When you work as a virtual assistant, it is imperative that your day is productive. When I am balancing my business and the work for other companies, it crucial that I stay on my game regarding my productivity.I won't lie I'm a sucker when it comes to articles on productivity. I'm sucked in like a vacuum. I have a pretty solid productivity practice in place. However, productivity is a skill that I am working on fine tuning all the time.
When you work as a virtual assistant, it is imperative that your day is productive. When I am balancing my business and the work for other companies, it crucial that I stay on my game regarding my productivity.
Personal Best
Here are a few of my personal best productivity practices that I use on the daily. How many of these do you use?
Check email only 3 times daily
I only check my email three times a day. Morning, Afternoon and end of the day when I am planning for the next day. To avoid distracting incoming notification, I close my email. Trust me I struggle with it, but I do it anyway. I've previously talked about inbox zero, each time my inbox is zero when I sign out.
Work on one task at a time
I stay focused on only one task. It's vital to me that my clients get every cent's worth. I do not bounce back and forth. I focus on one project at a time.
Get a timer
I set a timer. Some days I am laser focused, and I can put my head down for 50 minutes at a time with only a 5-minute break. But hey, I am a mother of three extremely active children. Depending on how much we had to go to the evening before I may not have the same focus. You know what that's okay. On those days I keep my sprints shorter and do not work as long. They may only be 25 minutes with 5 minutes off.
Schedule it
I schedule everything in my day and leave open time for the unexpected. Because I know that I will have the unexpected come up, that is a given. When I am lucky, and nothing comes up, bet you're not surprised that I can find something to fill that time.
What are your personal best productivity practices? Tell me about them in the comment section below.
Psst… I use a system of Google calendar, teamwork and my bullet journal on the daily. For fun, I created this example bullet journal page.
Get writing this is what I have been telling myself all week. Just start and an idea will come to you. I sit down and still I am not getting any grand ideas to write about this week on the blog. Do you run into those roadblocks? If so, how do you overcome them?
I repeat to myself, just start and the rest will follow. But the very next thought is Oh, but I really should ____.
Procrastinate, me?
What is your go-to method? Just start or do you procrastinate until it is waaaaaay too close to the deadline or past the deadline? We all have ways of handling these situations and some better than others. How do we grow out of these habits that get the best for us? How do I force my mind to just start when I do not want to get going? It's not that I procrastinate on much, but writing is one of those things that I can find something better to do. I will believe whatever I tell myself right? If I listen to that voice that says this can wait, I would never have a word written.
Shh… Procrastination voice
What did I do to overcome the procrastination voice? I instead listened to the voice that was telling me to just sit down and do it. I made it a bit easier by setting a timer for 10 minutes. Typing whatever came out of my head. Easing into this and setting the timer helped to stop my feeling of overwhelm that was causing my procrastination. It just started with 10 minutes to see what would come out. If I am not a fan of what I wrote, whatever it was 10 minutes I got this. Besides that is be better than staring at a computer screen for an hour.
It's okay
When it comes down to it, I give myself permission to do this once in a while. Not day in and day out. Boy, I won't get anything done if I listened to my procrastination voice creating the schedule. Next, to try the 10-minute timer on, oh yes the list of all the things I need to get done around the house.
Does opening your email turn into a time drain? With so much of our communication revolving around email, it is easy to watch your time go down the drain as you work in your inbox. I completely understand as I too get into that situation. I open my inbox and next thing I know I have lost two hours with little to nothing to show for my time.
Do you receive a large amount of promotional emails? Do you still want to receive these emails? Is the offerings from the company no longer valid to you? I understand as my children grow so do their interests.
Here are a few simple things that I have put in place, they may work for you too.
Unroll.me
Unroll.me is a service that lets you unsubscribe in on click to various emails! It also gives an option to have those emails rolled up into one email and sent in a group message for easy skimming in a central location.
Watch here for an explanation.
Cleaning and Organizing your Inbox
This one is a bit more time-consuming and overwhelming if not done correctly. Do you have folder and categories set up in your email? If not, you may want to consider creating folders for the items that you may need again.
Are you combining to fewer inboxes? Over time I have gathered four different email addresses. I have all of these combined into one email client. Giving me only one inbox to go through.
Instead of having my email open all day, I spend time morning, midday and evening going over email. Still, I will have days that I spend too much time with email. It just happens.
Dave Crenshaw is a great resource for email management ideas. He is an author, speaker and business coach. If you have a Lynda.com membership, he has a number of training courses that are worth watching. If you don't have a Lynda.com account no worries, he has a great blog too! Here is one on How to Detox your Overstuffed Email Inbox.
I am working to bring my email inbox to zero as Dave encourages once per week. It may be only for a split second, but that split second feels wonderful! I wish for you to also feel this split second of joy. I hope these suggestions help with the email time drain. Good luck.
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Email a Time Drain?