by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Feb 4, 2014 | Productivity, Small Business, Time Management
You can’t “manage” your time but you can learn to better manage yourself. “Time management” takes discipline and commitment. There are many hindrances to time management but they all relate back to how you regulate your life and productivity levels. It is a matter of the daily choices you make and how you set your priorities. If something is that important to you, then you will get it done; otherwise, you will make excuses. Your success depends on getting the most out of each day.
We seem to think we have so little time to effectively manage our days and have some semblance of work life balance. You too want to get more things accomplished while the clock keeps ticking and more tasks seem to pile up. It can take all of the discipline you can muster to tune out the influx of information coming at you. Time can be an elusive mystery when you are in a constant struggle to find more of it, so it is up to you to invest in your time, in your life, in your business.
“People are always trying to find ways to save more money, but saving time may be the true mark of success.” Geoff Williams
Get a handle on your time, your interruptions, your distractions and your data overload. The first step toward success is to be cognizant of the level of disturbances which you allow into your day. It could revolve around the daily notifications you receive regarding text messages, emails, news alerts, phone calls or any other immediate disruption that diverts your focus from the task at hand. Learn to be fully engaged with whatever you are working on and give it 100% of your focus, otherwise, it may only get half done or be done inefficiently. Decide what is most critical and stop multi-tasking. It diminishes your productivity, may change your brain chemistry and increase your error rate.
Another substantial detraction from your efficiency level is the organization of your office space. When you create a more structured environment you become more efficient and effective. You are no longer scrambling to locate important papers, files, emails or even your keys. Your time management increases as does your personal and professional productivity. Your setting is not just about physical space but mental as well. If you reside in chaos or mayhem, it does transmit into your work habits and daily living.
Being busy, doesn’t equate to being productive. You could be wasting your time and energy doing menial tasks or simply procrastinating. Focus on real work that gets you closer to your goals. Ask yourself, “Does this serve my goals? Is it getting me closer to completion?”
“When we’re busy, we see that as being productive, when productive is really narrowing down what we need to do.” Cathy Sexton, time management specialist.
Time Management:
When you learn to manage yourself, you will better manage your time.
- Turn off notifications
- Set priorities and goals
- Don’t procrastinate
- Time block your day and schedule
- Organize your data
- Institute systems and processes
- Develop a routine
- Set boundaries
- Use your calendar for appointments and To Dos
- Use action steps for items on your To Do list
- Stop multi-tasking
- Keep your workspace orderly
- Use news aggregators for your RSS feeds
- Automate social postings
- Schedule time to engage in social media and stick to it
- Check email at specific intervals
- Learn to say no
- Get appropriate amounts of sleep
- Know your most productive time of day
- Delegate
“He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign.” Victor Hugo
What steps are you ready to implement in order to become more productive and manage your time? Sound off!!
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 15, 2014 | Organization, Small Business, Social Media
You know the intrinsic value and sheer magnitude of having an online presence and creating a community but what do you do with it?
How do you do it?
Do you have a method to your madness or are you the willy nilly type posting, commenting and further acting like a crazed JuMpInG bEaN?
Slow down a bit and take stock of your social platforms, goals and each individual audience.
And don’t just go over it in your head. WRITE it down.
Whether you engage on one social channel or 10, you should have an idea of what you are doing and why.
Know where YOUR audience is.
“Social media is a smart selling tool only if your clients and prospects are using social media.” Colleen Francis
Don’t spread yourself too thin or your quality of content and engagement will suffer. THIS will hurt your brand image and reputation. You are here to build. To construct your digital universe and connections not to destroy them with a wrecking ball.
Time and patience is an absolute must. Don’t expect to have people clamoring all over you because you pushed out a few posts. Sure, you may feel pride and accomplishment but, your online networking is about developing relationships and brand awareness.
Real, honest relationships with a foundation of engagement, not self-promotion. Your consistency and frequency of remarkable content will cultivate you as an authority; a thought leader in your field.
To put it simply, be the person you would like to meet and do business with. What attracts you to others? What entices you to listen and pay attention? Emulate that.
If you’re not sure where to begin, check out this infographic from TopDog Social Media in 25+ Tasks For Your Social Media Strategy There are some very basic tasks that you should be working on every day in each of your social networks. This image displays the bare minimum.
While these three platforms represent just a small nibble of your full dining experience, never stop reading and educating yourself. The climate, dynamics, algorithms and “rules” are always changing.
Research the staggering statistics on social media growth, the B2B and B2C environment, the money spent on social media teams to ensure companies are involved, listening, engaged and troubleshooting, be amazed with the tremendous increase in content marketing and curation. This is where it is at and if you are not disseminating and curating, you may get lost in the vast amount of digital noise. You could become just another fly on the wall. Don’t get swatted. Get educated.
Here’s a little food for thought to motivate and inspire your online activity.
