Prioritize your life

Many of us feel we spend our days putting out fires and accomplishing nothing we really wanted to accomplish during the course of our day. Sometimes this leads to bringing work home or spending long hours at our offices trying to accomplish all the things we thought were important and needed to be done (taking time away from our families and personal lives).  Recently, in meeting a colleague told me she put in a 12 hour day at a manufacturing plant and then spent another 2 hours per day staying after her shift has ended in order to complete all the paperwork, emails, and phone calls she could not get accomplished while the floor crew were around; due to constant interruptions.   This meant that Jane worked her normal 12 hour shift each day for her salary and then put in an additional 2 hours each day for no pay and this stole valuable time she could have been spending with her 2 small children. 

I suggested she create a list of:

·         Important;  urgent

·         Important; not urgent

·         urgent; not important

·         not important; not urgent tasks

                On this list she should include not only work related tasks but life tasks too such as playing with children, calling best friend, and reporting time sheets to HR. Once we begin to look at all our activities in these four categories we realize that some things just do not need our attention and some things we can hire others to handle.  One way to outline all the things in our life that truly need our attention and those that don’t we can use note cards.  Include your dreams, goals, plans and ideas.  The next step is to make two piles:  things that have to be done this very minute (or at least we think they do) and things that can wait.  Continue to narrow down each pile according to the list above and the things that do not fall under any of the four tasks can be thrown out immediately. (for example: read junk mail) Once you see these lists in writing it helps to prioritize your life! Instead of spending countless hours reading e-mails we don’t really care about we could have written our best a long e-mail catching up on the important things in life and maintaining our personal relationship.

                OK, OK. You’ve created a list of tasks that need to be accomplished in a timely fashion, tasks that can wait, and task that are not important but there’s still not enough hours in the day for you to balance work responsibilities and life.  To help create a healthy balance and live a more fulfilling life while accomplishing all those work related tasks still needing  to be completed is to delegate tasks to others. One simple way to do this is to hire a virtual assistant.  Perhaps on Mondays we want to be out of the office by noon so we have plenty of time to exercise, attend your child’s baseball practice and still be able to make a home cooked meal for your family before falling into bed and starting the routine all over again.  However, there are so many things that need to be done at the office such as checking time cards, reporting the numbers to our payroll clerk, promote a new service or product, scheduling meetings and e-mailing colleagues, customers, co workers, and following up on correspondence.  All of these items are tasks that can be delegated to a virtual assistant and while you enjoy the rewards of hard work and family things are still being accomplished! Remember if you are stuck trying to figure out things that are important and need to be accomplished and things that can just be discarded a virtual assistant can help you to organize your schedule and tasks as well!