optimize, automate, and outsource everything - ari meisel

8/10/2019 Optimize, Automate, And Outsource Everything - Ari Meisel

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Make Gmail, IFTTT, andVirtual Assistants Your Ultimate

Productivity Weapons

BYARI MEISEL

OPTIMIZE, AUTOMATE,

AND OUTSOURCEEVERYTHING


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ARI MEISEL

OPTIMIZE, AUTOMATE,AND OUTSOURCE

EVERYTHINGMake Gmail, IFTTT, and

Virtual Assistants Your UltimateProductivity Weapons


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OPTIMIZE AUTOMATE AND OUTSOURCE EVERYTHING

Copyright 2013 Ari Meisel

All rights reserved under the International and Pan American conventions, including the right to re-produce this book or por tions thereof in any form whatsoever. No portion of this book may becopied or reproduced in any form whatsoever without prior written permission.

For additional copies of this book, please contact Ari Meisel at:

http://www.lessdoing.com/contact

Editing and Design (except the cover) by Cara Stein / BookCompletion.com


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Introduction................................................................1

Gmail ............................................................................4

The Less Doing approach to email ............................................5

Getting startedmigrating to Gmail and importing

accounts ...........................................................................................7

Getting Gmail settings and labs tweaked to perfection ......11

The most essential filter and the ONLY folder youll

ever need .......................................................................................13

How I process my email using Gmail ......................................16

Gmail add-ons and plugins .........................................................21

IFTTT.........................................................................34

Basic recipes..................................................................................37

Advanced recipes.........................................................................38

iii

Table ofContents


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How I use IFTTT..........................................................................40

How I use Zapier.........................................................................44

Virtual Assistants ....................................................48

Why everyone should have a virtual assistant ......................49

Two types of virtual assistants and how you can use

them both......................................................................................51

What can a virtual assistant do for me? .................................54

How I use FancyHands...............................................................58Creating the Manual of You........................................................60

Tasks and tools for advanced outsourcing .............................66

Tasks that should be automated...............................................71

The ultimate: automate your virtual assistant .......................72

Conclusion.................................................................77

Bringing it all together ................................................................78

Be even more effective ...............................................................81

Optimize, Automate, and Outsource Everything

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Introduction


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Learn the Three Amazing Weapons

of Productivity: Optimize,

Automate, Outsource!The Art of Less Doing is an entire framework and philosophy for

getting more done and freeing up your time, so you can do the

things you want to do. The goal is to free up as much of your

time as possible. That way, you can stress less, be more produc-

tive, and accomplish the things that you want in life.

The main principle of Less Doing is to optimize, automate, and

outsource EVERYTHING. People can save thousands of hours

by

not running errands, and they can manage their time better

by

choosing their own workweek, but a lot of people just want

to know how to deal with email andget rid of their to-do list.

This book will show you how to do that. Ive boiled it down as

simply as possibly by showing you the three most important pro-

ductivity tools to simplify your life and free up your time.

The first tool is Gmail. With Gmail, you can optimize not only

your email, but your overall life management. Next, well cover

IFTTT, which allows you to automate so much of your life that

you can simply set it and forget it. Finally, virtual assistants bring it

all together by outsourcing all of the other time-wasting tasks in

your life and business.

Each chapter in this book will show you my personal, Less-Doing-

approved methods. Then, Ill present a number of essential plugins


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and add-on services. You wont just learn the fundamentals. Illshow you the advanced techniques for using each of these serv-

ices individually, and then Ill show you how to combine them into

the ultimate productivity toolbox so you can start being more ef-

fective today!


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Chapter 1:

Gmail


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The first amazing productivity tool well cover is Gmail. Gmailcomes with a lot of excellent tools and add-ons that can help

you eliminate inbox clutter and become far more efficient in han-

dling your email.

The Less Doing

approach to emailMy inbox used to look like this; yours may, too.

When youre working with a cluttered inbox, everything you have

to do takes longer. You have to search just to find the important

items, and its easy to get distracted by all of the other items in

front of you.


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The Three Ds: Delete It, Defer It, Deal

with ItTo eliminate the overhead of inbox clutter, remove time-consum-

ing distractions, and be able to quickly and easily identify the im-

portant items demanding your action, the goal is simply to clear

your inbox.

To accomplish that, as you go through your inbox, you have three

options for each message:

delete it, defer it, or deal with it. Thatsityou have to do one of those three things for each message.

Heres how I deal with those three options: when I open my

inbox, I look at each email and do one of the three Ds:

If the email is something that Ive already responded to,

then I delete it. (Or, I might archive it. A wonderful feature

of Gmail is that you can archive without deleting, so you

dont see the message, but if you ever need to search for it,

youll find it.)

If the email is something that I can better deal with at an-

other time, I forward it (defer it) usingFollowUp.ccto a

time when I can deal with it best.

If I can do it now, then the best thing is to deal with it now

and move on.


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I realize that seems insanely simple, but using that method effec-tively invokes the all-importantEssential vs. Optionaltheory to

make it easier.

Over time, you will get better and faster at processing emails.

Once youve got a handle on the methods were about to cover,

try

The Email Gameto work through these principles and get re-

warded as you improve.

Getting startedmigrating to Gmail andimporting accountsIf you havent done so already, head over toGmail and setup

your free account...its ok, Ill wait.

If youve never used Gmail before, spend a few minutes playingaround with the interface. If you need a basic primer on Gmail

features, check out this

Tutorial.

Done? Great, lets go!


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Gmail makes it really easy to

switch

from your current email

service without missing a beat. There are two ways to go: you can

either do it yourself, or you can outsource it.

Do It YourselfGmail allows you to import messages and contacts from dozens

of different providers by simplyclickingon the gear icon in the


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upper right of your mailbox and then going to Settings. Nextclick on Accounts and Import, and under Import Mail and

Contacts, click on Import Mail and Contacts. The process takes

you step by step through entering your current provider informa-

tion and transferring messages.

Right under the Import Mail and Contacts section is a

very cool feature called Send mail as. Suppose, like me, you

have several business emails, plus a personal one and that college

alumni email you dont want to let go of. Using Gmail, you cansend mail from as many addresses as youd like, all from the same

place. All you have to do is click on Add another email ad-

dress you own and enter the address.

Gmail will send a confirmation email to that address, so as long as

you have access to it, all you have to do is click the confirmation


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link. Now, you can send mail from that address whenever youwant.

I would alsorecommendchoosing the option right below that

that saysWhen replying to a message:Reply from the

same address the message was sent to. That way, people dont

get confused.

Outsource ItIf you dont want to set up your Gmail account and move your

email yourself, there is an excellent service called MigrationWiz

that will migrate all of your messages and contacts from any serv-

ice to Gmail for you. This is a great option for people with thou-

sands of messages in dozens of folders, since the process will

maintain your entire folder structure. You dont need to down-

load anything or have any technical knowledge. You just provide

the login information for the old service and the new Gmail ac-

count, and they take care of the rest.


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Getting Gmail settingsand labs tweaked toperfectionOnce you have your Gmail account, there are some settings and

tools that can make a big difference in your productivity. You can

play around with settings and labs (Gmails experimental fea-

tures) to tailor your Gmail account specifically to your needs.

