notes on virtual assistants

i want a va, u want a va, what is a va

i was speaking to a friend that wanted to hire a va. hey jack. actually this happens a lot. alex. people drowning in emails and calendar invites and someone told them get a va and suddenly ur leveling up. which. okay. sure.

but lets start with what these words actually mean because if we dont symbol ground the words we are we just idk idk idk. ea is executive assistant. va is virtual assistant. but what is an assistant. an assistant is someone who helps u manage information flows. what information goes where. what gets prioritized. what gets acted on. what gets ignored.

secretary came from the word secret. the job was always information management. who gets access. who knows what. what flows when. in the platonic corporate hierarchy the ea sat outside the ceo’s office and was the interface between the executive and everything else. high trust. high context. often decades long relationships.

then the internet happened and someone realized this person doesnt need to be in manhattan they can be in manila. same job different location. the va was born. but because it was offshore and remote it got framed as lower cost lower skill more transactional. va became associated with task execution. inbox management. calendar tetris. the commodified version of the ea. dumb, dumby, dummy.

the technology that enabled remote work also raised the ceiling of what was possible. project management tools. communication platforms. shared documents. automation. the infrastructure for remote coordination got really good really fast. which means a va can now do everything an ea could do. the terms converged but the framing hasnt caught up. actually the va can do more. claude jigga. this essay was written by a va. no it wasn’t.

people still think ea equals more high level and va equals low level. cached beliefs. the actual capabilities could bethe same. the difference is how u frame the relationship. and framing is everything because framing determines initial conditions and initial conditions determine everything else. this blog is ur daddy.

when people say they want a va what they are really saying is they want leverage. leverage is about using a small information to produce a large amount of information. hey va go get me a plane ticket. hey va go build me a $2m ebitda biz. a single decision made today that determines the shape of a thousand decisions tomorrow. an architectural choice at t=0 that defines the possibility space at t=100.

it goes information = energy = matter, same shit in different states. the leverage is the energy to transform information into matter. is the only thing that matters. everything else cascades from this. im also not perfectly clear on the relationship between info, energy and matter.

if leverage is small information constraining(?) large information then the question is what information are u trying to constrain. most people think the answer is tasks. they want the va to constrain which tasks get done when. inbox zero type beat. but tasks are the smallest possible information space. thats not leverage thats just delegation.

real leverage is constraining how decisions get made. real leverage is transmitting ur frameworks ur ways of thinking ur decision making processes. real leverage is creating a system where someone else can think like u think and decide like u would decide without u being involved. or maybe real leverage is just get the outcome mofucka. or maybe it’s all at once.

this is why a really good va should be almost indistinguishable from a coo or chief of staff. elon’s coo was his long term ea. the difference between an ea and a coo is not the role its how much information has been integrated and how much decision making authority has been transmitted. elon ain’t napoleon. i’m not elon.

if u enter ur relationship with ur va in task war blacked out whackamole mode then ur va is going to be a va forever. they will book ur flights and manage ur inbox and thats it. i once had a model ea who bought me nice clothes which felt cool. i once interviewed spielbergs ea to be my ea. i once interviewed palantir ceo’s ea to be my ea. felt cool, i was just being a larping idiot. still a larping idiot.

anyways, if u transmit frameworks if u transmit decision making processes if u transmit how u think then that person becomes an extension of ur executive function. they become ur coo because they can operate like u would operate.

this cascades into hiring. most people hiring vas optimize for silly ability. can u use google calendar. can u book travel. can u manage email. but ability is just task completion. what u should optimize for is aptitude. can u learn to run my entire operation. can u integrate new frameworks. can u level up from va to coo.

if u hire for aptitude instead of ability the entire trajectory changes. because now ur not hiring someone to execute tasks ur hiring someone who can integrate information and level up into increasingly complex decision making. ur hiring a coo in training not a task executor.

this changes the initial conditions. and initial conditions are everything. errors caught during requirements development cost 10% of errors caught during coding and 200 times less than errors caught during maintenance. if u set up the relationship wrong from day one if u frame it as task executor executing tasks then its really hard to shift to strategic operator running operations. but if u frame it correctly from the start the whole thing cascades differently.

