An Experiment in Lifesourcing

What if you could tap into your social net (or even strangers) and ditch time intensive information tasks that you have to do in favor of the higher value stuff that you're best at? After an experiment in "lifesourcing" some work to India, I believe such a scenario might become common in the business world or even more widely - one day. Here's my story and where I think this could lead.

I first heard about lifesourcing - e.g. personal outsourcing - last summer when I read Tim Ferriss' runaway bestseller, The Four Hour Workweek. His mantra is to free yourself up to do the stuff you and only you are best at. Seth Godin covers a similar theme in The Dip.

Though it's very early, my gut says that it's conceivable that as people cope with the Attention Crash, they will zero in on their core competencies and seek to offload the rest in order to become more productive and remain competitive in the workplace. There are several forces at work here: the massive and independent-thinking Gen Y workforce, big time disruptions in IT, the growing ubiquity of social networking and peer-to-peer platforms and the rise of a giant talent pool in Chindia.

Back when I read Tim's book, I didn't see an immediate fit for lifesourcing in my day-to-day as an executive at Edelman. In fact, given that so much of what I deal with is confidential client information, it's darn near impossible.

Still, I remained extremely intrigued to run a pilot. It seems to bridge to a growing "digital nomadism" movement. For more, check out what my former colleague Mike Elgan and folks like Lea Woodward and Skellie are writing about.

My blog seemed like a natural place to dabble in lifesourcing since since pretty much everything I do here eventually enters the public domain. So, on Tim's recommendation, I posted a job on Elance. I searched for someone who could take my raw reader survey data and convert it into percentages and nice charts. This was a rather trivial assignment. However, for an Excel-challenged dude like me it was a major timesaver.

Even though the job was small, I was stunned when dozens of bids flowed in within the first few hours. The bidders seemed extremely aggressive and hungry for the job. After 24 hours of fervent bidding, I selected Sri from India based on his feedback rating, correspondence, experience and price. I also selected him because I was eager test a project with someone based in India.

After some back and forth and a bit of clarification in what I was looking for, Sri got to work. The amazing thing is that almost all of his emails came during my workday, not his. Sri turned around the job quickly and professionally and it cost me all of $50 - the Elance minimum. (I will share the charts in a subsequent post.)

Granted, this was a very simple assignment that probably anyone (but me) can do in an hour or two. Still, I was impressed. And it gets me thinking about where this might go when you combine lifesourcing and social networking - especially if the costs come down.

Social networking and online real-time communication/collaboration tools are a way of life for many Gen Yers. They already use these systems to get stuff done both inside and outside the enterprise.

Over the next five years I believe that lifesourcing will become a core part of every social network, be it b2b or b2c. Like IM or corporate blogging, social lifesourcing will start as a bottom-up movement as workers tap into the Net to get work done in the most efficient way possible, no matter where these resources may be. A groundswell may build as word spreads and workers try hard to compete with those who are farming out work elsewhere.

Still, there are big pitfalls. It's a guarantee that companies will try to put the kibosh on such activities as their information seeps beyond their virtual walls. This is already happening on social networks. Many employees have water cooler groups on Facebook. Others are dabbling in using LinkedIn to get questions answered.

It's conceivable that these interactions will migrate from simple collaboration to peer-to-peer transactions over the next few years. The implications here - if this happens en masse - are huge. People will focus on their core competencies. This in theory will make everyone more productive and prosperous. However, it remains to be seen if this will become a mass trend given all the inherent risk.

Comments

[Gerald Buckley]

Mr. Rubel - Am curious to know if this takes off for you if these elance-type experimental assignments will be borne as personal expenses or if you see a time where they're large/frequent enough for you to be carried as business expenses?

[Javaun Moradi]

Interesting timing on your post. I just heard from an old friend who loved "the Four Hour Work Week" and told me it's a book he could've/should've written. He'd quit his job a while back to day-trade and was doing really well. Now, it seems, he doesn't even trade for himself anymore. He outsourced it to someone who is better than him and is making even more money than before. Sounds like he cut his 4 hour work week down to 2.

[Steve Rubel]

@Gerald in my case, this was a personal expense. In some cases businesses may cover these costs, though I have yet to hear of such a case. There's a fine line between personal outsourcing and corporate outsourcing.

@Javaun The bedouin thing is happening for sure. But I think that lots of people will remain in corporations but act entrepreneurially in such a manner.