Many settings default to the right choice, but here are the settings

I find most impor tant and useful. To access the settings, simply

click on the gear icon in the upper right of your inbox and select

Settings.

General

Keyboard shortcuts - On

Auto Advance - go to the previous (older) message


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Send & Archive - Show Send & Archive button inreply (This saves you a step: when you respond to an

email, you dont have to go back to the inbox and archive

the original email.)

Signature - No signature

InboxInbox type classic

FiltersFiltered Mail - dont override filters

LabsUndo Send Enable undo send for 10 seconds

(Sometimes you hit send and then realize you forgotsomething, or maybe you said something regrettablethis

lab allows you to give yourself a little grace period to undo

it)

Background Send enable

Canned Responses enable

Google Docs preview in Mail enable

Google Maps Preview in Mail enable

Google Voice Player in Mail enable


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(if you dont use Google Voice, I highly

recommend

it, evenif you only use it for voicemailit allows you to get your

voicemails transcribed into your inbox for free)

Signature tweaks enable

Again, these are the essential settings I find most impor tant. You

may find other Labs features you really like by all means try

them out and see if they improve your efficiency.

The most essential filterand the ONLY folderyoull ever needOne of the greatest built-in features of Gmail is the ability to au-

tomatically filter emails based on certain characteristics, such as

who theyre from or what words they contain. You can create fil-

ters specifically in response to non-essential messages, to makesure similar messages go into your Optional folder in the future. I

cover how to do that in thisscreencast.

However, the most essential filter and possibly the only one youll

need should be created first. This filter will get over 90% of emails

out of your inbox automatically. Heres how to set it up.


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1. Once youre logged into your

Gmail account, click the gearicon in the upper right corner and choose Settings.

2. Then switch to the Labelstab and create a new label

named Optional.

3. Next, switch to the Filterstab and click on Create a

new filter.

4. Here, enter the following in the Has the words field:

opt-out OR unsubscribe OR viewing the newsletter

OR privacy policy OR enews OR edit your prefer-

ences OR email notifications OR update profile

OR smartunsubscribe OR secureunsubscribe OR ya-

hoogroups OR manage your account OR group-di-

gests OR mailing list OR ensure delivery OR

Manage your subscription OR click here to view

OR view as web OR mailing list


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5. Now head to the

Next Step, where you should check markthe following rules:

>Skip the Inbox(Archive it)

>Apply the label:Optional

>Never mark it as important

> Also apply filter to* messagesbelow.

Finally, click on Create Filter in order to apply the filter for

the changes to take effect.


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Thats all there is to it! Now all of the emails currently in yourinbox and any future messages that meet these criteria will auto-

matically go straight to your Optional folder. That way, you can re-

view them whenever YOU want to, and they dont create noise

in your inbox.

How I process my emailusing GmailTo show you how this works, I want to walk you through a typi-

cal email session using my system and show you how I actually

process my email.

Going to my inbox in Gmail, Ive received six new messages in

the last hour and a half or so. There are also 32 unread emails in

my Optional folder, but I dont have to worry about that. The

inbox contains the essential stuff the stuff I have to do.

Everything in the Optional folder is the stuffthat Id like to go through and maybe act onit, if I have the time.

The point of the Optional folder is that all of that noise is out of

the Inbox. The Inbox becomes a place of action. Remember, there

are only three things we can do with anything in the Inbox:

Delete it, Deal with it, or Defer it.


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So, my first email is from ScheduleOnce, myappointment scheduler.

ScheduleOnce gives you a public appointment page, so people

can go to your schedule URL and pick times to meet with you

when it is convenient for YOU.

This email is a request from someone I recognize and want to do

business with. Shes requested a phone call with me. Sched-

uleOnce shows three possible times when shed like to talk withme. I know that Im available during those times, so Ill just pick

one, and Im done. ScheduleOnce updates my calendar and hers

automatically. So Im done with that Inbox message, and I can

archive it.

The next message is a confirmation messagefrom Tinypass, a service I use to process

payment for membership to my site.It sends a confirmation message each time a new member signs

up for my site.

I do want these emails, but I dont need to see them every time

someone signs up. It would be enough for me to check them

every once in a while. This is a perfect example of a specific kind

of filter that I want to set up.


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has the usual Send button, but theres also a Send and Archivebutton that will send the message and remove it from your

Inbox. Im choosing that. Thanks to Followup.cc, that message will

come back to me in an hour, when Im free to talk.

My next message is a Followup.cc messagereminding me to do the task Im alreadyworking on.

Obviously, I dont need that, so I just archive it.

Finally, I have a response from my Fancy-Hands assistant.

Theyre informing me that they made the purchase I requested,

so my order is confirmed and the vendor has included a coupon

code in appreciation of the business. Thats a discount good until

June 30

th

on a product I dont need right now, so Im going to for-ward the email [email protected] and Send and Archive

that.

Thats it now my Inbox is empty.

This process would usually take under a minute, and I dont even

have to think about things like that coupon code: it will automati-

cally come up when I can use it.


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Now that the Inbox is clear, I can look at myOptional folder.

It contains some newsletters I like those, but I can look at them

later. Theres an email from a friend whos forwarding an email

about an app I was interested in. It went to the Optional folder

because the forwarded message contains the word Unsub-

scribe. This is a good example of why the Optional folder is so

useful. I easily recognized the message from my friend, so I could

pick it out and deal with it.

This particular message is about an app that my friend and I dis-

cussed. Although the message is from a friend, I still wouldnt have

missed the information its not essential so the Optional

folder is the right place for it.

Continuing in my Optional folder, I can quickly go through and

look at any email that Im immediately interested in. Then, I hit

Shift-A to select all and Shift-I to mark everything read, and Imdone processing the Optional folder.

So, I had over 40 new emails, and theyre allprocessed in just a couple minutes.

Now, some people say you should save time by only checking

your email twice a day, but that may lead to more stress than not.

For me, its better to check it frequently and so that I can get

through all of the messages quickly I just went through some


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important stuff and a stack of non-important stuff in just a fewseconds. Either way, the point is to get as efficient as possible with

your email.

Gmail add-ons andplugins

Canned ResponsesCannedResponses is a tool that gives you templated responses

you can drop into your email messages and send right away. To

enable Canned Responses in Labs:

Click on the gear icon in Gmail (its in the top right corner).1

Then go to Settings > Labs > Search for a lab.2

Type Canned Responses in the search bar.3

Press the Enable button and press Save Changes4

(See screenshot on the next page.)


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To add an email to your collection of canned responses:

Compose an email that answers a common question or1

problem that people ask you by email.

Click the little2

more options tri-

angle (currentlylocated next to

the trash can in

the bottom of the

compose win-

dow,).


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Select Canned Responses > New Canned Response.3

Enter a name for the response that will help you remem-4

ber what its about next time you get this question.

Click OK.5

To use one of your saved responses:

Open a compose window.1Go to the more options triangle.2

Choose Canned Responses.3

Select your saved response from the menu.4

Gmail will populate this answer into your message, where you

can edit and customize it for this recipient, or send it as-is. You

can include links, text formatting, and as much content as you

want.

