Personal

In your personal advice, if you’re reasonably affluent, spend money to recover time. Some examples:

  1. Get a Roomba (or similar robot vacuum).
  2. Hire a cleaning person to come regularly.

Professional

When I’m looking to work with someone, I’m looking for, in order:

  1. They do what they say they’re going to do (very difficult to assess in an interview).
  2. They have demonstrated the ability to get the tasks done that I want them to get done.
  3. They’ll be reasonably pleasant to work with.

Nowhere on here is “is really smart” or “went to a fancy school.” These can be convenient proxies, but ultimately, I’d take someone who gets work done and is reliable 10 times out of 10.