For virtual assistants, time management is one of the most crucial skills that one needs to have, especially if you have deadlines to meet and you can't seem to finish anything. A common saying, "Time is gold." is what most people say. If you're a virtual assistant who's rated by the hour or monthly, time is essential to finish all tasks required. If one wants to finish more tasks, one needs to master good time management skills to accomplish this.
Whether you are struggling with time management or have found a good way to do it, it's always good to search for more ways to improve your time management skills. But first, you also need to be able to acknowledge and recognize what you lack or what mistake you did. Because if you don't, you might be costing your clients a hefty sum because of lack of productivity on your end.
With this article, we are going to discuss some indicators of recognizing poor time management skills, the problems that arises from it, and the solutions to improve your poor time management skills.
Indicators of Poor Time Management Skills
Lack of Focus and Concentration
Virtual assistants face many distractions, especially if you're in the comfort of your home. There's your mobile phone, television, game consoles, your family, pets and many more.
With most people having mobile phones for everything, we are easily distracted by constantly checking on our notifications, updates, social media, or by just watching your favorite series. Sometimes, it's out of our control. We can't just yell at our neighbors for being loud or for our pets to stop making noises.
By recognizing what made you so distracted, we might not eliminate all of them but at least, we can eliminate 1 or 2 distractions to boost our productivity.
Procrastination
We all have moments where we want to delay everything else for at least one minute, a day, even for a week or up until our most sacred deadline for a task. Most of us experience procrastinating once in our lives, mostly when we're still in university.
With these continuous instances of procrastination, it somehow became a habit and it was carried-on when we're already working. At work, procrastinating might not just be because of our laziness, it can also be because of some factors which includes a task being difficult or troublesome to do, a task which involves you as the decision-maker, or a task which is just stressful every time you think about it.
For every task that you procrastinate, it becomes an evil cycle where it's hard to get out of. Whether it's a simple task or a difficult task, procrastinating won't help you or your client in the long run.
Multitasking
We usually have a lot of tasks assigned to us and we do multitasking much frequently or every time. Our brains are not wired to focus on different things, rather, it's hard for our focus to return if we do multitasking. When doings our tasks, our focus is one of the most important and if we lose this, it can be hard to produce an outstanding output that will please clients.
Rushing
With the amount of tasks virtual assistants do, we always feel that we need to rush doing these tasks to complete it. Always rushing to do tasks can cause uneasiness within. It can also be said that always rushing can cause our outputs to be unsatisfactory or not up to standard.
Burnout
Burnout is experience when one is constantly feeling overwhelmed with work or other matters. It certainly has a direct impact to our health. And, when health is already involved, it becomes the worst indicator of one's poor time management skill. Because it not only affects our mental health, but also affects us physically. When one is swamped with work-related matters, one tends to overwork by not having enough rest hours, not taking needed-breaks and constantly working throughout the day and sometimes, night.
Problems that Arises from Poor Time Management
Lack of productivity and performance
When it comes to work-related matter, one's productivity is very important, especially if you are a virtual assistant. Being productive throughout the day indicates that you're doing your job well and also helping your client. However, due to poor time management, one's lack of productivity and performance produces poor quality output which will directly affect your performance, impression to the client and results. Productivity and good time management are connected to each other. If one can improve one's time management skills, one's productivity will also be boosted.
Stress
Poor time management skills always lead to stress. And when one is stress, you'll feel the need to rush. When you're always rushing, you feel the additional stress added to you by rushing. Rushing when completing a task is never advisable and good. Whatever the reason is for the rush, if it's avoidable, it's always better to prioritize your work to ensure that your meeting deadlines and giving your clients the much needed high quality output.
Poor Work-Life Balance
A virtual assistant is someone who must adhere to a schedule. Without a set schedule to guide them throughout the day or tasks, it will be difficult to get anything done. Having a schedule or even a to-do lists will make sure one is on time for deadlines, breaks or rests and even time for end of work. A poor work-life balance is often seen especially if one is overworking or multitasking. It will take a toll to one's health, which is detrimental.
Improving your Time Management Skills
Plan ahead/Schedule
For every task assigned to you by the client, make sure to write it down and add it to your to-do list for the day or for the week. Prioritize the most urgent task or the task whose deadline is soon. This way you'll be able to schedule on how many hours or days you'll work on one task.
Other than the deadline of the client, set a deadline for yourself to make sure that you'll have time to adjust whichever part you will unsatisfactory or change some things.
Also, set a schedule where you will have appropriate break times and the duration of the break. Never go beyond the set break time. Because once this happens, it will always happen for the second or third time, after which, your schedule becomes useless.
Stay away from distractions
Place yourself in an environment which eliminates distractions or if it's not possible, invest in a noise-cancelling headphones. You have to steel yourself in not checking your social media and other entertainment from distracting you. Also, if you can, talk to your family or friends to not distract you when it's time for work. Set a time for checking and replying to emails to make sure you're not doing email management throughout the day.
Set Personal Goals
Setting a personal goal for yourself will help your motivation and focus. Having a goal means not only are you completing a task for your client or also working for your own's self improvement. With this mindset, it can boost your productivity which will make sure that you'll be able to produce high quality outputs, good performance and good results. And who knows, you might get a reward for this.
Having good time management skills will ensure a good work-life balance, great productivity and also reduce stress. Improving your time management skills takes time. There's no rush, complete one task at a time. Take necessary breaks in between to ensure a good working atmosphere for yourself. These things will become easier as one gets used to it. You just need to insist and persist.
Being a virtual assistant, try my good time management skills yourself. If interested, check out my resume, portfolio and LinkedIn profile.
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