Followup.ccFollowup.cc offers a very simple, valuable service that allows you

to create email reminders. Basically, you write an email, and then

you CC or BCC any time period you want at followup.cc. For ex-

ample, if you BCC [email protected], youll get your original

email back in one week, automatically, as a reminder. (If you BCC

the followup, only you get the reminder; if you CC it, the re-


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minder will go to both you and the sender a feature that canbe very useful for teams.)

Messages from Followup.cc also include a snooze feature in the

upper right corner, allowing you to easily defer the message again.

Deferring an action to a more practical time gives you incredible

peace of mind, because as soon as you hit the send button, you

can forget the email completely. You dont have to think about it

again, because you know its taken care of.

ContactuallyContactuallyworks as a personal CRM system. It sits in the back-

ground and looks at the emails you send and who youre com-

municating with, and it gives you reports that tell you who it

thinks you should be following up with.

Its very smart and helpful. By reminding me and suggesting peo-ple for me to follow up with, its enabled me to take advantage of

business leads and even friends that I had lost touch with that I

wouldnt have contacted otherwise. It seamlessly integrates with

your workflow.


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OneReceiptOneReceipt is a service that watches your inbox for receipts,

whether from Amazon, iTunes, Nordstrom any store, it doesnt

matter. OneReceipt automatically organizes everything, pulls in all

the receipts, tracks your spending, and generates a personal ex-

pense report for you. You can also use the iPhone app to take

pictures of your receipts on the go, and it will integrate those as

well.

SliceSlice is a similar service that pulls in all of your shipping receipts.

This is very handy for someone who gets a lot of packages from


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Image courtesy of OneReceipt.com


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the same place (Amazon, for example). Rather than just getting anotification that a package is being delivered, Slice will actually tell

you whats in the order.

The great thing about this is that it happens automatically. You

dont have to do anything, other than use Gmail.

PowerInboxIm really against the gear-shift mentality where you shift back and

forth between activities, like working for five minutes in an Excel

spreadsheet, then taking a phone call, then switch on to some-

thing else. Its inefficient.

That inefficiency pertains to email as well. It may seem counterin-

tuitive, but PowerInbox helps you spend more time in your inbox

in a good way.

As you process your email, you might find yourself jumping out ofyour inbox to act on the emails. Instead of switching away and

coming back to the inbox, PowerInbox keeps you inside the

inbox as much as possible.

For example, when you snooze a Followup.cc message, it nor-

mally takes you to the Followup.cc website. Instead, PowerInbox

lets you take care of that inside the inbox, in a small active area of

the email. You can also respond to Facebook messages and com-

ments, and even retweet things, without ever leaving the inbox.


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TripItTripIt is another automated service that works from your inbox,

this time to organize your travel stuff. It doesnt matter whether

you make a flight reservation, book a hotel room, buy a confer-

ence ticket or a train ticket, reserve a rental car, or make a dinner

reservation TripIt will automatically pull all of your travel plans

out of your inbox, make an itinerary, and even add the itinerary

into your Google Calendar automatically.

TripIt also allows you to keep track of your membership rewards,

and you can use it to share your itinerary with a spouse or

someone you have to visit. TripIt will keep track of all of the parts

of your trips and keep them in a well-organized itinerary.


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Image courtesy of TripIt.com


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BoomerangBoomerang offers two fantastic services: Boomerang Calendar,

and Boomerang.

Boomerang Calendar is a plugin with Gmail. When someone

sends you an email with a date listed, Boomerang automatically

checks your Google Calendar to see whether youre available. If

someone shares multiple times, it will show each time in green if

youre available, red if youre not, or yellow if you have something

right next to it. If you choose a time, you can add it to your cal-

endar with one click.

You can also share your availability with one click, either for the

next four days or the next week. The recipient doesnt see what

youre doing, just when youre available. This makes it really easy,

and you can even schedule group meetings, all within Gmail.

Boomerang also offers a service thats just like Followup.cc, allow-

ing you to send yourself email reminders. The difference is, withBoomerang, you have to be in Gmail to use it. Personally, I prefer

to use Followup.cc, because its platform independent you can

use it wherever you are but Boomerang may be a better fit for

your way of operating.

Boomerang also has another feature, which I use extensively: the

ability to send an email later. Sending an email later may seem like

an odd thing to do, but its actually incredibly powerful, because it

puts the ball in your court when you want it there.


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For instance, lets say Friday at 4:45, someone sends you a quickemail. You get back to them right away. Then, they get back to you

at 4:59 and leave for the weekend. Your weekend is pretty much

ruined, depending what the task is, because its going to be on

your mind, stopping you from being about to concentrate on

what you want, which is probably relaxing over the weekend.

On the other hand, if you write that response at 4:45 but set it

to send first thing Monday morning, the task is off your plate and

you dont need to worry about it. Nothing could have been doneabout it over the weekend anyway, so you dont lose anything,

and you dont need to be stressed about it because youve al-

ready taken care of it.

RapportiveRapportive is an application that runs in the sidebar. Every time

you get an email from someone, it will pull information from their

Twitter, other social media profiles, your own interactions with

them, and other applications like CrunchBase. It displays this

snapshot of publicly available information about the person to

give you context for the conversation.

If you dont remember who the person is, this snapshot may trig-

ger you to remember. Also, if you see other recipients CCd on

an email, you can hover the mouse over their email addresses


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and see a profile on them. It provides a very helpful context andbackground information for the person.

WiseStampWiseStamp makes supercharged email signatures. It will automat-

ically insert signatures, and it can include your most recent blog

post, your most recent tweet, the most recent thing that youre

selling on eBay, the most recent thing you stumbled upon itsvery dynamic. Rather than just having a static, text-based email, it

adds nice icons and interactive information thats automatically in-

serted into the emails.

KloudlessIm a huge fan of keeping things in the cloud. I keep a very lean

machine and store very few files locally. Most of my stuff is on

Google Drive or Dropbox.

Kloudless makes it easy to manage that, in two ways. First, when

someone sends a message with an attachment, Kloudless can au-

tomatically save the attachment to Google Drive or Dropbox, or

it will let you do that manually if you prefer.

Secondly, when you want to send a file to someone, instead of

having to find it in the cloud, download it to your machine, and


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then upload it to Gmail, Kloudless will let you attach it directly toa message from the cloud. Thats much faster and easier.

WriteThat.NameWriteThat.Name is your address book, automagically updated.

This service watches your inbox, and when you reply to some-

one, it automatically grabs their contact information from their

email signature and adds it to your address book without youhaving to do anything.

There are safeguards in place so it doesnt save junk. You never

have to add anyone to your contacts, and if someones phone

number changes, it will automatically update.

If you want, you can get a digest report every night, telling you

what it did and allowing you to approve or disapprove each

change. Or, you can just let it go. It makes it so much easier not

to have to keep track of these details yourself.

