Author Assistant
100% remote, 100% time-of-day flexible, 30 hour a week role helping inspire people to reduce overthinking and live happier, more intentional lives.
Hello!
My name is Neil and I’m a writer, podcaster, and speaker.
(Full bio here: https://www.neil.blog/about-neil)
Spiking anxiety, scrolling addictions, rising loneliness, exhausting news cycles, and plummeting societal trust makes life challenging for many.
I have spent nearly 20 years trying to infuse positivity into the puddle of overwhelm.
I started because I needed it.
I still do!
And I need help.
I’m looking for someone extremely speedy, tech-savvy, detail-oriented, organized, literary-geeky, and excited by wild and unpredictable requests at wild and unpredictable times.
You need to have expert—like you could teach the pro class to a room full of advanced users—in 5 of the following 10 (listed in order of priority, pls include your top 5 in your email somewhere):
1. Business Writing
2. Creative Writing
3. Claude
4. Gemini
4. Kit
5. YouTube
6. Wordpress
7. Squarespace
8. Twitter
9. Squarespace
10. Dropbox
You will:
1. Help manage my newsletters. I have four! A daily awesome thing, bi-weekly blog post (on www.neil.blog), bi-weekly podcast (www.3books.co), and a monthly book club. You will help source content, linkify, edit, upload to Kit, be ‘first eyes and last eyes’ on everything, etc. You are my helpful second brain and our trust enables everything. (You are also likely a "word nerd" with a list of favorite words somewhere and you are a keen reader who will pick up on this pretty obvious hint to include your favorite 1-3 words, underlined, IN CAPS, are the verrrrrry bottom of your email to me.)
2. Help manage my podcast. You will research guests, help with questions, write show notes, prepare and edit audio / video files and transcripts, be ‘first listener’ and propose (thoughtful, storytelling-creating) edits, brainstorm (always alliterative) titles, etc. (Note: I also have a wonderful podcast editor who you will help manage.)
3. Help manage … other. This is the biggest thing. It's a grab bag full of wild requests. I have ADHD, wild ideas, and send random thoughts at random times. (Note: I do not expect nor desire you to work evenings / weekends and my system with my last super-amazing assistant was I texted her on Signal in evenings / weekends, an app she'd delete off-hours, and only text her on iMessage if something was urgent, which happened like once a month.) What kind of requests??? Uh: “Can you pull anything I’ve written on X for the book we're working plus everything the top 3 global researchers have said on the topic and tell me what the gaps are and how it might fit into the chapter we're writing about Y?", “Can you have books waiting for me in each of these three hotels next week?”, “Can you manage, organize, and send creative gifts to X, Y, and Z?”, “Can you propose three people we should interview on super-niche topic X?”, "Can you edit this garbled audio note I just recorded into a crisp blog post?", etc.
Note this job is largely text-message based — you can be anywhere in the world — and the goal will be for the most efficient, tightest interactions possible. Like I said, I try very, very hard to avoid evening / weekend work (I have four kids!) and so I have no desire to impinge on your evenings / weekends either — unless we are on different time zones or something.
OK, still here????
Do you really want to do this???
You can probably tell I can be a creative mangle sometimes!!!
Remember: Everything in life is a "no or hell yeah" so iff (#excelnerd) this is feeling like a hell yeah then please email me your 1-page max resume in PDF along with your tweet-length (i.e., <280 chars) answers to all the little hidden q's in here PLUS i) What are your 3 most formative books?, ii) What are the last 3 podcast eps you listened to and what'd you get from them?, iii) What's your income trajectory (current income, income at past two jobs) and your income and non-income goals for your next job? iv) What's one problem — preferably a tech problem — you solved for yourself / someone recently and how did you approach it?, v) How do you organize your bookshelf or computer or inbox (pick one), vi) What are any leadership / manager needs or work boundaries you have?, and vii) What are the 3 most glaring typos in this job posting?
Lastly, please make the subject of your email I AM AWESOME and an em dash and then a short alliterative phrase describing yourself and then a second em dash and then the total number of minutes (no decimals) your entire app took you to do (and mention, just bf your favorite words at the bottom bottom the actual time-measuring app / software you used to track this.)
While I feel my own views on AI changing — growing on me lately, like a good fungus? — I want writing, especially my own, to be human-based. There should be zero complete sentences in the email you send me not from your own head. PHrases, words, fine, look stuff up, and, you know, if you think you can use AI and I won't notice / be able to tell, go ahead, try it, but warning: I get so much AI slop and I absolutely hate it and you are the person whose texts I willread more than anyone's except my wife's so I need to love your writing. (Yann Martel gave me a great quote recently — "I don't need AI to help me write cause it would be like having AI have sex for you or eat for you — I'd rather do it myself." Btw, what's the timestamp of that quote on the YT video of our chat and how many seconds did it take for you to find it ... )
One more thing: I loved my last assistant, Sarah. She was a rock star and we worked together two years. She had two simultaneous undergrad degrees from NYU (literature / neuroscience), was a former founder w her own Substack, and while working for me she worked out every day at her gym in Queens AND read like 2 books a week AND wrote a big chunk of her first novel ... before leaving me to go to law school at Fordham. Go Sarah! I never knew when / where she was (like she'd be in entirely different cities or countries) and I never asked. She worked for me exactly 30 hours a week, every week, and we sifted perfectly into each other's lives. She had 138 hours every week to do anything she wanted! I mention this bc she's made a bunch of videos to train you and she's the person (for better and for worse) I have in my head as a best practice. You can see I think this role is perfect for someone super high functioning and multi dimensional ...
So, yeah ... still here???
Really???
Again, I would like this all emailed to me. To be clear: I will not check things on this site. I only want your response emailed me. Last time I did this I got over 900 applications so I apologize in advance if you're in the 99% of people I cannot personally respond to.
This does not mean I don't love you.
I do.
You are absolutely awesome.
You are.
The world is overwhelming and complex and messy and we somehow just connected on a job site?
A sign of what great things may come ...
Thank you,
Neil Pasricha
Qualifications
- Extremely concise and clear writing skills
- Experience with AI and AI agents (which is your fave?) and (also) known as the fastest person at the dinner table to find that old photo everyone's talking about
- Super fast thinker-talker-typer-texter
- Ability to remain calm and clear-minded when giant loads of random tasks come in all at once
Job Type: Freelance
Pay: $50.00 per hour
Benefits:
- Casual dress
- Flexible schedule
- Paid time off
- Work from home
Work Location: Remote
