Visit Co-founder of ShipServ and Sigrid.AI, Paul Østergaard's private To-Do list of tasks he delegates to his dedicated assistant daily here. 

Does your job require a lot of travel? Are you wasting valuable time managing your travel itinerary, finding and booking flights, booking hotels, and organizing ground transportation?

Even if you are supported by a travel agent, making sure your unique preferences are considered, every time can be an impossible task.

Instead, transform business travel from a chore to pleasure by delegating your travel arrangements to a remote assistant. They can proactively plan all your travel and make sure everything integrates with your personal and private schedule. This is especially valuable when things change at the last minute, saving you from losing hours in rescheduling and rebooking hell. 

• Research the best prices on flights, hotels, and car rentals,
• Book flights and hotels,
• Find the best prices for remote airport parking,
• Book a car service,
• Flight Check-in and securing your preferred seat on your flight,
• Visa assistance,
• Apply for renewal of your passport,
• Arrange car transportation (airport drop-off/pickup),
• Call airlines for travel-related questions,
• Track lost and delayed luggage,
• Book a taxi or car-service (via Uber/Lyft, etc.),
• Manage Loyalty Programs.

Keeping track of all your memberships and subscriptions can be overwhelming. Amazon Prime, Netflix, the Harvard Business Review, even local sports clubs. Most of us actively use just 10 - 20% of our subscriptions, yet we stick with them. Finding the ‘How to sign off’ section of a website can be so complicated it keeps us on the hook, month after month.

Then there are the software and online services for your business. It’s easy to end up paying for another year because you didn’t know the renewal date was coming, or worse yet losing a service because your payment details were out of date.

Stay on top of your subscriptions and stop wasting time and money by leaving it to your remote assistant. They can follow up with your fitness club, clean out and sign off smartphone apps, and unsubscribe you from publications you haven’t read for the last six months:

• Manage magazine and newspaper subscriptions,
• Manage grocery delivery services,
• Cancel apps on your iPhone (explain how you can do it yourself),
• Manage fitness club memberships,
• Manage your software as a service and other service subscriptions.

• Write/edit/proofread articles and blogs,
• Schedule content into BufferApp,
• Grab blog URLs and add them to an Excel/Google Spreadsheet,
• Add Twitter user URLs (from a list) into an Excel/Google Spreadsheet,
• Obtain website URLs from your Feedly account,
• Find new content sources (blogs) for social media,
• Add blogs into your Feedly account and categorize,
• Find stock images for blog posts (add to lightbox),
• Manage your Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn account.

Do you always leave your expenses until the last minute? Like bookkeeping and accounting in general, while it makes little difference to the success of your business, ignoring it too long can bring things tumbling down.

You can delegate all your expense management to a remote assistant working with your existing software systems and processes. Send photos of your receipts to your remote assistant in real-time, then sign off on the expense report on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. If your assistant has access to your calendar, they can log expenses against agreed dates and approved accounting codes:

• Expense report generation,
• Card/bank statement reconciliation and matching,
• Invoice/receipt processing
• Category matching,
• Expense management process streamlining,
• VAT filing assistance,
• Expense encoding in various accounting-related software such as Xero, or Concur.

Have you considered using a grocery delivery service? A perfect solution and time-saver: you do your shopping online, pay with your credit card, and voila! Your groceries appear at your door. Even better, ask your remote assistant to do your shopping for you. All you have to do is email them the grocery list, and your fridge will be stocked every week with your preferred products:

• Online Grocery shopping with, i.e., a virtual debit card,
• Find eBay or Amazon listings for particular items,
• Upload items on eBay you want to sell,
• Manage your Amazon seller's account,
• Obtain quotes from leasing/car rental companies and compare prices,
• Track lost items you have purchased online
• and order reshipping of lost things,
• Buy items (for yourself or someone else),
• Book and management pickup of a parcel for shipment,
• Call stores to see if they have an item in stock and have them hold it for you, 
• Provide ideas for gifts (birthday, anniversary, etc.) for family or friends, 
• Send flowers to someone (Birthday, anniversary, baby, new job, graduation, etc.).

Is your week full of meetings with people inside and outside your organization? Then you’re probably spending a lot of valuable time coordinating, chasing people, and waiting for responses. Ask your remote assistant to manage your schedule for you proactively, to continuously plan and refine the detailed logistics of your life weeks ahead, reflecting everything in your shared calendar and leaving you free to focus on the things that matter:

• Email Inbox Management,
• Schedule meetings/appointments, and adding them into your calendar (e.g., dance lessons, water delivery, business meeting travel dates, dinner appointments, conference calls, doctor appointments, dental appointments, pet grooming, house viewing, yoga classes, nail spa appointment, haircut, barber, etc.),
• Book a meeting room,
• Make lunch/dinner reservations at your favorite restaurant,
• Call shoe repair places to get quotes and hours of operation,
• Coordinate and set up conference calls (Zoom, Skype, etc.),
• Reminders (birthdays, events, funerals, christenings, recurring meetings and events, recurring purchases, etc.).

