Episode 258: Need More Time to Work on Your Virtual Assistant Business? 8 Common Time Wasters to Eliminate Now

Full Episode Transcription:

[00:00:00] Are you trying to grow your virtual assistant business, but you just cannot find the time with all the other things on your plate? Holiday season is a really great time for spending more time with family and just relaxing, but it’s also a great time to analyze your life and see what’s helping you reach your goals and remove the things that aren’t. So, in this episode, I want to share with you 8 common time wasters that you can eliminate to help you find more time to work on growing your virtual assistant business. So let’s just go ahead and jump right in. Number one, right off the bat, I know you guys are probably expecting this, is social media. Bet you, if you looked at the time tracker that is embedded on pretty much every phone these days, you would be very surprised at how much time you actually spend just scrolling on. Social media. And I want to ask you if you just eliminated one or two hours of that and started putting that towards growing your virtual assistant business.

[00:01:00] What could that help you do? Could that help you to apply to 10 more jobs during that two hours? Could it help you finally get your portfolio created? Could it help you have time for a discovery call or two with potential clients? What would that give you? So I’m not saying you have to cut out social media completely. We like to stay connected, but put time limits for yourself, set restrictions on how long the app is allowed to be open on your phone, and when that time runs out, it will automatically close. So you can absolutely do that if you just need help holding that boundary for yourself. The second time waster that If you eliminate it or reduce it, it’ll help you grow your virtual system business is checking your emails. This is kind of like social media. A lot of times we’ll open our phone and just immediately click that email button. And then we end up putting out fires that we did not plan into our day. So if you just set one time a day. Maybe 20 minutes where you have dedicated to emails, and I actually typically recommend to do this towards the end of the day because I don’t want you to do it right at the beginning and then see a fire that needs to be quote unquote put out, but not really, it could probably wait, and then that derails your whole day.

[00:02:20] So if you do it towards the end, maybe when you have like an hour left of working time, that’ll give you time to tackle anything that’s urgent, but then delegate it. Thank you. The other tasks that you need to get done that are in your email to an appropriate time throughout the week. So you’re not just like stressing, checking, feeling like you have to put out that fire right away. Alright, another big time waster is working without a plan. When you actually sit down to work on your business and you’re like, okay, but what do I actually do right now? You’re going to end up just wasting time twiddling your thumbs and you’re not being productive. With that time you’re actually trying to give, so it’s going to take you twice as long to do something if you don’t have a game plan for how you’re going to do it.

[00:03:04] So this is why I always recommend setting up workflows. This is something I help you do in the Virtual Assistant Mama Academy. We get a whole workflow set up for your business. So that when you sit down to work, you know exactly what you need to do in your business. So if you need help with that, I encourage you to go over and grab the workflow and everything else in the Virtual Assistant Mama Academy at virtualassistantmama.com. All right, the next one is kind of similar, a little bit, but it’s just working off of to do lists. So when you sit down at the beginning of the week and you just make a checklist of all the things you gotta get done. That’s really overwhelming and it can just put you in this kind of fight or flight response of like, ah, this is a lot.

[00:03:48] But if you have that workflow planned out and you have those repetitive tasks automated, not automated as far as like having technology that gets it done for you, but automated to where it’s already planned into your week, your month, however many times you need to do those tasks throughout your working day. However many times you need to do those tasks a year, when you have it all set up in your workflow, then you don’t have to, one, hold it in your brain and take up your brain space, but two, you don’t have to try to remember it and make sure you get it done. It’s just already in your workflow. You set the date ahead of time, and then when that date comes up, you know, okay, this is the day I got to get it done, and you don’t have to stress about it. If you are working off a to do list, it’s okay for like a couple random things that are not Happening reoccurringly in your business, but if you’re doing a to do list for everything, it’s going to take so much time, so I really recommend transitioning to a workflow when you can. If you’re looking for an episode diving deep into how I recommend setting up workflows in your business, go to our podcast catalog, which you can find at virtualassistantmama.com/catalog. And in there you can just type in the word. Workflow, and it’ll bring up all the episodes where I talk about how to set up a workflow in your business. You could also just look up time management. That’ll give you some episodes as well. Alright, the next common time waster that you’re probably wasting time on when you’re trying to grow your virtual assistant business is having a lack of clear goals and priorities.

[00:05:30] So if you don’t have a set goal that you’re working towards, you’re probably going to be doing tasks that don’t actually matter in the long run. So I know it seems like a little counterintuitive to take the time to set some goals because you’re thinking you could be spending that time somewhere else, but it’s really, really helpful if you just take an hour once a month to figure out what goals you’re working towards and what steps you need to take to achieve those goals and then figure out a game plan for that. Alright, the next one, number six on the list, is multitasking. Now, multitasking is okay for mindless tasks, like if you’re folding laundry, you can listen to a podcast, and that’s fine. But when you’re doing focused work, it’s actually hindering you. Your brain needs to stay in one mode, because when you’re bouncing back and forth, your brain has to keep transitioning, and that takes time to like, get in the groove, and you’re actually wasting time.

[00:06:26] So, I recommend just having one tab open on your computer, putting your phone on silence mode, eliminating as many distractions as you can, and then you’ll be surprised by how much you can get done and how much faster you can get it done. All right, number seven, the seventh time waster, is having an unstructured work environment. So if you’ve got a whole bunch of clutter around you, it’s probably distracting you. And making you waste time because you might be trying to tidy up, but not really succeeding and just getting confused because all around you is all cluttered. So you’re not really sure what you’re supposed to be working on when you’re looking at your computer, but you see all this clutter in the corner of your eye. So if you can just take 10 minutes at the end of every day to tidy up your workspace for the next time you work, that’s going to help you so much in the long run. Alright, the last time waster is a really big one and that is procrastination. If you are waiting till the last second to do things, then your brain might not be in the right mode when you actually do have to sit down and get it done.

[00:07:32] Then you don’t have a choice because you waited till the last second. So if you can strategize and prioritize your tasks, then if you do get to the point where you sit down and you’re just not. in the right frame of mind. Maybe you’re just exhausted because your kiddos were up too much last night. Then you might have a little bit of buffer room to work with where you can move your schedule around and do tasks that are a little more mindless and save that task that’s going to use more brain power for a different time. But again, if you’re waiting till the last second to get things done, you’re not going to be able to do that. So I highly recommend Getting a game plan in place and avoiding procrastination. Alright, I know this was a lot, so I just want to recap those 8 time wasters that if you eliminate them or reduce them, they’re gonna help you grow your virtual assistant business in the long run.

[00:08:24] Number 1 is social media. Two is emails. Three is working without a plan. Four is just working off of to do lists. Five is having a lack of clear goals and priorities. Six is multitasking. Seven is having an unstructured work environment. And eight is procrastination. Now, if you are working towards your virtual assistant business, or you haven’t started yet, but you’re trying to figure out If this is something that could be possible for you, I highly recommend you come and check out our free workshop that we have coming up on January 11th. This is called the The Number One Way to Start Working From Home workshop, and in the workshop I’ll be teaching you the five piece of becoming a successful virtual assistant. I’ll help you figure out what services you would love to offer, where to find paying clients. How to get your name out there to find those clients and just all the things. It’s going to be so awesome. So you can get registered for that at ariannavernier.com/free-workshop or find the link in the show notes. All right, y’all. I love you so much. If you have any questions, as always, you can come and drop them in our free Facebook community. That’s at facebook.com/groups/virtualassistantmama. Drop your questions there and I would love to answer them for you either in the comments there or even here on the show. All right, you guys, I hope you have a wonderful week and we will see you next time.