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.

But, given I’m the type of woman who makes to-do lists that include tasks I’ve already completed in order to get a sneaky