Five Top Tips to keeping on track
We all know that the key to success in anything involves planning – A friend of mine often quotes “Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance” or “Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail”
As a Virtual PA and working with numerous clients, it’s crucial that I plan and am organised. So I thought I would share my top 5 tips…
- Lists – I start my week by writing a list of work needed for each client. By writing everything down, it makes it more visual and achievable there’s nothing worse than going through everything in your mind, you’re bound to forget something. So sit and tip all the words out of your head and onto paper
- Vision Boards – Planning for the future is brilliant and can be really exciting but sometimes trying to visualize it can seem really daunting. Get a whiteboard, large piece of paper or I use the ‘magic whiteboard‘, stick it to your wall and draw/write it out, draw your ‘mountain of achievements’ and mark off what you want to achieve to certain timelines.
- Schedule – Review your day ahead and decide what will take the longest to achieve, plan your day in blocks. Categorize similar tasks together, deal with emails, make calls and bulk them together, once you’re in the swing of doing something, you’ll get through the list a lot quicker and more efficiently
- Prioritize – Have you deadlines? Do some tasks have to be done today whilst some can wait until later? Use highlighters/red pens to make these stand out – each time you look at the list, you’ll notice them & remember……colour is a great way to brighten your day too !
- Know your limits – It’s easy to write a list and make it look pretty with bright pens, but if there is too much work for you to complete then there is little point in writing it ! Consider what you can achieve, is it realistic? Have you got the tools to do the job? This includes people, can you delegate? If you have staff then what can they do to help you? If you’re a Sole-Trader/Small Business, can you out-source? If you already utilize the skills of a VA, send them the list and ask them to complete the tasks that you don’t have time to/aren’t best skilled to or consider giving them a regular weekly list
Take a look at our services page to see some of the tasks we currently complete for our clients.
Why not comment below on how you plan your workload – it might help somebody else !
Happy Planning
