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Eneasz comments on Minor, perspective changing facts - Less Wrong
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Amazon turk works for at least some mundane things.
I was more thinking of things like housekeeping, grocery shopping, taking the car to the shop, and the like...things that are routine, time consuming, and can't be automated, so that over a lifetime they take up a truly infuriating number of hours.
Unfortunately they also require a good deal of trust for anyone hired to do them.
You can automate aspects of them. I have heard that people have had success using Amazon's 'subscriptions' where you set up a recurring order every X months for a particular foodstuff or household good, which certainly could help reduce time on grocery shopping.
Am setting this up now.
That wouldn't work for groceries for us, because Reasons, but I was unaware that feature existed and can think of other things for which it may be helpful. Thanks.
[ETA: Some places have companies that do grocery delivery, which I would totally pay for, but none of them deliver here. Too far out from the city, seems like. :-( ]
Do you have any specific examples?
(I've been looking into the literature on ego depletion recently, so I actually have a lot of sympathy for the OP's position, but I can't think of any tasks in my life so cognitively exhausting relative to their mundanity that it would make sense to outsource them to India.)
EDIT: I should think for five minutes before I say things like that. A few are coming to mind, but I think I'll mull them over for a while before saying what they are.
I am not currently using this or anything like this but proofreading, compiling lists, searching for scattered information on someone across the internet and inputting some data in a certain format can be outsourced in this manner.
I think part of OP's point is that you don't realize how much relief you will feel about outsourcing the task until you actually do the outsourcing.
I don't think that is the OP's point (though OP is welcome to correct me on this). If it is, it's highly implicit in the original comment. It is a worthwhile point to mention, though. The difficulty with these tasks seems to be identifying them, rather than solving or managing them.
laundry, food, dishes, cleaning, organizing, recurring household purchases (toiletries etc.) Most can be automated with varying degrees of capital commitment. My point was that yes, even if you shut up and multiply you are likely underestimating the benefits column of your cost-benefit analysis.