HelloSignHelloSign allows you to sign PDFs, and much more. There are

many services that allow you to sign PDFs, but whats unique

about HelloSign is that it lets you fill out and sign PDFs directly in

Gmail and send them back right away. This can save you hours, as

you dont have to print the document and scan it back inyou


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Gmail is a great example of somewhere you could use keyboardshortcuts, but sometimes theyre hard to learn. Thats where Key-

Rocket comes in.

KeyRocket is a plugin for Chrome that makes it as easy as it can

get. You install it in Chrome and go about your business, and as

you do things with your mouse, a little blue box pops up to tell

you what keyboard shortcut you could have used to do the

same thing. It provides immediate reinforcement to help you re-

member the right shortcut for the next time you want to do thattask.

I used this for about a week, and it trained me so well, I didnt

need it anymore: I had all the keyboard shortcuts memorized for

the things I do. Its a great tool, and its saved me a lot of time be-

cause using keyboard shortcuts is so much faster!

* * *

I hope these tools will help you make themost of Gmail and use it to clear yourinbox and streamline your productivity.

With all of the plugins and services available, Gmail is a key mem-

ber of the ultimate productivity trio.


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Chapter 2:

IFTTT


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Once youve setup the trigger

event, youll need

to specify what

you want to hap-

pen. Again, this is

very simple: you

click on that to

specify the then

that part of therule. Then you

click the Dropbox icon and choose Add file from URL to save

the video to your Dropbox.

You can also specify more information, but if you dont want to,

you can just click Create Action, and youre finished. Youve cre-

ated a recipe on IFTTT, and you set the whole thing up in five

clicks.

IFTTT also makes it simple to manage your rules/recipes. As you

add more recipes, you can see them all in one place, turn them

on and off, edit them, and share them. Its a very easy-to-use,

helpful service.


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Basic recipesAs you saw in the example above, creating recipes in IFTTT is ex-

tremely easy, and the site walks you step by step through setting

up each trigger and its subsequent action. Ease of use is IFTTTs

greatest strength, but it may also be its greatest weakness. Be-

cause IFTTT allows you to create so many combinations so easily,

it can be somewhat overwhelming and you might not know

where to start. Below are links to several of my favorite recipes

to get you started and give you some ideas for recipes of yourown. These first four areSharedRecipes, so you dont have to

recreate them yourself: you can simply look to the bottom of

each recipes page and click the button labeled Use Recipe.

Call in a Note To Myself and Get an Email with a Tran-

scription

Send a Text and Get an Escape Call

Save My Blood Pressure to Evernote

Upload New Podcasts to Soundcloud

But thats not all the following are more simple recipes that

save me lots of time and may benefit you in a couple of ways:

think about what would happen when each of these recipes does

its work, then go ahead and create one like it on your own. The

exercise will give you some useful tools and reusable ideas, but it

will also give you valuable practice in the process of reducing an


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action to a process or recipe. Try building these recipes for yourown use:

Notify me of the shipping status of my package by SMS

If I Check In on Foursquare Add to Google Calendar

Let My Family Know When I Check In At An Airport So

They Know Im Safe

If I Label an Email with Something, Forward It to

Someone

These are all simple recipes that I have found useful.

Remember, this is to give you an idea of the capabilities of IFTTT.

You may find these specific recipes useful in your life, but more

importantly, I hope youll come up with some amazing ones on

your own.

The idea is to let IFTTT automatically do the routine

actions that take up time you could use for better things.

Advanced recipesNow that you have a basic understanding of IFTTT, I hope you

will create recipes of your own to make your life easier. Here are

some more advanced uses of IFTTT, some involving third par ty

services, that allow you to really supercharge your productivity.

You may notice that most of these are specific to the user and

may require website login information or other private data.


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Since we wouldnt want to share that kind of data, Ive mostlyprovided descriptions and, in some cases, links to articles. Here

are some more sophisticated things you might want to do with

IFTTT:

Automate your virtual assistant and outsource your out-

sourcing

Remotely start downloading a torrent while on the go

Back up your Pinterest images to Dropbox and share the

folder with your team

Find a new job

Get notifications of important emails while travelling inter-

nationally even without a global data plan

If you have grandparents or friends who arent very tech

savvy, you can make it so any time you post a picture with

a particular tag (like a childs name) to Facebook, or Insta-

gram, or a Dropbox folder, then it gets send via email tothat person. If they are really in the dark ages, you can set

it up to email the picture to a service like

UnityFax and the

picture will be faxed to the person.

A client told me they had a nanny who didnt do email

and was bad with scheduling, but she could text. This client

set up the Google Calendar channel so that if there is an

upcoming item in the childs schedule, the nanny automati-

cally gets a text message alert with the time and details.


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Using the WeMo Motion channel, keep a record in theGoogle Drive spreadsheet channel of every time your pet

goes to the bathroom in a certain area, to establish a

schedule and be more vigilant to avoid accidents.

These and any number of events and actions can be set up using

the 70-plus channels available in IFTTT. (And, for similar interac-

tions between more business oriented services, check out

Zapier

and its interaction with over 200 different channels!)

How I use IFTTTIn a nutshell, I use IFTTT to automate as many things as possible.

Tasks YOU automate may be complex or simple. They may affect

only you, or they may reach out to numerous fr iends, associates,

or contacts on your mailing lists, using a variety of channels. What

they all have in common is the ability to free up the time you

used to spend on repetitive tasks.

Here are some more examples of recipes I use:

Whenever an email comes in with a particular keyword,

IFTTT sends that email to FancyHands with instructions to

answer it personally, using information that Ive provided.

Its kind of a human autoresponder.

If I save an item on Feedly, which is my replacement for

Google Reader, IFTTT adds it to Buffer.


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If I check in at an airport, IFTTT will send an email messageto my wife and my parents, letting them know Ive arrived

safely.

If I change my Facebook profile picture, IFTTT changes my

profile picture on Twitter to match.

Any time I star a message in Gmail, IFTTT will save it to

Evernote.

When a new workout of the day was posted at the

Crossfit gym I used to use, IFTTT would send me thatworkout by email.

Whenever I like something in Instagram with certain

names in the caption, IFTTT will add those pictures to

DropBox. (I use this to automatically save pictures of my

kids to DropBox.)

If I check in on Foursquare, IFTTT makes a note in my

Google calendar, so I can keep a record of Ive been.

If I take a picture in Instagram, IFTTT adds it to my Drop-

Box.

Again, the goal is to automate everything possible. As you can

see, the variety of tasks you can automate with IFTTT is truly

mind-boggling. The bottom line is the amount of time that this

automation saves each week or every day the time saved is ab-

solutely phenomenal!


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How I use ZapierYouve seen how to use IFTTT to automate the tedious tasks of

your life. Zapierdoes some of the same functions, but it offers

more complexity and integrates with an enormous number of

services, including more business functions, like BaseCamp, Chat-

ter, GoToMeeting, MailChimp, Crypt, Osmosis, PayPal Business,

Streak, TaskRabbit, and Zendesk. It also allows you to create your

own linkages or use it in conjunction with IFTTT.

