Experiments With The 4-Hour Workweek
Personal outsourcing questions – Part 1
14Dec2009 Filed under: 3. Automation (Muse and Outsourcing), 4. Liberation Author: Rasmus
Sometimes I get a couple of questions by mail primarily about outsourcing. I thought I would answer the last one here on the blog.
The mail started with the reader’s current situation, but I will skip this and go directly to the questions:
How do you pay the freelancers?
by hours? projets?
Second question,
Do you find it difficult to be out of the office?
I miss working with people. So I should take a mini-retirment soon as Tim or share office space…
how do you deal with it?
Regarding question one, my answer is both 
. I currently have a couple of Filippinos hired on a fixed monthly salery (where I expext a certain number of hours of work).
But I also have a team in Russia doing webshops for me, that I pay per project. The ebook I am trying to have written is also paid on a “project basis”. So it varies with the task at hand. I would however strongly advocate that you have some people that you work with over a longer periode. Knowledge is quickly lost and it gets hard to keep a momentum if you hire a new guy every month.
Regarding the second question. Currenly I do not work only 4 hours per week. I work half of my time as a consultant typically on larger projects, so on these kind of projects I am typically on a team where I get my “social skills” polished . The other half can get a bit lonely but I am currently located in a shared office (http://laoficina.dk/) where I can talk with other people whenever I feel a bit lonely.
Regarding mini-retirements, I am currently looking at a house in Thailand so the dream is that I in a year will be able to spend 2-3 months there each year. However I have just become a dad, so my priorities are currently with my little princess .
Hope it answered your questions. You are all welcome to send me an email if you have any questions on how I organize my life.
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6 Responses to “Personal outsourcing questions – Part 1”
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About this blog
Hi, my name is Rasmus and I live in Denmark. In January 2008 I read the book 
I am in the IT business and saw that some of the stuff Tim mentioned in his book, was clearly possible. And while I will never be as hardcore as Tim is, there were certainly ideas in the book that I could see myself using.
This blog is all about my experiments with Living The Four Hour Work Week - although my weeks are currently longer :)
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Daniel Graversen
December 15th, 2009 at 5:45 am
Congratulations with you daughter, I wonder how you get time to blog when such a life changing event occurs.
Rasmus
December 15th, 2009 at 6:00 am
@Daniel: Thanks
. Yeah this is why I am working from home. This is yet another reason why I strive at only working 4 hours per week!
Craig
December 23rd, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Hi Rasmus, I’m a writer in the UK and I’ve been plagued by procrastination all my writing life! I love the idea of the four-hour work week! I’m just ordered the book from Amazon. I have some other time-management books but this one sounds like the best. Do you have a group on Skype, or how does that work? (I’m new to Skype — don’t really know if it has public spaces yet. But it would be great to have a writing group, or at least a group of writers, on Skype.) Take care, Craig
Rasmus
December 26th, 2009 at 4:11 am
No I don’t have any groups, but I am planning a small community forum where likeminded people can share ideas
Mads Q
December 26th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Hi Rasmus, congrats on the princess.. We enjoy everyday with Lukas! It is a strong motivation for keeping working hours low – and even more motivated for passive income
)
I’m warming up to the webshop we talked about… Take care
Rasmus
December 27th, 2009 at 8:01 am
@Mads: Thanks… Yes it is a strong motivator for getting some passive income up and running and designing your lifestyle to suit your needs