oneafrikan.com

The shorter version:
Checkout Online Personal Assistant. I recommend it, it’s saved me time and made my life easier. Best part is you can use it from wherever…
Try it, tell Ed you got there from here, and he’ll treat you nice

The longer version:
OK, so I’m the first to admit that I often find myself with too many balls to juggle. I find that having more to do actually makes me more productive and when I get in the zone, things happen and it feels good.

However, when you’re starting a business, or working on something important to you, and you decide that it is the highest priority in your life, then other things slip down the priority order, and they simply don’t get done.

Cases in point:

1. I’ve needed to get a UK drivers license for at least 3 years now
2. I’ve needed to renew my South African passport for over a year now
3. I’ve been serious about taking up Kendo, or a Japanese Sword Art, for at least 18 months
4. I’ve needed to sort out health insurance for a long long long time
5. I wanted to organise a birthday bash for myself this year, for precisely the reason why it didn’t happen last year

I think you get the picture…. Basically you keep your life together somehow until something threatens to break, then you mend it so it doesn’t break in the short term, then you go back to being focussed. I know not everyone is like that, but I am, hence this post!

Anyways, I’m not really into recommending or plugging services that I don’t have a lot of exposure to, mainly ‘cos I get too many emails so it’s hard to decide whom to spend an hour for getting to know a service, and also ‘cos people don’t really read my blog for that reason I’m not Scoble or Arrington or Kirkpatrick, and neither do I want to be.

Back to the point – a while ago my friend Ed setup a service called Online Personal Assistant, and after a bit of nudging I decided to give it a try. My @Inbox was overflowing, and I really just needed to clear some stuff that was important, but not that important it could go above Kindo.

So I sent a list of stuff to my personal assistant Kevin:

1. Book Geek BBQ venue for summer in London
2. Book karting venue for my birthday delebration
3. Book bowling venue for my birthday celebration
4. Find me health insurance
5. Find me Tai Chi schools close to where I live
6. Find me Kendo schools close to where I live

As you can see, they’re all time intensive tasks that would mean me spending a few hours online for each one, at some point, getting to a place where I can make a decision and then do some actions… Getting my passport and drivers license require me to be somewhere in person, so I needed to do that.

Where we are now is that Ed’s team (thanks Kevin!) has spent about 9 hours doing all that stuff for me, for which I’ll pay an hourly rate. Everything is documented and tracked in an online workspace (not Basecamp), and I’m happy with the results. I have a few things to tie down now, but basically all the research is done, and all it requires is another booking, or an action on my part.

Bottom line – I’ve saved 9 hours of my time (which I value more than what I’ll pay for it), thereby enabling me to focus on things more important to me now, so as far as I’m concerned I’m a happy biologist.

I happily recommend the service, and am going to continue to use it.

Some good news for the SA tech people out there

_ Financial Mail – Here comes Neotel

SA’s second fixed-line network operator was meant to begin operating in May 2002, when Telkom lost its statutory monopoly over fixed-line telecommunications. Six years later, the company – known now as Neotel – will finally launch its services to consumers.

All signs are that Neotel is finally gaining traction – and that it’s prepared to take the fight to Telkom. Despite warning initially that it wouldn’t start a price war with Telkom, indications are that it will compete aggressively on price. The company is still reluctant to talk prices, but some details are emerging.

Hat tip to Tim, who still does not have a blog yet.. ;-(

OK, so this has become somewhat of a labour of love the last month or so, where I’ve snuck bits of time here and there to get this to a point where I’m happy it makes sense, and there’s not much more I can add to it now…

Please check it out, let me know what you think, comment on this post for feedback (or email me), and send me typos!

Once I’ve done one more pass of it and I’m happy it’s ready for consumption, I’m gonna create a page for it to live at (while other plans get rolling – thanks Ed!).

Here it is: Building a Startup You Love is Hard (BaSYLiH) – Final Draft.

Edit: If you’d rather read on Scribd, here it is – thanks to David for putting it there.

Enjoy