Whereas IFTTT is mainly focused on personal services, Zapier

has more of a business focus. Because of its greater number of


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linkages and the greater complexities it allows, Zapier offers evenmore power than IFTTT for automating your life.

I want to show you a little bit about how I use Zapier, so you can

see how it works. I currently have five zaps running.

Two of my zaps automate what happens when I record a pod-

cast. Every time I record a podcast, I want messages to be sent to

my virtual assistant, directing them to edit the podcast and post

it.

I used to have to remember to send those messages by hand, but

now, if I just upload a new file to Dropbox with a particular key-

word, it automatically triggers these two zaps: one to send a mes-

sage to the virtual assistant, directing them to edit the file and

giving instructions on how to do that, and the other directing

them to post the podcast and explaining how to do that.

Automating these tasks saves me three orfour steps. More importantly, it saves mefrom having to remember to send thosemessages.

The next zap is set up so that when someone signs up for my

Pro membership, a message is automatically sent to my virtual as-

sistant, directing them to invite the new member to the Vimeo

group. The zap is triggered when TinyPass processes a payment

and sends a message notifying me of the new member. There is


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no automatic way to add someone to a Vimeo group, but this isanother example of a task where Ive automated outsourcing.

Another zap I use is one I created to re-place someone elses service that wasntworking.

This service was called Mention Notifier, and it did one simple

thing: it sent me an email when I was mentioned on Twitter. I

dont spend a lot of time on Twitter, but this allowed me to par-

ticipate in conversations where people were mentioning me,

without wasting a lot of time.

The problem is, the service was unreliable. It would go down, and

Id miss mentions and never realize it, so I created my own re-

placement right here in Zapier. Whenever someone mentions me

on Twitter, it automatically sends me an email notification.

The great thing is, Zapier allows me to set up custom, dynamicfields within the message to tell me the users screen name, num-

ber of followers, the text of the tweet, and a link to the tweet.

There are also many other options that I could include.

Finally, my last zap is tr iggered any time I move an email to a spe-

cial folder called Unsubscribe. When that happens, it will auto-

matically send a message to my virtual assistant with instructions

to unsubscribe me from that list and an explanation of how to

do that.


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The great thing about this is that when Im processing my Op-tional folder, I can select seven or eight messages at a time and

move them all to my Unsubscribe folder, and an actual person

will take care of the rest, whether it requires simply clicking on

something, or actually contacting the company to get me off the

list.

I hope these zaps have given you a taste ofwhat Zapier can do. I encourage you to try

it out, and its free for the first five tasks.

Zapier can really take your business a lot farther than IFTTT. For

example, I recently posted a case study of a company that has 14

processes that automatically take place when a customer signs up

on their website, and all of those processes are done by Zapier.

Previously, they had humans doing these tasks, and it was taking

half an hour each time someone signed up.

The time savings for that company add up to hours and hours,and it could be the same for you. Give Zapier a try!


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Chapter 3:

VirtualAssistants


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The last essential productivity tool that well cover in this book isvirtual assistants. Virtual assistants make up the third step in the

Art of Less Doing. For any tasks that cant be eliminated or auto-

mated, you can get them done without wasting your time by out-

sourcing them to virtual assistants. This is one of the central

tenets of the Art of Less Doing: less doing means creating more

time in your life for living.

Why everyone shouldhave a virtual assistantEveryone wishes there was more time in the day. Whether an

investment banker or a stay-at-home mom, an architect or a col-

lege student, everyone could use an extra set of hands, an extra

hour to get things done, or a little extra time to themselves. Re-

gardless of whether youre short on hands, short on time, or

short on ability, multi-tasking, (accomplishing more than one thingat a time) can be the key to filling your shortfall.

The truth is that most of us are poor multi-taskers, and most of

us dont even know it. Having several tabs open on your web

browser is not multitasking, nor is eating a meal while

reading. Truthfully, youre just reducing the quality of your per-

formance for each activity. We all need a little help, and fortu-

nately that help is within reach.


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Virtual

assistants are individuals who operate from remote loca-tions, whether they are off in the Far East or nearby in your own

city. They typically work for several clients at once, cost less than

full time employees, and are more efficient at getting things

done. Simply working with a

virtual

assistant

will teach you to ef-

fectively communicate and delegate your tasks to someone

else. This frees you to focus on your core competencies and do

more of the things that you are passionate about.

Activities that you consider tedious and un-pleasant are easily delegated to avirtualas-sistant.

This clears as much time as possible and frees your mind to think

about the things that really matter to you. And with so much

time made available, you will find that you are free to come up

with better ideas than youve had in a long time.

Just to be clear, EVERYONE can benefit from having a

virtual

as-sistant:

Students can get help with research and paying bills

Entrepreneurs can maintain the image of a more estab-

lished company without consuming cases of Red Bull in

order to accomplish their goals.

Parents can get help keeping their home stocked with sup-

plies and finding new ways to spend time with their kids.


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9 to 5ers can make sure that their personal life isnt con-sumed by their professional life

Retirees can make sure nothing is ever forgotten and pa-

perwork is handled promptly

But most importantly, working with a virtual assistant is an educa-

tional process that helps you learn how to relay and delegate

tasks as efficiently as possible. When you are in a situation where

you are assigning work to someone you have never met and in

some cases will only speak to once, that places a very interestingfocus on how you explain what needs to be done. It forces you

into a better understanding of the tasks you need done and how

to do them, and it develops your skill to see those things faster

and more clearly.

Two types of virtual

assistants and how youcan use them bothThere are two types of virtual assistants: on-demand and dedi-

cated. Depending on what you need them for, one type may be

better for you than the other. Many people will use both.

Generally speaking, if you are an absolute beginner or an ex-

treme expert at what you need done, you should use an on-de-


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mand assistant service. If you are somewhere in the middle,where youre not sure what you need to outsource and want a

more personal touch, then a dedicated assistant is for you.

The on-demand assistantWith an on-demand assistant service, you send in a task (either

by emailing it or leaving a voicemail), and then any one of hun-

dreds or even thousands of assistants will pick it up and do it. Youmay never deal with the same assistant twice. They wont have

any stored personal information like your childrens birthdays or

your Gmail password, but they can still provide valuable services,

make purchases for you, and interact with your calendar.

On-demand services tend to be cheaperthan a dedicated assistant.

And, because there are many assistants, you benefit from 24/7service and the ability to issue a high volume of tasks in a short

amount of time, with each one starting right away. On-demand

tasks tend to be defined as anything that can completed in about

20 minutes (not including holding on the phone or waiting for

someone else to respond).

My

recommendation

for on-demand service: Fancy Hands


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The dedicated assistantWith a dedicated assistant, you get more of a relationship. When

you call or email, you will always get the same person. They get to

know a little about you and the way you like to do things, and

they can keep lots of information on you to help streamline fu-

ture tasks.

Working with a dedicated assistant, you can develop the trust

needed to give them access to more financial information, email

accounts, and other personal data. A dedicated assistant can do

more

recurring

and long-term projects, and even help you with

outsourcing jobs to more specific contractors like graphic design-

ers or mobile app developers. This type of services tends to be

more expensive than on-demand services, and workload is lim-

ited because you are dealing with one person.

