Read on Twitter
Have worked with an assistant for about a year now, started as an experiment. It’s been great — May write a post at some point, but interesting to note for now, that 90% of the use cases have been:
1. Buying gifts for friends — the change in activation of just sending an email, as opposed to checking out and entering payment details, changed the game. Noticed a lot more gifting happening as a result
2. Personal shopping in general — this may have been unique to me, as I was in different addresses a bunch, but being able to send a link and have it magically arrive wherever I was, was very handy
3. Having books printed — any time I saw a great blog, or a series of deep technical essays / papers, I’d email her links and she would send a physical book version. Noticed a lot more of this kind of reading as a result — paper helps focus, more fun to read with coffee outside
Main thought on above: most of this is about reducing activation cost. A small change in activation cost can lead to drastically different usage.
Much of these can be automated into companies, but most wont automate enough to reach to the same kind of activation cost.