What You Absolutely Need To Know About Content Marketing
10 Awesome Infographics to Guide your Marketing Plan for 2014
Get better social media results in 2014: 3 strategies that will up your game
Social Media Audit: How to use tools to audit social media
The 3 Essential Elements of Any Successful Social Media Marketing Strategy
Is Solution Selling Dead? The 2014 Content Marketing Imperative
Understand your social media goals and carefully plan your strategy, writing for your audience and their needs to create a tight and authentic community of brand ambassadors, colleagues, friends and customers.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Dec 23, 2013 | Communication, Organization, Time Management
The expansion of the digital global office is not just working in your pajamas and drinking coffee all day. It is an efficient and productive place of business to business operations. There has been a constant increase in the number of remote or work from home opportunities and it will only continue to escalate. It gives your business the benefit of assembling a top notch team of professionals, working in a variety of time zones, contributing to your growth and success.
At last count, that amounted to some 3.3 million people working remotely (not including the self-employed or unpaid volunteers), or 2.6% of the U.S. employee workforce. Global Workplace Analytics
Operating a virtual office can be simplified through utilization of many of the online/open-source productivity and collaborative tools ensuring a connected global workforce. Creating a virtual team is a cost effective and productive avenue to manage your business, maintain a low overhead; thereby increasing your profit margin.
Working remotely offers a more versatile environment, increased work/life balance, varied working hours, reduced stress, no commute and enhanced knowledge of technology.
While members of your virtual team may not meet face to face very frequently, they do regularly interact online for discussions, brain-storming and training sessions, requiring a variety of tools to enhance communications, collaborative efforts and teamwork. Effective communications, transparency and feedback are the building blocks of your successful remote environment. Email and text are two of today’s most widely used “communication” tools but remember, a phone call or video chat offers more of the personal nuances and relationship builders within your virtual community.
The applications shown below are just a minute sampling of the available basic online solutions, helping you to manage your remote office. Source the ones that best suit your present needs as well as those that will support your corporate growth and future goals.
JUST THE BASICS: 14 Tools for a Productive Virtual Team
- Google Docs: office suite of online collaborative tools to create/share documents and forms
- Google Calendar: Web-based calendar to share and collaborate with your team
- Genbook: online calendar scheduling allowing colleagues and prospects to schedule appointments directly with you instead of continual back and forth emails
- SKYPE: VOiP for live chats, video or IMs. Also offers low cost calling options
- Viber: free calls, text and file sharing to other Viber users over WiFi or 3G. They also offer low cost calling options for non-Viber users
- Google Hangouts: group calls, video conferencing, file sharing, share on YouTube
- Mighty Text: simple tool to text from your computer and have all messages sync to your phone and other technologies. It even alerts you to incoming calls
- Ring Central: cloud based phone system – nationwide calling and fax
- JoinMe: screen sharing, send files, and share control
- Free Conference: set up free conference calls up to 150 attendees with call recording
- AnyMeeting: full featured online FREE meetings up to 200 attendees, video broadcasting, screen sharing, ext surveys, recording, invitations and more
- DropBox: free file storage, share with colleagues/friends. Simplifies sending or sharing of large documents that most mail clients are unable to accommodate. They offer two-step verification as an added security measure
- TeamBox: online project collaboration/management to streamline conversations and documents, keeping them in one central location.
- Awesome Screenshot: take full screen or partial screenshots: edit, annotate, save or send
Just do your due diligence to ensure the features and benefits match your goals and collaborative requirements.
- Work smarter, not harder.
- Embrace the cloud.
- Stay connected with your team.
- Foster a community of trust and openness.
- Remember to check-in weekly.
- Don’t simply rely on texting and emails.
- Use chat tools.
- Create online communities for your team
- Continue to research and review other collaborative tools.
When working with your virtual team:
What tools or applications do you find most effective?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Nov 5, 2013 | Entrepreneur, Productivity, Time Management
image credit: spokesman.com
Time management is always a hot topic as we seem to think we have so little time to effectively manage our days and have some semblance of work life balance. You too want to get more things accomplished while the clock keeps ticking and more tasks seem to pile up.
What can you do? Get a handle on your time, your interruptions and your distractions. Thanks to technology and the digital world, we are always connected and being bombarded with data overload. Crush the chaos. It can take all of the discipline you can muster to tune out the influx of information coming at you. Time can be an elusive mystery when you are in a constant struggle to find more of it, so it is up to you to invest in your time, in your life, in your business. The best thing you can do is learn to manage yourself to better manage your time. “Choice management.”
We are repeatedly bombarded by data overload via our push notifications, social media notices, text messages, phone calls, e-mails, Skype chats and news alerts on a daily basis. It is marvelous to always be connected, in touch and just a mere keystroke away. You are never alone and continuously up to date in both your personal and professional life. But there is a hitch and that is the negative impact it has on our concentration and stress levels. It hurts our brains!!
As a technologically in-tune society, we must learn to filter the urgency of our incoming communications in order to remain devoted to the tasks at hand. The constant interruptions have a pronounced impact on our productivity and efficiency level, never mind time management. If we continue to allow outside distractions to compete for our time and focus, we are unable to give our absolute attention to our present moment and activities. Interruptions because of too much data in the workplace costs US businesses $650 billion a year!