My recommendation for a dedicated assistant service: Zirtual

Using a specialty assistantFor some tasks, neither a dedicated nor an on-demand assistant

quite fits the situation. It may be that you need a specialist or

someone for a really big project, or maybe you want just the op-

posite: a very limited but free experience with a sort-of virtual

assistant. These are special cases, but theyre not unique by any

means. When you have one of these situations, there are places

to go for help.


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When your task is a big project or a highly specialized technicalone, check outElance, where you can post a description of what

you need to have done (from legal work to transcriptions to

ghost writers) and get bids from around the world.

At the other end of the spectrum, for micro-tasks and very nar-

row information or service needs, check out

TalkTo, a service that

allows you to text any business and get a text response. You can

make a reservation, find out if something is in stock, or pretty

much anything else.

For just about anything you need to have done, regardless of the

type of task it is, there is an assistant available who can accom-

plish what you need, while freeing you to focus on the kind of ac-

tivity that suits you best.

What can a virtualassistant do for me?If youve never worked with an

assistant, you probably dont real-

ize 90% of what they are capable of doing for you. With the

right techniques and tools, a remoteassistantcan do just about

anything an

onsite assistant

could do for you. This long list is just a

fraction of whats possible. Take a look and see if you get any

ideas.

Perform receptionist duties, answering and routing calls


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Research

Contact people or businesses for information

Schedule meetings

Make reservations

Manage your social media profiles

Manage a blog

Follow up with clients

Archive and respond to emails

Send thank you cards

Submit insurance forms

Check, transcribe, and respond to voicemails

Take dictation

Make purchases

Edit writing

Graphic design

Create PowerPoint presentations

Create Excel spreadsheets

Compile mailing lists

Cold calls

Fact checking

Summarize documents

Craigslist Postings

Classified Ad Submissions

Event planning

Website analytics


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Meeting minutes via speaker phone

Travel planning

Customer service

Accounts payable

Accounts receivable

Content moderation

Document formatting

Mailing letters

Budgeting

Financial analysis

Tax preparation

Expense reporting

Statement balancing

Photoshop

Web programming

Lead generation

Market research

Mobile application development

Editing

Ghost writing

Meal delivery

Grocery delivery

Meal planning

Check deposit by mail

Scanning documents or business cards


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Sending handwritten letters

Paying bills

Birthday cards

Comparison shopping

Selling or donating old home items

Wakeup calls

Waiting on hold

Translations

Viral marketing

Thats a lot of time-consuming tasks, and I hope the list suggests

other ways that a virtual assistant can let you do less of the things

that keep you from spending your time how you want to and

how you should spend it.

Remember, when it comes to Less Doing,we always try to optimize first, automatesecond, and then outsource what little is leftover.

If there are a lot of items on this list that you could have a

vir-

tual

assistant

take off your plate, then you are already way ahead

of the game. However, you should realize that just as you should

be offloading nonessential tasks to your VA, you should automate

as much as possible before handing off the tasks that require an-

other persons attention. The more efficient your system be-


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comes, the more youll gain, as your assistants time will be opti-mized for greater effectiveness.

How I use FancyHandsNow that youve had a chance to think about some ways you

can use virtual assistants to help in your Less Doing, Id like to

give you an idea of how much impact using virtual assistants can

actually have on your time and your life.

Over the last year, my FancyHands dashboard shows Ive had over

1300 calls placed for me including more than 3700 minutes of

phone time plus nearly 300 emails sent and nearly 1800 requests

fulfilled. Just think about how much time and frustration would be

involved in doing all of that yourself and how much distraction it

would be from more important things!

So what do I do with all those tasks to FancyHands? Personally, Ido about 150 tasks in an average month. Here are the most re-

cent ones showing on my dashboard:

Find a food testing company

Learn how to get French passports

Add a podcast to my blog

Research Adobe Presenter Express problems

Find a doctor specializing in hormone testing


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Post weekly motivation video to my blog

Find international services providing complete meal cook-

ing ingredients

Locate the nearest clothes donation drop boxes

Arrange a Task Rabbit to pick up and drop off clothes do-

nation

Find sources for bullet-proof doors

Find DVDs of a rare video

Pay bills that cant be handled by autopay

Find a source for my wifes favorite perfume

Find [anything] from an undocumented picture seen online

Locate and order exotic or international foods

Correct my sons birth certificate

Remove me from an email list that has no source info or

unsubscribe link

Find best price on a toddler bed and order it

Automatically have blog posts pinned on Pinterest, Stum-

bleUpon, and others

Find a nearby source for tuxedo studs and one to dry-

clean in about 5 hours

Stop paper statements from a business on autopay


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Learn the lead time for ordering a particular ceramic tile

Add an article to my press portfolio

Get a quote for exterminating carpenter ants

Cancel an order thats been delayed

Check status of an order

Get recommendations for a pediatrician in Ohio

Youve probably noticed that I actually have a lot of personal

tasks and purchases handled by FancyHands. The reason: time is

time. Any time that I can save is time that I can use for something

else. And any time that I can use for something else pays multiple

benefits, because I dont have the distraction of worrying about

all these minutia. Look closely, and youll probably find that a lot

of tasks that dont really need your own attention are taking up

the lions share of your time!

Creating the Manual ofYouMaking the concept of Less Doing work for you means crafting

your processes to work for you.

In the first fundamental of Less Doing, namely, the

80/20 rule, I

talk about the importance of tracking your resources. You need

to understand how you spend your time and get things done in


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order to optimize all of the processes in your life. While somepeople might complain about the vagueness ofIKEA instructions,

you have to admit,

they have broken

down the process

of building some-

thing, into a set of

instructions that is

language-indepen-

dent, requires asfew steps as possi-

ble, and is mostly

fail-proof. The goal

with your processes

should be exactly

the same. Ikea In-

structions.

You need to break your tasks down to the fewest, most explicitsteps possible so that they are easier for you and, more impor-

tantly, so that they can be automated or outsourced entirely.

What processes?We all have processes that we go through on a regular basis.

Yours probably include how you do things like checking your

email, writing reports, doing research, generating content, review-


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Photo credit: jon|k


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ing materials, making meals The list goes on and on and in-cludes so many things you do daily or weekly, or even just once

in a while.

The problem is that most of these activities have become so rou-

tine that we do them without even thinking about them, almost

as if on autopilot.

That might seem like a good thing, but the

truth is, if you can get a task done on au-topilot, then someone else can probably getit done for you.

Its easy to fall in the trap of thinking you are the only one who

can do the things that make your world spin, but have you ever

stopped and considered the steps you actually take?

As an

exercise, think about something you do often. Now de-

scribe, on a very granular level, each step you go through in orderto complete that activity. Think about it as if you were creating

The Manual of You, as if you were going to give the Manual to

someone who doesnt know you or how you work, and they

have to get that task done. This can and should be applied to

most of the things you spend your time doing.

I have clients go through this exercise with incredibly complex

and precise tasks, with the same results: the perfect instruction


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manual. I had one client start with a process that was 10 pageslong and end up with 11 easy-to-follow steps.

