Start by counting the right things
Hours are the obvious measure, and they are worth estimating. For one ordinary week, note every personal task that took more than a few minutes: booking, rebooking, researching, calling, chasing, comparing, planning. The surprise is usually the total rather than any single item.
Then count what hours miss. A task that takes ten minutes can occupy your mind for days if it's unresolved. Researchers have described the cost of switching between tasks as attention residue: part of your attention stays with the task you left. Personal admin is a constant source of those switches.
Finally, count what is being postponed. The training plan you haven't started, the trip you haven't booked, the dinner you keep meaning to arrange. Those are costs too, just not ones that appear on a calendar.
What research says about paying for time
A 2017 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that people who spent money to buy themselves time, for example by paying to outsource disliked tasks, reported greater life satisfaction, and that this held across income levels in the samples studied. In a field experiment, participants felt better after a time-saving purchase than after a material one.
The research doesn't say outsourcing makes everyone happier, and it doesn't put a dollar value on your hour. It does suggest that people tend to underuse money as a way to buy time, which echoes a familiar pattern: people often delegate at work long before they delegate at home.
A simple test you can run in five minutes
Answer these honestly. Three or more yeses usually means help would pay for itself in attention, if not always in money.
- Do you regularly spend evenings or weekends on bookings, providers, paperwork or planning?
- Do you keep a mental list of things you need to arrange that never quite gets shorter?
- Have personal goals, such as fitness, slipped because there's no time to plan them?
- Would you happily make the decision if someone else did the research and the follow-up?
- Do plans fall through because coordinating them is one more task?
When it is worth it
Help is most valuable when your involvement can shrink to a single decision. If you can say what you want and approve a recommendation, a good assistant or personal team saves you the research, the calls and the follow-up, which is where the time goes.
It is also worth more the longer it lasts. Preferences take time to learn. A team that has handled your travel, appointments and plans for months needs far less from you than one starting fresh, which is why continuity matters as much as price.
When it isn't
If you have only a few small tasks a month, a flat monthly service is hard to justify; an hourly virtual assistant or doing it yourself is probably better. If you enjoy planning your own trips or researching purchases, keep doing it. And if you won't let go of decisions, even good help will feel like extra work.
Be wary, too, of arrangements that move tasks without moving responsibility. If you still have to remember everything and chase the assistant, you have added a step rather than removed one.
Compare virtual assistants, hired assistants and a personal team
How SuperHandled approaches the decision
SuperHandled is a named Personal Concierge and supporting team who take ongoing responsibility for parts of your life: remembering, anticipating, organizing, keeping you on track with goals and getting things done with your approval. Personal is $900 a month and Plus is $1,500 a month with priority handling.
We'd rather lose a sale than sign up someone who won't use the service. In a first conversation we'll ask what currently takes your attention and tell you honestly whether it's a fit.