The Delegation Game - Is There An App For Everything?

You’re busy. You’re skint… and you want to live like a Rich Kid of Instagram. Guess what? You can. Jennifer Savin road tests the new ‘outsourcing economy’, which lets you live like an oligarch for as little as £5 a day. (Disclaimer: this article may just change your life)

- Jennifer Savin

After a day of emails and meetings, I sink into the seat of an Uber cab, ordered with a mere three taps of a finger. I optimise my travel time with a few more swipes and arrange flowers to be delivered to my mum, order a week’s worth of lunches, and email my PA, Sumari, asking her to coordinate my trip to Lisbon. Although Sumari knows the ins-and-outs of my diary, it’s unlikely we’ll ever meet – because Sumari’s a ‘virtual’ PA (although she is an actual human being), and one who’s happy to take the reins of my hectic schedule for less than 70 quid a month…

By the way, this is not my ‘usual’ set-up. No, normally I get the tube to work, run to Pret for lunch and make my own appointments. But this month, I’ve been challenged to ‘outsource’ everything (read: delegate my chores via apps and websites) in order to win back unnecessarily ‘wasted’ time and, in the process, become a productivity machine. Turns out happiness experts (and yes, that’s a thing now) such as psychologist Professor John Collings say that outsourcing can enhance overall life satisfaction, but only if we use the extra time to embark on more worthy activities – you know, such as nurturing relationships that make us feel good, or in my case, finally cracking on with that unwritten novel I’ve been brainstorming since 2009.