A recent tweet by me sparked a conversation on Twitter between me and 3 fellow Do Lectures attendees, @lpostlethwaite, @tot_baker, @iamcreative. And it got me thinking.

As a huge generalisation, creativity doesn’t often go hand in hand with organisation. And so while we have brilliant ideas, our poor time management and ever-expanding to-do list tends to stifle our ability to fulfill our creativity. But we also rarely have the means to be able to afford a personal assistant to keep us on track and help us with those thousands of little things that get in the way of just being, erm, creative.

I know there are lots of virtual PA services out there, but I’ve never heard of anyone using one, and I think the concept of a disembodied person helping you out is both limited and not particularly appealing.

But what about a shared, real-life PA for creatives? Surely there would be handfuls of potential people interested in having help for between a few hours and a few days a week?

Would the PA be able to find, say, five different clients, all of whom would be willing to pay £10 an hour each (so he/she could dedicate a day a week to each)?

Or would it be more feasible to just pay someone for half a day’s work a week (e.g. £40). In those four hours, I’m sure someone super efficient could mop up all the admin bits and pieces that sit on my desk for weeks at a time. It’s just whether it would be worth £160 a month to have someone do this.

Would it free me up to be more creative, and therefore more profitable? I suppose this is the eternal point of PAs, book-keepers, administrators etc. They’re there to enable you to spend more time doing what you excel at (and hopefully what you enjoy).

Or would the switching between 5/10/20 clients a week make it very difficult for the shared PA to stay on top of everything?

What do you think…..?