Getting more from your day doesn’t have to be so hard

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What’s slowing you down probably isn’t a huge procedural issue, but a bunch of small, anti-productive habits that add up over the course of your day. Fixing small challenges can have a big impact on your day.

 

Respect the 2-minute rule:

Think about the important piece of paper that you shuffle from one side of your desk to the other instead of dealing with it immediately. Then, two days later, you find yourself picking it up again.

 

This is where the 2-minute rule comes in. Many of our immediate responses are to shuffle rather than to just act. Break the habit and just act – take 5 seconds to assess whether something will take you less than 2 minutes to do. If it passes the test, DO IT IMMEDIATELY!

 

Look at the emails sitting in your inbox from last week. Take 5 of them, and, with each one, determine whether you can act within 2 minutes. If you can, do it immediately. If you cannot, wait till later. Always remember, nobody will hold it against you if your reply is shorter than usual. The main thing is to reply and get it done.

 

 

sunflowers in the field in summer

sunflowers in the field in summer

Check your e-mail on the go:

No, don’t check your emails while driving, but when you have a few minutes here and there during the day, when you’re waiting in line at the coffee shop, waiting for your next appointment to arrive and so on.

 

The underlying and most important thing about checking email on the go is that you make your “desk time” sacred. This is when you get real work done. Often, emails are not “real work”. Reply, forward, archive and delete from your phone. If a message requires more, you can save it for “desk time”, then you’ll have a much smaller pile that actually requires your attention than your typical overwhelming unopened inbox.

Action:

  • Don’t check your email from your computer today (yes, I know, you can’t help refreshing that screen as you’re reading this now).
  • Set aside tomorrow morning to answer any email from today that require more than what you could type or do on your phone.

What is draining you?

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Do you sometimes feel that a particular client or few clients are leaving you feeling drained at the end of the conversation or at the end of the day?

 

Have you thought about the reasons why you might be feeling this way? There are three possible reasons for this.

 

  • Over giving: Charging too little or giving too much of your time, almost always leads to feelings of being drained. It takes courage to charge what you want to charge and end the session when you say you’re going to end. Do it anyway. It will leave you with more energy to continue your day.
  • Not speaking your truth: What about those things you wish you could say to your client (but it might be rude or disrespectful, and after all, they’re paying you lots of money . . .). Those are the things you need to say!! Just begin your bold statement with a large dose of acknowledgment, compassion and gentleness. It’s nearly impossible to boldly speak your truth and get drained at the same time.
  • Getting attached to your clients getting results: Generally speaking this is a good thing . . . don’t we all want this for our clients? The problem is that when you get attached to your client getting great results, you tighten up and when you tighten up, you lose connection with your client and you lose connection with your intuition. From this place, you probably push your client too hard, or you protect your client from your inner pusher and you become quiet and withholding. Neither works.

 

Instead, trust that there is a much bigger picture working here. Sometimes people are ripe for results, and other times, it takes time.

 

Your clients’ results do NOT determine your goodness or worthiness. You can be amazing, even if your client didn’t get results and you can be terrible and still have clients get results but its helpful to use their lack of results as inspiration to step up your game so that you are holding the most optimal space for your clients to get results.

 

It’s helpful to trust that there is a bigger picture happening that we are not always privy to that goes way beyond how much money they made, weight they lost, or soul mate they have found. It’s helpful to celebrate the results they are getting, no matter how big or small.

 

It’s helpful to address your clients’ feelings about the results they’re getting. It’s helpful to love them completely as they are, even if they don’t change a bit, and, at the same time, it’s helpful to hold vibrant space for them to become who they are becoming.

 

But, it’s NOT helpful to take responsibility for your clients’ results. You can’t get results for your client, even if you try your hardest, because they are the ones doing the work . . . it’s their results. Your job is to hold impeccable space, like a cocoon for a butterfly. The space you hold includes your love, wisdom, energy and compassion and it’s their choice to become the butterfly.

 

When you’re doing your best to help your client win, it’s best to simply hand the rest over to them and to God and trust that everything that is happening is exactly what needs to happen, but, what if you’ve been charging an amount that feels good, sticking to your time agreements, speaking your truth, and giving the results over to God but, you’re still getting drained? Well . . .

