Productivity Tips for the Scatter-Brained Virtual Assistant
January 25, 2008
It’s 11:45 AM and you’re surfing around your RSS feed reader. Before that, you laid on the floor with your dog, you checked your personal Facebook account, you made some breakfast, you checked your e-mail but haven’t answered any yet, you wrote out some ideas for future blog posts and you made yourself a coffee.
You glance at the clock and feel frustration and anger at yourself for wasting so much damn time and energy on nothing productive (although, I’ll give you something - making a coffee for me is definitely productive!)
So, where did the time go and why does this happen to you day after day?
It’s because working from home means you have NO structure. There isn’t someone looking over your shoulder and you aren’t in business attire in a stuffy cubicle where you work to keep your mind off of how long you need to stay there. Your day is wide open for you to do whatever you want and you do what you want.
Becoming a super successful virtual assistant means cutting down on the non-productive things you do every day.
It’s true! I bill my clients, on average, eight-ten hours per day. My assistants are also billing between four and six hours per day. Every day, on top of client work, I am marketing my business, managing this coaching practice, taking client calls and balancing a personal life.
How do I do it? I stay focused. Focus for me is the number one reason that I have experienced such rapid, amazing success in such a short time. So, here are a few times for you scatter-brained VAs…
- Set a timer. I’m not kidding! What I do is sit down at my desk with my Red Hot Copy chicken timer and I say, “Ok, for the next 30 minutes, I am going to work only on client X stuff” and then I do. When the timer goes off, I reset it for the next client. I spend the day counting down intervals of time until I have at least eight hours of billable work in.
- Make a list. I use Basecamp to manage my to-dos but if you don’t want to pay for something, get a notebook! It’ll save your sanity if you know what you want / need to accomplish every single day.
- Think of the almighty dollar. This one sounds funny but it’s so true. If you think every single day, “How much can I earn today?” and you get motivated by increasing your income, you will! Remember, one of the Laws of Attraction state that what you put attention toward sees results so get your mind on raising those billable hours and creating more income for yourself!
What else do you do to stay on-task?
Technorati Tags: Virtual assistant, virtual assistance, VA, Erin Blaskie, The VA Coach, productivity, setting a timer, increasing income, staying focused, focus, productive, Laws of Attraction
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2 Responses to “Productivity Tips for the Scatter-Brained Virtual Assistant”
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Wow - in so many ways this is me! What an excellent post that I am sure 99.9% of VAs can relate too.
Definitely puts things into perspective.
Thanks again for always providing great advice!
Trina Lamarche
http://www.efficientva.com
Use Time59 (www.time59.com) to bill your clients. Just enter your time and expenses. Time59 does the math, creates the invoices, and keeps everything perfectly organized.