by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jan 4, 2013 | Delegation, Entrepreneur, Social Media
Welcome to the first week of 2013 and what a productive week it was: new clients, consults and projects!
As a Virtual Assistant, part of my day is content curation and this affords me the opportunity to do quite a bit of reading. While some days it seems like a digital overload and my bandwidth has far exceeded it’s elasticity. I love to find relevant content to put into play or share with my network to help demonstrate the positive growth opportunities that can be achieved via outsourcing.
I am very passionate about it and not just because it is my business, but because it works; because it is true; because there is “science” to prove it. With 168 hours in the work week, it is important to choose your activities and projects that make the most sense for yourself and your business. The Sales Blog said: “Successful people spend their time where they create value. They delegate, eliminate, or defer activities where they cannot create value.”
Three of my favorite topics are time management, productivity and delegating as they all support you, your organization and goals for success. This theme seemed to be very prevalent across many news platforms and blogs this week which further supports the evidence that in order to experience growth, you need these key elements.
Weekly Words of Wisdom
“A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.” Brian Tracy
“As a business owner it can be difficult to let someone else take care of your baby, but it is almost always in the business’s best interest to create a team with diverse and useful skills to improve processes.” Curt Finch
“If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.” Lee Iacocca
“Smart outsourcing means remembering just because I can do something, doesn’t mean I should be doing something.” Trista Harris
“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” Jim Rohn
Weekly Relevant Content
The Productivity Issue Fast Company: an incredible compilation of resource articles
Delegate and Know When to Let Go of Small Business Operations Small Business Trends
30sec Tip: Identify Your Peak Hour of Productivity Life Hacker
4 Fantastic Time Management Quotes & How To Put Them Into Practice Pick the Brain
80% Is Good Enough: Grow Your Business By Delegating Forbes
How To Outsource Your Most Dreaded Tasks Fast Company
My New Productivity Tweaks for 2013 Ray Edwards
These are just a few of the articles that delighted me this week. They truly are eye candy or should I say brain candy for me and further exemplify the clear need for time management, productivity tools (plans) and delegation in order to experience personal and professional growth.
Wishing you a successful and productive 2013.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Dec 2, 2012 | Life Thoughts, Small Business
Smart entrepreneurs plan because they recognize that it will increase their probabilities for achievement. Important issues are less likely to fall through the cracks with formal outlines, processes and action steps. It’s a valuable tool that can make a substantial difference in the success or failure of a business or personal dreams.
Business development is about creating your dream of self-employment and spinning it into reality. A business plan is the document you produce when you take have an idea for a marketable endeavor and work through all the dynamics that will have an influence on the startup, operation, and management of the business.
Formulating your plan will help reduce time-wasting indecision and increase the likelihood of success. Without knowing where you’re going, it’s not really possible to plan, or make inroads toward goal achievement. Take a moment and look around, thinking about all of the things in your present environment, from the chair you sit on, the pen you use, the computer, your car or even the food you eat; they all began with a plan, a blueprint.
Dumb Little Man: ”A mansion will not come out as grand and as breathtaking as it is unless there’s a good plan behind its construction. Same goes with the great and amazing things you want to obtain in your life. Plan, and plan well. Make sure your plan is feasible, doable, and effective. Also, it pays to think and plot an alternative plan or a plan B, in case your initial plan does not work.”
Managing our own lives and businesses is hard enough but without written goals and action steps, we are just going through the motions, yearning for success and growth. It is important to visualize what we want and expect. It is from this starting point that enables us to map out our plan to facilitate action and forward movement.
There are many options to formulating your plan of action, from spreadsheets, mindmaps, flowcharts or just a word document, but whichever tool you choose should be one you will faithfully utilize and implement otherwise, it will be an exercise in futility and there aren’t enough hours in the day to justify wasted time, energy or effort. Your plan can outline all of your goals, action steps, timelines and a To Do list to help drive your dreams to the finish line. c into a reality but instituting a thought out functional strategy will.
How will you launch your inspirations from a concept to a tangible outcome?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Aug 28, 2012 | Entrepreneur, Life Thoughts
Timely commitments speak volumes about your intentions. If you are consistently missing time limits or deadlines, delaying outcomes or otherwise just holding off on completing promised projects, what message are you giving to the recipient?
“When you find someone who you think is an ‘A’ player and effective, you should go back and see if they were an A player and effective previously. And if you can see that he or she was accountable, collaborative and inspiring in his or her previous work, you can expect the same kind of performance going forward.” Jim Schleckser
As business owners, we are inundated with unlimited requests for our time and expertise but when you overcommit or plainly don’t back up your word with actions, you are shortchanging yourself, your clients, partners or colleagues. Consider the nonverbal communication you are sending when you don’t deliver the promised results in the appropriate timeline.
Meeting your demands in timely manner is good service on deliverables. It demonstrates your committed resolve to get the job done; a dedication to responsibility. If you can remember a time of disappointment or frustration when you were waiting for a response, final product, contract or any other form of collateral and you perceived an extensive delay, what thoughts consumed you about the contributor?
“Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”
As said in the Freelance Switch article 14 Essential Tips for Meeting a Deadline, “Your reputation as a freelancer is pretty much the only thing you have to go on — your bread and butter.” As we continue to build and foster relationships, both online and off, your reputation will become a predictor of future business and partnerships.”
While we may hit a few roadblocks in the process: technical issues, data requirements, brain-cramp, logistics, team members faltering, with proper planning, insight and time padding, you should meet or beat every deadline, whether explicitly implied or merely an unspoken exchange of expectations.
When you evaluate your “proficiency” for meeting deadlines, you must also review your level or reasons for procrastination. Putting something off only perpetuates additional anxiety and stress. We all may procrastinate on occasion. It could be a chronic issue for some while for others; it’s only a problem in certain areas of their life. Procrastination is continuously frustrating because it creates a domino effect in wasted time, lost opportunities, disappointing work performance, and generally a bad perceived feeling of self.
Procrastinating allows less important tasks to usurp your time and space when you should be more focused on projects that take a higher precedence. Most people don’t have a problem finding time for the things they want to do, but once a task is presumed challenging, time consuming, or boring, procrastination takes over.
If procrastination produces negative results, then why do we allow this behavior? Procrastinating actually reinforces itself in two ways. 1. It is difficult for most to institute change or accept that a real change is required. We tend to divert our attention away from a task to do something we want to do, something that is more desirable. 2. Procrastination can help to feed ego when the deadlines are met at the very last minute and you or others pat yourself on the back for getting it done. If the project isn’t as acceptable as you had wanted, you blame it on time restraints. Either way, you are reinforcing the habit of putting things off.
University of Cambridge states: “Often we try to disguise our avoidance by being very busy doing things that may be interesting, and even useful, but don’t contribute towards the main goal – even doing something we normally hate – rather than writing, for example, just before an essay deadline!”
Recognizing your behaviors and tuning into the purposes will guide your future actions and reactions. Learn what drives you and if change is needed, then start with simple steps. Persevere, knowing that change is a positive tool affecting your personal and professional relationships.
- Honor your words, unspoken guarantees and anticipated recipient results
- Plan your time and projects with dated action steps
- If required, seek assistance early on, don’t wait until the last hour
- Over deliver
- Don’t keep someone waiting or wondering
- Correspond and update as needed
Harvey Mckay: “Deadlines aren’t bad. They help you organize your time. They help you set priorities. They make you get going when you might not feel like it. And meeting deadlines successfully is one of the best motivating factors out there.”
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | May 29, 2012 | Entrepreneur
Follow your passion. We all hear that but what does it take to make your dreams come true?
Blood, sweat and tears. Oh my!
As children we may have dreamed the biggest dreams, the treasures of life and what we wanted for our future. As our life unfolded and we matured, that may have evolved into a different vision. Our personal lives and experiences, shaped and molded us on our journey, helping us to discover what we are truly made of. We learned lessons along the way, accepted what we could not change, while continuing with additional drivers toward our goals. We saw what we wanted and we took every step, every measure, to ensure our pot of gold was within reach.
Steve Jobs: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Richard Branson: “My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long University education that I never had – everyday I’m learning something new.”
Oprah Winfrey: “Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.”
Robert Collier: “The great successful men of the world have used their imagination? They think ahead and create their mental picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building – steadily building.”
Brian Tracy: “Personal development is your springboard to personal excellence. Ongoing, continuous, non-stop personal development literally assures you that there is no limit to what you can accomplish.”
Linda Chandler: Think P.I.G. – that’s my motto. P stands for Persistence, I stands for Integrity, and G stands for Guts. These are the ingredients for a successful business and a successful life.”
Anita Roddick: “I have always found that my view of success has been iconoclastic: success to me is not about money or status or fame, its about finding a livelihood that brings me joy and self-sufficiency and a sense of contributing to the world.”
Warren Buffett: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
Jim Rohn: “Formal education will make you a living, self education will make you a fortune.”
Michael Gerber: “The entrepreneur is not really interested in doing the work; he is interested in creating the way the company operates. In that regard, the entrepreneur is an inventor. He or she loves to invent, but does not love to manufacture or sell or distribute what he or she invents.”
Biz Stone: “Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.”
Walt Disney: “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
What are your motivators?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | May 21, 2012 | Delegation, Organization
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.
As a technologically in-tune society, we must learn to filter the urgency of our incoming communications in order to remain dedicated 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.
Computerworld reports that we are now living in a world of “interruption technology.”
Learning to unplug and tune out can present a challenge for many, but as an entrepreneur, it is paramount to your success, effectiveness and time management. Researchers at the University of Kent in Australia monitored the eye movements of 100 people using an eyeball-tracking camera. They asked the participants to read a section of text on a computer screen, before disturbing them with one-minute messages – like phone calls. The research subjects were then told to resume the original reading, while the eye-tracking camera analyzed how they did so. The investigators discovered that there was an average 17% increase in the total time it took to read the whole passage on the screen.
Psychology lecturer Ulrich Weger was quoted as saying: “I wasted time by reading emails whenever they came into my inbox. I noticed that once I had started reading the name of the sender, I read the first line of the text. Once I mastered that, I continued reading the entire message, and once I got to that point, I felt compelled to respond because there was no point in leaving an already half-finished task. Then sometimes I needed extra information to answer the message, so had to add other tasks.” Which meant it was harder to get back to the original task.
Now just imagine all of the alerts and communications you receive during the day; probably much more than what was instituted in the above research. If there was a 17% increase in the length of time it took to read the passage, can you imagine how your output is affected with a continual barrage of steady disturbances?
Here are a few tips to assist you in halting unnecessary diversions:
- 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 earbuds
- 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
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 disturbances.
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.
How do you tune out and limit distractions?