 

Sometimes the arc is simply over and it’s time to complete. After all, even the best things in life have a beginning, middle and end. Your work together might feel like a stick of bubble gum that you’ve been chewing for 30 minutes and it simply no longer has much flavour.

 

If this is the case, its time to set this client free and refer them to another resource that can help them grow.

 

This will make space for new clients to emerge.

 

Sometimes, the problem is having draining clients . . .  but other times, the BIGGER problem is simply getting enough high-paying clients to pay the bills.

 

If this is the case, I’d love to help.

On-Demand Personal Assistance

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Do you need help with calls, research and other short tasks that can be handled by an intelligent, multi-talented assistant?

 

Here are a few examples of what I am talking about:

 

Custom Research (Data Mining):

Finding detailed answers or solutions to unique questions and problems facing you, the client, for example:

  • Compile a list of all trade fairs coming up in the next few months
  • Find all the day care options between my house and the office and set up visits for any morning you’re free in the next two weeks.
  • Compile a list of outdoor events available near Cape Town including distance and price.

 

Deal with Customer Service:

Contact Customer Service on behalf of clients . . . examples:

  • Call SAA/British Airways to get your laptop/Ipad/Tablet back which you left on the plane after your most recent trip.
  • Deal with the warranty/guarantee process on your laptop/Ipad/Tablet that just died while you were using it.
  • Cancel your subscription to Getaway magazine

 

 

Product and Service information:

Find, research and/or order products and services, for example:

  • Phone around to find the stockist closest to you of your favourite wine
  • Find out prices and how long it would take to make a dozen custom decorated cupcakes from a few bakeries near you.

 

Personal and Work Projects:

Miscellaneous projects lasting 1 – 10 hours where clients need some extra help:

  • Put together a list of blogs and other sites that write about [your business] along with their Facebook and Twitter followers.
  • Put together a list of suppliers of [name the product] and get at least three quotations from those closest to me.

 

Reservations and Entertainment:

Find and book restaurants, appointments and entertainment, for example:

  • Find a restaurant for next weekend that can host a dinner party for 25 people, at around R120.00 per person, and has halaal and vegetarian menu options. A private room would be a bonus.
  • Find a place in Cape Town that does kiddies parties, and can also do theme parties.

 

The tasks listed above share three common attributes:

  • High Pain:

This is a task you need to get done, but when you think about doing it, you wish someone else (like me) could just take care of it for you. They’re time consuming, boring or simply annoying tasks. Perfect tasks for outsourcing to someone else.

 

  • Low requirement for perfection:

No one will be able to complete a task for you as well as you could do it for yourself. Make peace with this fact, then figure out which tasks you don’t need to be done perfectly. If someone else (like me) is finding information for you and only finds 90 percent of what you’re looking for, is that enough or do you need 100 percent of the information to be found?

 

  • Objective outcome:

The best tasks to outsource are the ones that don’t require preferences to be taken into consideration, and only rely on requirements to be met, e.g. the request to find a restaurant for a birthday party – there are a lot of objective conditions to be met for the request to be considered successfully completed.

 

A similar but poor request would be to ask for a fun and interesting restaurant for a date. There is too much subjectivity and personal preference in this request and the odds of coming back with a good outcome are slim to none.

 

Questions:

  • What do you have on your To Do list that I can help you with right now?

 

 

  • Do you follow any personal guidelines when outsourcing tasks? What are these guidelines? Please share them in the “reply” box below.

 

 

 

What have I been up to, you ask?

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Certificate_Assoc for Office Professionals of SA (OPSA)

Well . . . I’ve joined the Association for Office Professionals of South Africa which has the following benefits:

*  Promote and develop performance standards for administration professionals

*  Provide guidance and advice for continuing personal and professional growth

*  Recognise members’ achievements, and

*  Provide opportunities for mentoring and networking

All this will enable me to provide you with the best possible service at all times.

Have you popped over to my Facebook page yet? You can find me at:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Priority-Biz-Services/295647823892657?fref=ts

I’m also on Twitter @PriorityBizServ – use the hashtag #PriorityAdminDiva

Looking forward to hearing from you!