Computerworld reports that we are now living in a world of “interruption technology.”
In a 2012 study by The University of California, Irvine and the US Army, it was found that frequent email checkers were less productive, less focused and more stressed. On average, these types of email users averaged 37 switched windows per hour compared to a non-email checkers who only switched 18 times per hour. The second group of workers engaged more deeply with teammates, were focused on their tasks, increased their productivity and were less stressed.
Limit Distractions
- Schedule time on your calendar to tune out and turn off
- Let others know you are “off limits” during certain working hours
- Close the door or put on ear buds
- Silence your Smartphone
- Just say NO to social media! (Facebook and Twitter updates are always accessible).
- Shutdown everything that notifies you of an alert, sound, or other announcement (your e-mail will still be waiting for you).
- COMMIT to your decision to focus and jump in with gusto
- Once your project is completed, come up for air, stretch, respond to voicemails, text messages and other communications.
- Grab an energy snack to refuel for your next session
- Hide your tech gadgets
Remember, being offline is an industrious act toward completing your projects, achieving your goals and remaining on task. You will see a considerable increase in your productivity as you continue to shield yourself from outside disruptions and digital noise or as Stewart Baines says: “infobesity.”
Turning off isn’t just for the business world. We are electronically tethered 24/7 and this crosses into our personal boundaries. It becomes too much when we allow technology to consume our time and energy away from the present moment, sacrificing the things that truly matter. In a consumer survey last year, Qualcomm found that 37% of people use their phones while attending a party, 36% do so while eating at a restaurant and 35% use their phones while playing with their children.
Life is available only in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply. Thich Nhat Hanh
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Sep 19, 2013 | Time Management
Time management is always a hot topic as we seem to think we have so little time to effectively manage our days and have some semblance of work life balance. You too want to get more things accomplished while the clock keeps ticking and more tasks seem to pile up.
What can you do? Get a handle on your time, your interruptions and your distractions. Thanks to technology and the digital world, we are always connected and being bombarded with data overload. Crush the chaos. It can take all of the discipline you can muster to tune out the influx of information coming at you. Time can be an elusive mystery when you are in a constant struggle to find more of it, so it is up to you to invest in your time, in your life, in your business. The best thing you can do is learn to manage yourself to better manage your time. “Choice management.”
Determine where you want to be and who you want to be when you grow up and then, start planning.
4 Steps to Effective Time Management
Step One
Release your tie to your inbox.
It seems so simple, yet as soon as a notification pops up, off we go. Let’s see what came in. Every email does not need to create a sense of urgency. By continually monitoring your Smartphone and inbox, you generate a stop/start cycle in your work. It distracts you from your most current focus. You can let it go. Schedule specific times during the day to read emails. You can create an autoresponder letting your senders know the times you will be checking your email. You can also apply this to your phone, text messages and other IMs. Each time you stop to read a new message, you not only interrupt your work flow and concentration, but you tack on more time to complete a project, thereby decreasing your efficiency and productivity.
You must manage your Blackberry; do not let it manage you. Many executives check their smartphones throughout meetings and during off-hours. This is not good for concentration, and has a negative impact on decision making. Use it only in bursts: check emails for an hour or so and then put it away so you can focus on the task at hand. Richard Branson
Step Two
Have a plan!! A blueprint for success
Your outline or goal sheet will help to give you a roadmap to accomplish your objectives. When you don’t create a plan or at least a daily To Do list at minimum, your days are spent “willy nilly,” putting out fires, managing what you can remember, they daily influx of projects or the To Dos that are most current. You need a clear direction and plan, outlining your short term and long term goals for success enabling you to prioritize your tasks, projects and desired outcomes. You don’t want to wander aimlessly and miss an important oasis.
Prioritizing is the root of all small business evil. You must take the time to sit down and prioritize your day. Ideally before you leave the office, have a list written for the next day. Once you have a priority of daily tasks being organized becomes easy. Steve Freeman
Step Three
Tomorrow never comes! Tackle it now.
Procrastination is a killer of all things; don’t be fooled by putting something off until you feel like it or think there is a better time to finish up. The time is now, not later. Does your procrastination resemble a little fun on Pinterest, trolling Facebook profiles and your news feed or other types of busy work? Well, just stop right now and realize what you aren’t accomplishing. You are setting yourself up for doom and gloom because when you take the time to review your completed list, nothing got done or was only half managed. Set a To Do timer and commit to it. Forget the non-essentials, your time robbers and FOCUS!! Know what is important and why. Make your list with action steps and stick to it. Create task reminders. Use whatever system works for you, but use a system.
Step Four
Organize!
Organization enhances your time management and productivity. If you have to consistently search for documents,you are wasting your valuable time. File documents, emails, bookmark websites, make lists of your logins and remember everything has a place so keep it there. The more time you spend searching for things, the more time you lose.
You can learn to be more efficient in your time management which will in turn fire up your productivity.
What steps will you institute today?