what does this look like practically. u hire the va. but instead of giving them a list of tasks u give them frameworks. maybe reading this blog. maybe a large plan document. maybe ur decision making processes. and then u say im not hiring u to be a va im hiring u to become my coo or gm or chief of staff and im going to help u level up to get there. and make u mucho money.

and guess what. the va will thank u because just like u my jigga the va is trying to level up. if ur hiring internationally which u should be because talent is global and expensive is local then this person is probably in a socioeconomic situation where this opportunity is literally life changing. u can make value out of nothing duh duh duh.

but transmitting frameworks is not enough. u also need to give them real problems not just tasks. dont say schedule this meeting. say figure out the best way for me to connect with these five people over the next month given my constraints and objectives. dont say book this flight. say optimize my travel for q2 given my goals in these three cities. but go bigger.

real problems require integrating information. tasks require executing commands. completely different. when u give someone real problems u are forcing them to integrate information about ur goals ur constraints ur priorities ur way of thinking. and integration is how consciousness emerges. this is not metaphorical.

giulio tononi’s information integration theory says consciousness arises from the integration of information within a system where the various components interact in a coherent meaningful way. when ur va is just executing tasks they are not integrating information. but when they are solving real problems they have to integrate information across domains. they have to understand how different pieces fit together. they have to develop their own internal model of how u think and decide. can someone be a good va for me and get me a meeting for giulio or even better figure out for me what i would do with that meeting and then book it or maybe determine the latter does not matter.

this is why the paradigm shift from va as task executor to va as information integrator changes everything. ur not trying to hire a pair of hands ur trying to hire a node in ur information network that can integrate and process and make decisions. ur trying to extend ur own consciousness basically.

but extending consciousness requires care not trust. care is the act of integrating information. trust is a prediction of the integrity of an integration process. if u really care about developing this person into a coo u cant just trust them u have to care which means u have to check the work u have to give feedback u have to iterate.

but u also have to give them room to integrate information themselves which means sometimes they get it wrong and thats fine because thats how they learn. care means zero trust protocols in the places that matter. measure seven times cut once. but it also means high trust in the broader trajectory. u trust they can level up but u care about ensuring they actually do by checking integrating iterating.

leverage is small information constraining large information. if u want real leverage u need to transmit frameworks not tasks. if u want to transmit frameworks u need to hire for aptitude not ability. if u hire for aptitude u need to set up the initial conditions correctly. if u set up the initial conditions correctly u need to give real problems not tasks. if u give real problems u enable information integration. if u enable information integration u create consciousness. if u create consciousness u have a coo not a va.

the whole thing is one process. choosing what to do and doing it well. imagination and operational capabilities. artificial general intelligence. they are all the same thing. integration of information to create life.

this is why most people buying vas are playing the wrong game. they are trying to buy time when they should be trying to build leverage. time is a resource. leverage is a force multiplier. when u buy time u get linear returns. when u build leverage u get exponential returns.

and the beautiful thing is most people dont think this way. most people see va as commodity. but if u see it as leverage if u see it as an opportunity to create a genuine operator who can run significant parts of ur business then u have alpha. u have someone who costs a fraction of what a us based coo costs but who can do 80% of the work if u invest in them properly.

the evolution from secretary to ea to va is really just the evolution of coordination infrastructure. what used to require physical proximity now requires good wifi. what used to require decades of in person context now requires good documentation and communication protocols. the fundamental job has not changed. integrating information. managing flows. making executive function scalable.

so when my friend says he wants a va im going to ask him what he really wants. does he want someone to manage his calendar or does he want someone to run his operations. does he want to buy some time or does he want to build real leverage. because those are different games and the initial conditions determine which game u play.

the real opportunity is not in getting tasks done. the real opportunity is in creating operators who can think strategically execute tactically and integrate information across domains. people who can go from booking ur flights to running ur business. thats the game. thats how u make value out of nothing.

leverage goes both ways. ur boss gets a coo for the cost of a va. u get trained as a coo by being a va. everyone wins. u can make value out of nothing duh duh duh.