Yesterday my local CBS station ran a full segment on outsourcing trends. It was on the Eye On The Bay show, and the theme was called Outsource Your Life.

While the concept of outsourcing is not new, there has been a big trend of personal assistants to perform your every-day tasks. Things like buying groceries, setting up appointments, and writing thank you cards. Many people outsource functions like house cleaning and gardening, but how about having someone cooking for you?

In today’s world where everyone seems busy, hiring a personal assistant could free up some valuable time. But is it worth your money? This is where I have a hard time evaluating the worth. If it was for business, you could easily figure out if its worth the money to outsource. But when it comes to your personal life, its extremely hard to associate value to time. If you weren’t cooking for an hour, you could be spending time with your kids. You can’t associate cost to that.

The video is online, and their web site has a list of the personal assistant companies they covered. Tim Ferriss, the person behind the 4-Hour Workweek book also has a good list of resources for personal outsourcing.

So have you outsourced anything in your life? What was it? I am somewhat interested in having someone cook for me. I do like cooking though, so we will see. Maybe I’ll try it out and report back.