Posted by Paige on July 20, 2011 at 12:06 pm
In a world where technology changes come and go at the speed of a sonic boom, there is one skill that all others depend on and that never becomes outdated – organizational skills. It is so easy to become distracted, lose focus, and end up in the panicked “fight or flight” mode to achieve a deadline. In order to avoid that feeling of being overwhelmed here are 5 tips to start you down the joyful road to organization.
5 Ways To Get More Done
- Avoid interruption: If possible, leave your phone on voice mail during times you have scheduled to work on projects. If you have a private office, close your door. You might even place a sign saying something like “Hard at Work: Please Come Back Later.” If you are interrupted, help keep the interruption short by remaining task-oriented.
- Schedule time to make phone calls and return e-mail. When you leave a phone message, list times that you will be available by phone. Ask the other party to do the same – it will save you both a lot of time that would otherwise be spent on everyone’s favorite game, phone tag. Also, avoid checking your voice mail and e-mail frequently. Instead, review them at scheduled intervals during the day.
- Plan stress breaks throughout the day. Make sure you give yourself a break! Working to the point of total brain fatigue and muscle tension will never do you any good. Stretch, take some deep breaths, and go out to get your lunch, call your kids – do something to give yourself a little break. If you’d like, you can schedule these breaks as a reward for when you’ve finished a particular chore.
- Appreciate your own approach. Just as we are all different in other ways, we all have diverse organizational styles. Keep in mind that you have gotten where you are today because of whom you are and what you have accomplished. Employ improved organizational skills to enhance your personal style, not change it. Getting organized should make you feel good, not burdened.
- Stick to your plan. The best-laid plans often fall victim to their makers. While spontaneity is important, there is a fine line between it and plain procrastination. Once you’ve come up with a good plan for tackling a task, stay with it. Only you can prevent yourself from wavering.
Believe me, I understand how hard it is to ignore the phone or not leave your email up at all times so that you can see the messages as they come in. Once you finally convince yourself that you aren’t going to lose your clients because you don’t answer them immediately, you’ll discover at least two amazing things. The first is that once your clients get used to the fact that you answer emails or calls at a set time each day throughout the day, they will likely discover that it helps them become more organized as well. In fact most of my clients utilize this same trick in order to keep organized with their business priorities. The second thing you’ll notice is a completely unintended (but wonderful) side effect – not only will you accomplish more work in the day but you will do a better job at it. You will able to focus in on your task at the exclusion of all other distractions and this will make a world of difference in the work you put out.
Until next time . . .
Write On!
Paige
http://www.paigejackson.com/business
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Posted by Paige on July 17, 2011 at 11:53 am
If you’ve already jumped on the virtual assistant (VA) bandwagon, you’ve probably started experiencing the benefits everyone’s been promising – the flexible hours, the convenience of working from home and all that. You feel, though, as if you’re not making enough. There was that one VA who claimed she makes around $60,000 a year providing VA services. Why then are you making far less money than she is?
In case your paycheck is not living up to either your or the statistics’ expectations, read on to find out how you can increase the money you earn from home.
Please the Boss
Alright, so you technically don’t have a boss when you’re a virtual assistant. If you think about it, though, your client is as close to a boss as anybody can get. Your client dictates the terms of your contract. Your client signs your checks and sets your tasks and deadlines.
Thus, if you want to maximize your earnings as a VA, you have to make sure that every single one of your clients – if you have more than one, that is – is happy. To this end, you should pay attention to the small details. Perhaps, you can insert time stamps in transcription files to make looking for certain segments easier. Maybe you can format word documents in such a way that they’d be very easy to read and upload.
The small details are the things that get noticed. For a little extra effort on your part, you could gain leverage when negotiating your rates, your schedule or your workload.
Streamline Your Work Strategy
If it’s true that time is money, then you can maximize your earnings by maximizing (not increasing) the time you’ve allotted for work. This can be done by, say, downloading the next batch of work while you’re working on the current one on the word processor. This will be an extremely helpful strategy if you’re working on a project like transcribing a conference that involves a lot of file transferring.
You can also maximize your time by using the proper equipment. The term ‘proper equipment’ could mean anything from a clipboard to a transcription pedal, depending on what work you’re doing. Analyze how you could save even a few seconds of your time. All of these ‘few seconds’ will add up and allow you to do more work (and consequently earn more money) in the same amount of time. Getting more things done in a shorter time will also please your client because it shows that you’re efficient and committed to your job as a virtual assistant.
Waste as Little Money as Possible
If you are working from home, it’s sure you are already saving money. After all, you’re cutting down on transportation and food expenses. However, there are costs involved in being a VA as well. Costs like fund transfer fees (when your clients send you payments) and costs for consumables like ink and paper could add up to a significant sum.
Try to minimize any wastage of money. Find a payment method that costs the least fund transfer fees. Perhaps you can set up an account with your client’s bank so that there would be no transaction fees involved in money transfers. As for office resources, you just need to be more mindful of how you use them so you can make them last as long as possible.
Admittedly, trying to earn more money from being a virtual assistant requires a lot of time working and planning. The time you spend strategizing, planning and doing value added services is time that could have been spent working and earning. However, you should not look at it as time wasted. Rather, you should consider it to be an investment for the long term. Try the above mentioned steps and you’ll see that you can earn more money while doing the same amount of work or while using the same amount of time.
Until next time …
Write On!
Paige
http://www.paigejackson.com/business
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