Do More. Live More. Be More.

Like many moms, my daily life is packed -- both with work projects and a seemingly endless stream of household minutia. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how to increase my happiness factor by shifting the weight off the minutia (I even have a draft post titled "How to Do Less"), so it was bizarrely well timed when TaskRabbit contacted me about being the Boston spokeswoman for their Do More. Live More. Be More. campaign. I was psyched for a couple of reasons. First, I've happily used TaskRabbit before. Second, the campaign is all about encouraging people to do more of what they love and less of what they don't.
As part of the campaign, over the next month I will experiment with letting go of my inner control freak and outsourcing via TaskRabbit. Below I share some of the overarching things I need help with and will update you later on how things are going. Meanwhile, TaskRabbit is asking folks a simple question: "What would you promise yourself if you had more time to do the things you want to do?" Simply share your promise (up to October 14) and you'll be entered to win cool prizes -- including a luxury vacation (yeah, uh, I suspect you could use one of those right about now!)

Probably not uncommonly, I want to outsource so I can have less minutia monkeys on my back and more time both with my family and on my own. More specifically, I really want to be present in the moment, not multitasking.

Purging. For me, purging -- whether it's kid stuff or old electronics -- makes me feel lighter both in physical and emotional space. I would love some help with finding new homes for our unwanted items as it's a task that sits at the bottom of my to-do list casting a hairy nagging eyeball at me.

Pickups. In addition to random errand pickups, I would love help with our weekly CSA pickup. The timing is not great for us and invariably makes for a harried end of day.

Event planning. I'm co-hosting a fantastic event October 4 (we're almost sold out -- you should get a ticket if you're thinking of coming!). I'm super excited about it but it also involves a lot of work. I'm hoping to outsource some of the tasks leading up to the event.

Household. We have a bunch of random household projects that need to get done.

Travel. I have several trips upcoming and I would love help with the planning -- whether it's researching details or procuring items needed for the trips.

Virtual assistant. This will be the hardest for me (that old control freak thing) but lately, I've been feeling completely swamped work-wise (I started a new business venture last month, and still need to find my rhythm balancing everything). I have always thought of TaskRabbit as an errand provider but in looking at the site, I see it's not uncommon to ask for clerical help. So I'm hoping to try out TaskRabbit for some virtual assistant type tasks. Fingers crossed.

That's what's on my mind so far. Do you have similar minutia monkeys on your back? What other tasks have been nagging at you?