I don't have a partner in life, kids and also my family can't help with this.
If you managed to hire one, has it solved your problem?
A good PA, the type who can read your mind, would also be making really good money. They'd be about the rate of a lawyer or so. I've dealt with people who had dumb PAs and they were just really frustrating.
A good part of the Four Hour Workweek covers on how to utilize virtual assistants, and there was a boom in PA demand shortly after that. But it's receded since.
I've hired people to do stuff like research a good mouse for me and it was great. But you miss out on the satisfaction of doing such things. I mean I could get GPT-3 to write a perfectly good comment in HN from just bullet points, for about 6 cents. But where's the fun in that?
virtual assistants
(note: I realize some things I've named are not things a PA would do)
A good PA, the type who can read your mind, would
also be making really good money.
There's dedicated services for almost everything these days
If you want to talk to contractors, go through an agency that handles that
Even if I had a specialized agency with a dedicated point of contact just for this, I'd need a dozen other agencies for a dozen other things, and that seems as exhausting as doing it myself.
What you describe seems close to the role of a home maid/nanny. They're popular in developing countries; households with a working couple here often have a maid or two. Ironically, they're uncommon in developed countries because the cost of living/minimum wage is too high.
We have cleaning services and it's a pretty popular independent "side gig" for a lot of married women; their husbands work full-time and then they clean a few houses each week for something to do + supplemental income.
But I've not heard of cleaning services that handle things beyond cleaning, like dealing with contractors and running errands and the like.
For the ultra-wealthy there’s also often a Family Office who might be responsible for acquiring and running private jets, yachts, a property and investment portfolio, etc.
If you want someone to handle all the “boring” you’re closer to the former, but you get what you pay for, and you will either get someone who’s done this before (and probably charges accordingly, since your competition in that hiring market is usually versus people looking for House Managers) /or/ you may spend a LOT of time setting up mechanisms and coaching someone without experience to be successful (and does your definition of “boring” also include this type of effort?).
“I can’t get things done” in this context may also be termed “executive dysfunction” and may be indicative of ADHD (among other things, see a psychologist or psychiatrist for an actual diagnosis).
No idea where you are in the world, how much you earn or your net worth and ability to pay, but for Seattle or Bay Area, a decent agency-managed PA might be around >= $75/hr (usually the agency is also looking for 20 hour a week minimums, ~$6k/mo) or a House Manager on an FTE basis inclusive of benefits will be >$100k for anyone remotely competent. In both cases they usually have expectations or restrictions on job duties; they’ll often only do “light cleaning, tidying and arranging” and beyond that they will supervise cleaners (inc. paying them, if you set them up to do this, but the cost for additional contractors is not included in the $6k/mo cost for the PA) if you want someone to spend 6 hours getting into every nook and cranny, scrubbing ovens and cooktops, etc.
Virtual assistants are virtually useless (in my experience).
With a personal assistant, you'll need to provide very detailed instructions for success. The list of items you list for your PA will take roughly the same amount of time as actually just doing the work.
Drycleaning, handling returns, that stuff is easy. But if you're like me, that's only 10% of what you need to get done.
I'm wired similarly, have tried PAs, and I try to use services that have a PA aspect to them. (StichFix, Uber, wedding coordinator) -But unless you're putting in the work to really get value and automate the things you need a PA for, you'll find yourself just shifting the boring tasks to dealing with the PA, and shift the problem.
The problem IMO is that unless you’re making big money or the company is paying for one, having a full time PA is just well out of the question financially. And there are logistics issues with part time PAs serving 4-5 people, I’d imagine.
Rather, I look for vendors and suppliers that "get it", are actually helpful, and can be trusted to deliver the outcome, instead of just their part and require supervision.
It's not always easy to find, many, many companies focus on providing a cheap headline price, but then they push a lot of the work and risk onto you, employ dark patterns, don't answer the phone or emails, etc.
I keep looking and trying different options until I find someone that actually gets it, you can tell them what you want and they figure out the details, can deliver to you, etc. It's not always easy, but I think it probably works better than paying for your own assistant to deal with vendors that are basically unhelpful and disinterested.
It seems like companies like Google are always trying to solve the problem by pretty much managing your whole life, to the point of building company towns.
I wonder if there's a way to implement that in a way that doesn't lead to the usual horrible abuses one expects from a corporation running your life.
Some celebrities seem to have their personal lives managed pretty extensively by a manager.
I can definitely see the appeal of environments where you have one job, and some of the planning of random everyday stuff becomes a specialist position.
Regardless, there are no magic cures for ADHD. Medicine can be part of the answer, but ultimately it comes down to lots of life hacks and coping strategies to minimize distractions and allow one’s self to focus as best as possible.