I write this from under the awning of a waterfront restaurant in Athens, Greece.

Looking over calm blue water dotted by white sailboats, I wonder about the island of Ios, where I'm headed in two hours. It's my first time in the Aegean Sea, and I'm not carrying a cellphone. On purpose.

Emergencies? There won't be any.

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I have a virtual assistant in Vancouver who is clearing my inbox as I type, converting the hundreds of e-mail messages I receive each day into one daily 10-minute phone call, via Skype, for items to which she can't respond with pre-set rules and templates. My physical mail is being forwarded to a start-up that scans non-junk mail and then e-mails time-sensitive documents to me as PDFs.

Thirteen time zones away, Somya and his team of Indian MBAs are managing my Facebook and other profile pages for $4 per hour. All is well with the world. There are no manufactured emergencies, just breathing room to focus on feta and wine before returning to San Francisco in 10 days, refreshed and ready for new projects.

The science fiction writer who coined the term "cyberspace" in 1984, William Gibson, once said: "The future is already here--it's just unevenly distributed."

In the 1990s, pulling out a brick-sized cellphone in front of friends was sure to provoke smirks and questions like "Who are you, the president?" In 2008, not having a cellphone will likely earn you confused looks and references to the Amish.

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The future of personal outsourcing is already here, but it's in rough form. As one of my readers observed via Twitter: "In the old days, if you wanted a house--build it. Food? Harvest it. In 25 years, personal outsourcing will need no name, it will just be."

Based on the fast pace of technological change between 1998 and 2008, I don't think it will take 25 years.

Let's imagine one version of 2018.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has issued an official statement concerning the impact of Attention-Deficit Trait--when over-stimulating workplaces dehabilitates employees' efficiency and productivity--on a declining GDP, and even the Big 5 accounting firms have established divisions for Certified Information Managers. Personal outsourcing has matured and consolidated, adopting a new name in the process.

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Recognised as adult-onset attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADT has similar biochemical symptoms to bi-phasic depression and has created a trillion-dollar market for the pharmaceutical companies that helped label and publicise it. Developers in India lead the pack with a third-generation medication that combines features of the stimulant drug modafinil with serotonin reuptake inhibitors traditionally used to treat depression. Its user base exceeds 250 million worldwide.

Hiring a CIM for e-mail filtering, scheduling and related information management is now as common as hiring a CPA for your taxes, and the former comes complete with the standardised certification, codified common practices and disbarment procedures that consumers demand.

There is more good news.

Despite a 40 per cent drop in the value of North American currency against the euro since 2012, U.S. unemployment rates have been dropping for seven consecutive quarters.

Chinese private enterprise, the second-largest owner of natural resources in both South America and Canada (after the Chinese government), encompasses the largest non-native population of fluent English speakers in the world. And they all need virtual assistants.

Back to 2008: Personal outsourcing is still considered cutting-edge, but that doesn't make it ineffective. When planned properly, personal outsourcing can deliver 10 to 20 hours of free time per week with a simultaneous increase in work output.

Need someone on New York time? Find a team in Argentina through Elance. Want to e-mail a 10-hour project at 5 p.m. and have it completed in your inbox the next morning? Send it to AskSunday in India and have them work on it while you sleep.

You don't have to wait for the future to enjoy the benefits.

Timothy Ferriss is a guest lecturer at Princeton University in high-tech entrepreneurship and author of New York Times bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek.