Are you wasting your time?

If I could tell you, that there´s a way to save you time, energy, and mental space when it comes to job tasks. How much would you be ready to pay for it?

Let me let you into a little secret. It exists. It´s simple. And it´s free. And most probably you have heard about it many times before, but never gave it enough importance.

Automation is the solution to so many of the time-stealing issues and sleepless nights caused by forgetting something important.

As an Assistant, you have a lot of tasks on your hands on a daily basis. And if you take time to audit your role (you can use the Mapping exercise), you will notice that a lot of your to-dos are repetitive. Some of them repeat on a weekly, others on a monthly or quarterly basis. But after spending a few years in a role, for sure you have noticed the trends. The reports are repetitive, PowerPoint decks are built on the same patterns, annual events happen around the same dates, operational meetings take the same order. You name it - the list is endless. Yet, very often Assistants avoid using templates or technology to reduce the mundane repetitive tasks.

So the next time you will be doing something where you will catch yourself thinking ¨this is so boring. There must be a more efficient way to do it¨, take a pause, and think.

• Maybe there´s a template you could use?

• Maybe there´s a template you could build?

• Maybe there´s a technology or an APP out there that could help?

• How are other Assistants dealing with this time-stealing-annoying-boring-yet-important task?

To this day I know companies where Executives come back from meetings, handle their Assistants a bunch of new business cards, and some assistants still have to put in information from every card into the system manually. What a waste of time that is!! When you can have a Business card scanner APP like ABBYY or any other option from a long list that´s available on the market, WHY not do that? And save yourself an hour or two? And last but not least,- use the potential of AI and avoid the human error of missing a digit?

We often tend to act in the same patterns just because we are used to them. In a way, we have automated our own behaviors.

Yet, with technology evolving that fast, I promise you, that most likely there´s already an automation solution, template, or tech tool for most of your mundane time stealing Assistant tasks. You just need to spend a little time looking for it. We have built a Tech-Savvy PA e-book and cherry-picked the technology, APPS, and useful links that can help you automate most tasks. Or deal with them better. 

Yet, if you don´t find something you are looking for - we are always happy to look for it together with you. Just reach out to us!

Why TIMING is everything?

When was the last time you worked overtime?

Or missed your lunch break to finish the deck of BoD slides just in time?

Or skipped lunch, and coffee and stayed after office hours, just to ¨catch up with things¨? 

No wonder. Your Assistant role is demanding and full. Just as your calendar is.

But more often than not, we end up working extended hours not because of the amount of work that we have, but because we fail to plan. 

• We say yes to more things than we are capable of doing 

• We underestimate how long those tasks would take

• We overestimate our speed and efficiency 

And hey, that´s not to criticise your speed. Or productivity. The fact is that in the Assistant role, tasks naturally take longer to finish because you are interrupted ALL-THE-TIME. By the phone that´s ringing, by the catering that has to be signed off, by a colleague who can´t figure out how a printer works… You get it. It´s the nature of the role.

So we need to help ourselves with planning tasks in a real-life scenario (meaning constant interruptions) instead of a perfect one - nobody is in the office and nobody is asking me for anything.

The fact is, it will never happen! Unless you stay after hours once all your colleagues are gone. And that´s a no go. 

Help yourself to avoid over-planning. Understand how long your big tasks ACTUALLY take.

• Go through your calendar of the last month and identify what are the events that cause you overworking on a regular bases. Is it a BOARD meeting and preparation for it? Monthly operational review? Submitting expenses? 

• Note them down and once you´ve identified your biggest time stealers, understand how long those tasks take. 

• Next time you will be working on that particular task,- time it! Use one of the timers (most of them are free and available online). I use ATRACKER It´s free, simple and I use it as an APP on my phone. ATRACKER does precisely that,- it tracks time. It´s great that is requires minimum setup and allows you to focus on work rather than trying to figure out the fancy software.  

It sounds super simple, but it does miracles to your sanity when you are planning tasks with their real duration in mind. This way next time you´ll know, that getting slides done for a monthly meeting takes 7h rather than your optimistic 3 hours.  

Also, you could time how long your Executive takes on different tasks and plan his or her time better if you notice that certain meetings tend to overlap on a regular bases. 

Try it. I hope this helps to have less no-time-to-pee days!