You may have, at some point, fallen ill before a business trip, lost your luggage, or damaged a rental car while on vacation. Navigating the jungle of insurance claims can eat up a lot of energy. Instead, ask your remote assistant to take over the time-consuming and frustrating activities involved in making an insurance claim and tracking it until you’re reimbursed. Your remote assistant will gladly wait on the phone, so you don’t have to:

• Track lost/delayed luggage,
• Handle insurance claims (rental car, stolen items, burglary, health, travel, etc.).

Data entry is a time-consuming process. Tasks like data conversion, entering figures from one source to another, or processing forms quickly becomes dull and repetitive. Why not spend your time only on core tasks by delegating all your data entry and other document management tasks to a dedicated remote assistant?

• Move a document onto a new letterhead,
• Clean up an Excel document and identify differences in the two columns,
• Clean up an Excel document, so names and emails are not in the same cell,
• Type info from a PDF into Excel,
• Convert a PDF into a fillable form,
• Create fillable PDF from a Word document,
• Type info from scanned, handwritten notes into a Google Doc,
• Rename files in Dropbox,
• Separate (as separate files) each page of a PDF,
• Copy/paste content from Excel,
• Create a Google Spreadsheet and add defined information into it,
• Delete lines from an Excel sheet,
• Resize files to a smaller size,
• Download resumes and change filenames on each file,
• Add Names/Address to an Excel sheet,
• Update a Google Spreadsheet with all books published by a specific author,
• Combine multiple Word files into one Word file,
• Transcribe audio to text, 
• Transcribe text from a picture or PDF to a Word/Google doc,
• Edit papers, letters, emails, resumes, etc.,
• PowerPoint presentation design,
• Event Management,
• Virtual Receptionist.

Most of us experience IT-related issues that become significant roadblocks to our work. Finding and restoring lost data. Installing new software. Choosing the right adapter to connect our Mac to a projector for a big presentation. Get rid of that long list of IT-related issues by asking your remote assistant to take care of it. If they can't find a solution themselves, they'll happily spend hours on hold or days corresponding with tech support teams until the issue is resolved:

• Call an IT-Support company that may have long hold times and patch you into the call once a representative is on the line,
• Research solutions to IT-related problems,
• Suggest productivity hacks,
• Research new IT-software and hardware products to boost your productivity,
• Sign off on online IT-software and app subscriptions you haven't used for the last six months.

• Add fitness class types and associated times at the local gym into a Google Spreadsheet,
• Book fitness classes and add bookings to your calendar,
• Research best yoga studios and compare prices,
• Research best places to rent a bike in San Francisco and book,
• Research and schedule appointments with specialists.
• Remind you of classes and bookings.

Need to know the best SEO keyword for your next blog post? Want an updated competitor analysis before your next board meeting? Searching for a list of European banks actively supporting cryptocurrencies? Or do you want to know the scientific evidence behind the keto-diet? Whatever your research needs, your remote assistant can compile the information for you, using both online and offline resources:

• Demographic data,
• Local businesses (e.g., auto parts store, restaurants with gluten-free options),
• Inexpensive or free inventory management software,
• State-specific URLs to register a new employer,
• Best rated small SUVs,
• Online testing options for Microsoft Excel,
• Tools to send text alerts when a new item is published on an RSS feed,
• Specific companies’ information (addresses, phone numbers, etc.),
• Video conferencing tools/software and pricing,
• Company email procedure examples,
• Flight, hotel or car rental prices,
• Internet Service Providers for a specific city,
• Best pricing for remote airport parking,
• If a specific company has an affiliate/partner account and how to apply,
• Research and compile comparison on web hosting providers,
• Obtain phone numbers or emails people within an organization,
• Quotes for car detailing,
• Recent articles on a specific subject,
• Statistics on a particular topic,
• Service providers who offer a specific service (e.g., window cleaning, house move, Gartner, pool-cleaning),
• Software/tools to collect tweets,
• How to post job openings on college websites,
• Phone apps that serve specific functions (e.g., best music apps for Android),
• YouTube video tutorials for a particular subject,
• Best pricing/comparison pricing for items,
• Unique gift items on Etsy,
• Find five vegetarian recipes for Halloween themed snacks,
• Find email addresses, 
• Find fun things to do in a new city,
• Find the top 5 Christmas gifts for children under 5, for your godchildren.

• Capture Business Cards,
• Manage your contact lists and keep contact details current,
• Contact Profiling before your next meeting,
• Write copy for letters and Thank You notes.

• Obtain quotes for home repair/improvements,
• Household Management,
• Find, compare prices on local vendors, and manage, i.e., your cleaning lady, window-cleaner, plumber, electrician, etc.),
• Call IKEA and manage your next delivery,
• Find a service that can dispose of your old dishwasher,
• etc.

• Recruitment Support,
• Candidate screening,
• Managing your Workable-account,
• Write copy/editing job postings,
• Assist in analyzing psychometric test results,
• Schedule interviews.

• Appointment with the plumber,
• Your next Lamaze class,
• Your next doctor's appointment,
• Pay a bill,
• Your next yoga-class,
• Your cousin's birthday,
• An anniversary at your office,
• etc.