has a great example of how “she” works with families, which may or may not be applicable. Elance and GetFriday, two pay services that get you a Virtual Assistant. They can do the calendar management, screen phone calls for you, manage your email. The only thing that you need to be cautious of is the amount of direction and explicit instructions that are needed in the beginning. A paraphrased example from the 4 Hour Work Week:

What does a good VA [Virtual Assistant] task email look like? The following example was recently sent to an Indian VA whose results have been nothing short of spectaular:

Dear Sowmya, Thank you, I would like to start with the following task. TASK: I need to find the names and em-mails of editors of men’s magazines in the US (for example: maxim, stuff, GQ, esquire, blender, etc.)who also have written books. An example of such a person would be AJ Jacobs who is Editor-at-Large of Esquire (www.ajjacobs.com). I already have his information and need more like him. Can you do this? If not, please advise. Please reply and confirm what you will plan to do to complete this task. DEADLINE: Since I’m in a rush, get started after your next e-mail and stop at 3 hours and tell me what results you have. Please being this task now if possible. The deadline for these 3 hours and reported results is end-of-day ET Monday.

Read these articles from Tim Ferriss’ blog: The Personal Outsourcing Olympics: Bangalore Butler or American Assistant? and Mail Your Child to Sri Lanka or Hire Indian Pimps: Extreme Personal Outsourcing. Both posts that have a lot of resources and great comments. Pamela, I would love to hear if you have success with using outsourcing.