[Deepak]

My biggest problem with personal outsourcing is a sense of ownership. There are tasks I might not rock at, but I like doing them. Nothing wrong with that. Plus it's good to do stuff sloppily. If you only stick to things you are very good at, you're only going to get completely pigeonholed and won't expand your own personality. Of course, there is a monetary side to personal outsourcing. Even if most of us wanted to, we couldn't afford to do it.

[Nicole Simon]

If you are willing to throw a lot of money at it, you can receive stellar results. If you want to do it a bit more on budget, you need to plan it a bit more.

But it boils very much down to something simple you mentioned: It may take somebody just an hour. It will take you forever. This is where it does save you money.

Either way, just thinking about outsourcing - be it your personal life or your biz life - will make you start thinking about "how do I have to structure the jobs to let them be done by somebody else". And you will be amazed at what impact this can have.

Some things which are just time consuming and not fun, can easily be outsourced. Other stuff can't. For example I have seen VA use collected and processed data as reference for further projects ... you need to be sure NDA is in place for stuff like that.



The major downside for me? I would love to outsource a lot of stuff, but most of the agents understandably do not speak german. ;)

[Jason Van Orden]

I'd like to respond to anyone who thinks that they can't afford lifesourcing/outsourcing. First of all, I find that it is always best to ask "how can I afford it."

Also, sure it's an investment. But this is exactly it. If you say you can't afford it, then that seems to show a lack of confidence in your earning power and your productivity.

I outsource projects all the time that would take me 2-3 hours, but I get someone else to do it for $24-36. Even if you place the value of your time at only $30-$50 (meaning you could do activities in that time that would be worth that much to your business and earnings), it still makes financial sense.

I completely understand the thought that you can't afford it. I've been there, too. But I would argue that you have to take the leap and invest because when you really evaluate things, you can't afford to NOT do it.

If someone is reading this and thinking, "My time is not worth that much", then I would encourage you to find ways to increase the value of your time whether literally or at least in your mind to begin.I'm looking forward to the rest of your report, Steve.

[Tabitha]

I Lifesource all the time! And sometimes people even do things for me for free. It's all about the social network you have and how much they love you. Sometimes you can barter for things you love to do as well (I love creating WordPress blogs, and have shifted a task I hate - data inputting in exchange for creating the person a WordPress blog).

[Sudhanshu]

I'm not sure why this too has to come to India!!

Anyways, isn't this what a personal secretary does?

[Reginald]

I enjoyed reading this post. However, I suspect that an individual will have to attain a certain level of self awareness and discipline to find productivity in this approach.

It sure would be nice if the large majority of the world gave it a shot. We would certainly have created a more positive environment to live in.

Thanks for the read.

[Alx Klive]

Steve. Great article.

The main problem is the time it takes to find a specialist for a certain job.

I'm not sure how long you spent on eLance reading profiles, shortlisting, communicating back and forth to find Sri, but this can easily take a couple of hours, and that time is typically spread out over a few days with you coming back to it several times.

When you do find someone however, it can be very useful, providing you have regular ongoing jobs for them, or one big job, they can do. But if you are doing this, are you not then back to mere outsourcing, or having a virtual personal assistant?

I love the idea, and there's something to it, but I question how many of my truly 'life' tasks I can get someone in a cheaper labour market to do. How many tasks could a nurse or train driver outsource?

Perhaps one day we'll be able to scan our watch to be repaired or e-mail our shirts to be ironed. Now that would be cool.

[Lea]

Steve - thanks for the link.

It's an interesting development the way outsourcing/lifesourcing is becoming more common for the "average" employee. As a former strategy consultant, we were given access to "virtual help" and lifesourcing in the form of a concierge service to sort out things like home deliveries etc. whilst we travelled the globe "consulting".

Of course travelling permanently as we do now, I became interested in lifesourcing and outsourcing as a way to spend more time enjoying each new place we visit and less time working...it's an experiment that still taking place but as Alx mentioned, one critical success factor is finding the *right* people to outsource too. It's taken me a while but the wait was worth it!

From a corporate perspective, it will be interesting to see how organisations deal with the impact that employees outsourcing their work may have...and as Reginald said, the take-up of lifesourcing/outsourcing in this environment will, I suspect boil down to an individual's ability to determine and identify their core competency.