A personal example involved providing a discount code to a po-

tential student for one of my Skillshare classes. If a student cant

make it to a session they paid for, I have my assistant generate a

discount code for them so they can sign up for a future class for

free. The process for generating the discount code looks like this:

1. Go tohttp://www.skillshare.com/

2. Login using user name******and password *******

3. Go toDashboardat the top of the page

4. On the left hand side, you will seeupcoming classes.

Hover over the date of the specified class and

hitmanage (it should pop up in orange).

5. On the right hand side you will see

discountcodes,choosecreate new codeand alittle box will pop

up.

6. Enter a name for the code the name can

bewhateveryou want. (Example: for August15th, I would

name it: AUG15).

7. Put in the appropriate discount amount and the number of

codes you would like to create, then hitcreate.


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8. Note the URL of the page you are on that URL is whatyou will send to the student in an email with the code for

where to sign up.

9. Finally, email the discount code with the URL and instruc-

tions to the person on theoriginalemail.

Now, the first time I wrote this out, I left out the third step, and

the whole process had 16 steps instead of the current nine.

When I initially wrote out the 16 steps, I looked at it and immedi-

ately found redundancies, which I removed. Then, the first time I

sent the task off to aFancyHands assistant, they quickly pointed

out that they didnt know where the upcoming classes link was

(which prompted me to realize I had glossed over the step ex-

plaining that they had to go to the dashboard first).

The second time I sent it off, I got a different person (and hence,

a different perspective), since FancyHands is an on-demand assis-

tant service. This new assistant pointed out the superfluous as-

pects of some of the latter steps.

Just getting the process down makes it easier to understand your

process and see where things were missing or where they were

repeated.

And, integrating other peoples interpretations of your the in-

structions is an invaluable help in making them fail-proof and easy

to use.


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Intweaking aprocess, itsalsoimportant toget in themindsetofIf This, ThenThat. Bythat,I meanyouwant theretobe little or

nocommunicationneeded betweenthetime youassignthetask

andthetimeyou receiveconfirmationthatthe task hasbeen

successfully completed.

In order for thatto happen, you need to an-

ticipate problems or forks inthe road.

Inthetaskabove, I might have added alinethatsaid, If more

thanone upcomingclass dateexists, providediscountcode forall

datestoavoidthequestionof Whichdatedidyouwant the

codefor?Even ifitmeansaddinganadditionalstepfor situations

that come upless often, itsworth addingthat step.You only have

towriteit once, anditwill save you fromhavingtotakethetime

to dealwithit over and over inthe future.

The pointof all thisisthat, inthe end, I wasableto breakthis

task downto anincredibly efficient, error-proofprocessthat

any-

one can followandcomplete. Once aprocess has beenper-

fected, delegatingout ofyour sight andoutofyour mindis about

as easyas canbe.


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Tasks and tools foradvanced outsourcingUsing virtual assistants can help optimize your life, but optimizing

outsourcing your tasks to a VA can save you additional time and

headaches. A variety of tools are available to help in optimizing

your outsourcing. The key to reaping their benefits is recognizing

where they can help. What follows is a sampling of tasks that

need additional tools:

Processing VoicemailFor checking, transcribing, and responding to voicemails,

use Google Voiceto get voicemails by email and simply forward

them to the assistant.

DictationFor transcribing audio or dictation, use your favorite voice-

recording program (I likeDropVox) to send your assistant an

audio file for transcription. This can become one of your most

valuable tools, whether the content is a shor t blog post, a letter,

or even just an idea you want to get out of your head without

losing it.


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Scheduling MeetingsUseScheduleOnceto share your schedule with the VA and allow

them to make appointments for you. Your ScheduleOnce link

should be in your email signature.


67

Above: Sched-

uleOnce allows you

to specify your avail-

ability for meetings.

Right: When oth-

ers want to meet

with you, they can

choose among your

available times.


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Mailing LettersUsingPostalMethods, a remote assistant can send a pdf through

postal mail to individuals or to entire mailing lists.

Sharing PasswordsTo provide information access by securely sharing passwords, use

LastPass.

Tasking an AssistantFor outsourcing complex or repetitive/reusable

tasks,

CannedResponse allows you to create template emails in

Gmail so you can write something down step by step and save it

as a template. That way, its just one click away the next time you

need to have the same task done.

For repetitive tasks, you can useFollowUp.ccto send recurring

messages (which may be one of your CannedResponses). An ex-

ample would be having an assistant log in to a site (with details

provided in the template), check stats, and give you a report each

week.


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Real World Physical TasksUseDealing with paperfor general tasks andRedBeacon for

home services.

BookkeepingCombine weekly check-ins with the virtual bookkeeping services

of

Less Accounting.


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Image courtesy of LessAccounting


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Lead GenerationUsing CannedResponse, FollowUp.cc, recurringmessages, and a

script, an assistant can do systematic, weekly lead-generation

work.

Blog Content ModerationUse CannedResponse to provide login information and

Boomerangto task an assistant to moderate your blog com-

ments on a regular schedule.

Craigslist or eBay Postings

Use CannedResponseto provide login information and a content

template; you just provide specifics and photos for each item.

Expense ReportingUse CannedResponse and a sharedGoogle Docs Spreadsheet

to allow you to send a photo of a receipt and have it parsed and

entered into an expense report.


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Sort and process postal mailUseVirtual Post Mailto receive physical mail virtually.

Manage Incoming PaymentsUsing Virtual Post Mail, checks can be reconciled, and deposits

can be made by mail.

ResearchTask an assistant to research interesting blog/news items fa-

vorite a tweet and use

IFTTTto automatically archive the item

and share it for further research

Tasks that should beautomatedAs time goes on, you should be getting better at finding which

tasks are consuming most of your time, defining and optimizing

the processes they use, automating the processes you can, and

outsourcing the ones you cant automate.

Weve looked at many tasks that could be outsourced and a

number of ways to outsource them with tools to make that


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work, but remember that outsourcing is best reserved for tasksthat cannot be automated. In that spirit, here are a number of

tasks that could be outsourced to a virtual assistant but would be

better done by automation, including suggested tools for au-

tomating them:

Wake Up Calls -

WakerUpper

Waiting on Hold -

Fast Customeror

Lucy Phone

Add Business Cards to Address Book -CardMunch

Make Dinner Reservations -

OpenTable

Follow up by Email

FollowUp.cc

Send Thank You notes

Ink A Note

Meal Delivery SeamlessWeb

Text message/Phone reminder/Escape call

IFTTT

Order a car service

Uberor

GroundLink

The ultimate: automateyour virtual assistantOnce you know how to work with a virtual assistant, the pinna-

cle of achievement in outsourcing is to outsource, not just the

tasks themselves, but also the process of outsourcing them. Even

better, automate the process of assigning tasks to your assistants!


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Ive achieved this with IFTTT. It star ted with a simple assignmentto my Fancy Hands virtual assistant: Find out how to automati-

cally submit new blog posts to StumbleUpon.

Its pretty unusual to stump a Fancy Hands assistant, but the re-

sponse I got back was, There is no current method for automati-

cally submitting blog posts to StumbleUpon.

