Could You Become Your Own Virtual Assistant?
Thinking about a traditional assistant might make you think of Mad Men, but you can put your pencil skirt and hairspray back in the closet – the new world of assistants is here, and it’s much less formal than you might think.
Assistants come in many different forms, from executive assistants at the office to personal assistants at home to virtual assistants, who can do both and more. But if you’re someone in lower or middle management, having someone who can be at your beck and call for all your organizational needs seems like a pipe dream. Entrepreneur notes that the top reasons that companies hire virtual assistants are to streamline their workflow, arrange meetings, and make sure necessary documents are available, organized, and easy to use. But rather than having a nice woman in your office who greets you each morning with coffee and your daily brief, it’s much more common to make your own coffee, brief yourself for your day, and streamline, arrange, and organize your life on your own. It’s starting to sound like you’re just your own virtual assistant.
When do you need a VA?
While being your own virtual assistant might save you some money and time, there are key situations in which you might need a helping hand. Virtual assistants often function like freelancers, as many have skills in things like graphic design or copyrighting, and they also tackle social media for those with public images to uphold. They also keep your home life organized so you can focus on your work, and while you run meetings, they’re ensuring that your bills are paid, your groceries are being delivered, and your house cleaning service is coming on time.
Ultimately, only you can answer whether or not you need a virtual assistant, and there’s no shame in asking for a little logistical help or employing a virtual assistant agency, even if you’re a single person living alone. But if you’re looking to improve your life management skills, there’s also the option to become your own VA. As it stands, you might be managing your workload, but when it comes to administrative tasks, you’re surviving rather than thriving. So put on that pencil skirt and take out that hairspray – it’s time to be your own assistant, and do it right.
Becoming your own VA
The main thing an assistant of any kind is meant to do is to make your life easier. And if they’re sloppy, or unthoughtful in their task management, you’ll end up working double time trying to fix their mistakes. Consequently, everything you’re going to do as your own personal assistant is to create stress-free mechanisms that make you schedule just like Marie Kondo would want it – unchaotic, and full of only the things in your job description that bring you joy.
Automating your workday
One of the biggest responsibilities of an executive assistant is to tell you what you’re doing when you’re doing it, and where you should be doing it. They’ll help with your regular tasks, like responding to scheduling meetings, sending check-ins, or notifying teammates of hiccups in a project’s process, all so that you can focus on innovating and creating. And the good news is that with the advent of modern technology, you can do it all yourself.
We’re all fond of scheduling emails to send at a later date or sending Calendly links for clients or coworkers to use at their convenience, which is definitely something that can make your daily agenda a bit more manageable. But there are other tools available for more in-house organizational issues, ones that pop up on a frequent basis.
For one, Hive Automation can speed up your workflow by adding action cards to projects that allow for automated notifications to team members. For instance, if you want to alert team members that you’re placing a project on hold if certain circumstances arise, you can write that condition into your action card, and all the communication will happen automatically.
Keeping the office organized
The next thing a virtual or executive assistant can help with is keeping the office organized. In the old days, this meant updating databases, filling out ledgers, or keeping track of all the goings-on by hand. But these days, with the many technological tools available, it seems like everything you need to stay organized is right at your fingertips… right?
Sometimes, technology can be as overwhelming as it is useful. It can feel like an undertaking just to remember which app has which information. That’s why integration tools aren’t just useful, they’re necessary when you’re looking to be your own virtual assistant. By making sure that all of the information necessary to do your job is in the most accessible place possible, you can spend less time looking for what you need to be doing and more time actually doing it.
Notes, notes, and more notes
If you’ve ever been at a board meeting, you’ll know that a secretary is tasked to take notes or send out follow-up emails to everyone with action items manually or with a board meeting software. This is also the case with executive assistants, or virtual assistants, as even if the note-taker isn’t in the room, they can still be in the Zoom. The better your notes are the easier it’ll be for you to check back and see what you need to work on. But if you’re a participant in the meeting and you’re trying to keep track of the notes, most of your attention will be on multitasking rather than devoting your bandwidth to the present moment.
The main problem with a virtual assistant doing the note-taking is that though the goal is to be an unbiased reporter, often, someone might write down things they deem to be important but others don’t, or vise versa. Make note-taking a group activity with Hive Notes, so everyone can be in on what you’ll take away from a meeting, and which agenda items need to be revisited. That way, you’re not only acting as a virtual assistant for yourself, you’re also assisting your entire team as much as they’re assisting you.