I held my breath for the briefest of moments. Then my mouth

pulled into a smile . I like challenges like this.

I didnt realize this would open a completelynew realm of outsourcing for me.

Its one thing to use an on-demand virtual assistant for standard

tasks, but recurring tasks are tricky, since your tasks are assigned

to different assistants each time. Initially, I got around this by cre-

ating a reminder from Resnooze.com with the task instructions.

You can have this message sent to you at a certain interval; whenit arrives, simply forward it to the assistant.

I thought that was a pretty slick solution, but it still required a

moment of my involvement. The issue with Resnooze is that its

not trigger-based, only interval-based. So, the task might say, Add

new posts from the past week, but it couldnt say, Add the post

that JUST went up.


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Another approach I tried was to create a forwarding filterthrough Gmail. The problem was the resulting email didnt origi-

nate from my own email address. Because of that, most virtual

assistant routing services wouldnt recognize it; they rejected the

task.

This time, I approached the task backwardsand on a very basic level: how can I assign atask to my virtual assistant without havingto initiate the request at all?

I was seeking the holy grail of outsourcing, the perpetual motion

machine of the outsourcing world: I wanted to outsource my

outsourcing.

Since mind control of Gmail doesnt exist and wouldnt be a real-

istic solution anyway (why use my mind for that?), I started to

scratch my head. I remembered that IFTTT has a Gmail channel,

which Id never used before. You can create triggers based on

searches or starring an item, but you can also send an email.

But wait, does this sent email originate from your own email ad-

dress? YES, IT DOES!!!

I was so excited, I could hardly contain myself. Thats when I cre-

ated the first IFTTT recipe, which has resulted in 32 outstanding

and amazing automated actions that I never have to think about

again. It couldnt have been more simple: If a new post (based on


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the RSS feed for my blog) is created, Then send a Gmail emailmessage to [email protected] and say, Visit this {FEEDURL}

and submit this newly published post to StumbleUpon.

IFTTT gives you several options for automatically propagating in-

formation, so FEEDURL is replaced with the most recent post

address. Thats all there is to it. According to the 80/20 Rule, I

should only be focusing on the things that only I can do, like cre-

ating original content for the blog. Everything else should be han-

dled by someone else if possible.

IFTTT has about 50 channels at this point, most of which can

cause an email to be sent to your virtual assistant. I set up a trig-

ger so that every Friday morning, my assistant receives an email

telling him/her to create my Interesting Things of the Week

post, based on my Delicious links from the past seven days.

You may ask, why not just give your assistant one instruction:

create the post every Friday? But if you dont have a dedicated

assistant, you cant do that. Even if you do have a dedicated assis-tant, what happens when that person gets sick or takes a new

job?

Doing things my way makes you future-proof, bomb-proof, and idiot-proof.

Think how much fun you can have with this! How about if every

time you take an Instagram picture of a cool product and tag it


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with the word #buythis, your assistant gets an email instructinghim or her to find it at the best price and order it? Maybe on

rainy days, you decide to indulge in an Uber car instead of walk-

ing to the train. So, you set an IFTTT recipe that checks the

weather, and if rain is predicted, it sends an email to your vir tual

assistant asking him or her to order you a car to take you to

work.

The more you can make things happen based on the things you

are already doing, the less stressed and more productive youllbe. Let your imagine take the reins and watch how far it takes

you!


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Bringing it all togetherProcesses Optimization Automation Virtual Assistants

Applications that interact with the physical world Once you

understand how to use these tools, you can start to combine

them for some amazing results, including something I call The

Human Autoresponder!

One of the most difficult things to outsource, much less optimize,

is email. Its exceedingly difficult to let go of control over some-thing thats so personal, and in many cases, critical to a person or

businesss way of operating. Even if we accept the notion of let-

ting go, most of us probably have no idea how and where to

begin.

Ive developed what Im calling The Human Autoresponder, and

while the components are not necessarily that ground-breaking,

the compilation and final outcome really has me salivating over

the possibilities.

My first attemptMy concept was something that would work like this. You star t by

picking some keyword or combination of keywords that you

often see in your incoming essential mail. In my case, I get a lot

of inquiries regarding Crohns Disease. Maybe you get a lot of

email about a particular product or service you offer, or maybe


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you work in real estate and particular addresses are mentioned alot.

In my case, to respond to inquiries about Chrons, I set up a stan-

dard canned response in Gmail that would respond to any email

that had the word crohn in it. The autoresponder tried to cover

all possible questions relating to Crohns and give a general an-

swer, pointing people in the right direction for the information

they were seeking. I even had an intro stating that it was an auto-

matic response and I hoped it answered their question, but if itdidnt, then I would get back to them with a personalized answer.

I was pretty satisfied with this setup and started testing it, but

within about two hours, I realized that it was a horribly bad idea. I

got a newsletter email from the Crohns and Colitis Foundation,

and when Gmail autoresponded, it bounced back and created an

endless loop: newsletter response bounce response

bounce response repeat ad infinitum!

Someone else emailed me with a question that wasnt covered atall by the canned response. To make a long story shor t, it did not

work.

The UpgradeI decided that I needed a different approach to the autoresponse.

I created an Evernote notebook called Autoresponders, with

each note referring to a different keyword. Now I have a note in


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Evernote, and rather than contain a canned response aboutCrohns, it tells my story and gives bullet points for every Crohns

resource I know of, including those on my site and on other sites,

and even my coaching services. Now, as youve probably figured

out already, that was too much information to send everyone.

The Human Autoresponder

At that point, I turned to our good friend IFTTT. I set up a recipeso that if a new email comes in with the word crohn, the email

will be forwarded to my FancyHands assistant with these instruc-

tions:

This email has been automatically forwarded to you based

on certain keywords. If the message is obviously spam or there

was some error in the forward, then let me know.The task is

for you to personally respond to the person below using the

information provided in an Evernote note. You will use your

best judgment to create a personable and informative re-

sponse. If you dont have enough information in the notebook,

then let me know.Otherwise, visit this Evernote note for full in-

structions: https://www.evernote.com/xxxxxxxxxxx.

Now an assistant has all of the information they need and can

extract just enough to provide the correct answer to the inquiry.

I even included an opening paragraph that basically explains how

I feel its more important to give someone the information they


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The concepts of Less Doing make up a methodology and frame-work thats the core of my business. I work with people who

have any variety of problems, from health issues to business is-

sues or even relationship issues.

My vision is based on the belief that I canhelp people become more effective at any-thing they do.

I have helped clients attain goals ranging from outsourcing a busi-

nesss bookkeeping to running a seven-minute mile to achieving

lucid dreaming.

I offer a different way of looking at things a fresh perspective to

fill in the gap that stands between my clients and true accom-

plishment and satisfaction in their lives. Thats often all it takes, and

my job is to supply that vital perspective and help people find it

for themselves.

I offer courses, corporate programs, and individual coaching to

help anyone become more effective at everything. Please get in

touch if youd like to discuss how I can help you. Good luck and

thank you!

- Ari


optimize, automate, and outsource everything - ari meisel

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