I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The [...] banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. — Howard Beale, Network

Come to think of it, that’s not a great quote for what I want to say, but the film (Network) is so incredibly worth watching that I thought I should quote it to sow some seeds. It was just the first few sentences which put me in mind of it. Things ARE bad, and everyone is saying so.

But recessions are not intrinsically bad. Just as winter kills off the weak things and the pests, so recessions cleanse us of the chaff we build up (you’ll recall that estate agents were amongst the first to go) – so rather than fearing winter, think about planning for the spring. The seeds you plant now are going to be next summer’s fruits.

Or, to quote another film

Cheer up you old bugger, c’mon give us a grin!
Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best
So always look on the bright side of life
(der dum, der der di dum di dum!)

* Giving your assistant plenty to do, so you can go do something more enriching (to your wallet and / or your soul) is entirely why we exist, so don’t take their message TOO literally!

Working with an online personal assitant is perhaps a little different, since you’re very unlikely to meet, so here are a few tips on working and delegating remotely to help you along.

Take time to get to know each other.

We can help you more the more we know about you, your business or activities, and anything else you deem relevant, so it’s worth taking the time to pass it on in an email, instant messenger, or perhaps schedule a call.

We always strive to place the most appropriate assistant to the client, but if after a time you find we’ve got it wrong, we’ll work with you to better meet your expectations.

Get it out of your head.

If you have nagging tasks and worries, it’s best to get them off your mind, so you can get on with the tasks at hand.

Review your existing task list and see which can be given to someone else.

Whether it’s remembering that you’re due to make a dental appointment, or remembering to book a train, or look into legislation around something, the only way to deal with all the stuff in your head is to get it off your mind.

With your online personal assistant just an email, SMS, or form away, you can look forward to a life with less hassle and more time for concentrating on the important things

Choose the tasks they can perform most effectively.

Don’t try to give them your high-stress, high-priority, urgent tasks. It’s a recipe for further anxiety for you. Instead use your personal assistant for the longer haul, more time consuming tasks.

Make each task actionable.

People don’t “do projects”, we “do actions”.

Write down exactly what you want your PA to accomplish. Then, think through the steps that you would take to accomplish the task. Write those down as well.

To handle these ideas, thoughts, and tasks more effectively, turn each into an actionable task, such that “Oh I must make a dental appointment” becomes “Call Dr.Pullen on 0207 123 4567 and book an appointment on the next available Friday”. This will help you get it done by making it real and tangible.

Set check points.

If your task is long, or has obvious break points, you might like to ask your PA to report back to you shortly after starting to be sure that they’re doing the task as you hope.

Sometimes we think we’ve understood a task clearly, but end up getting it slightly wrong. Similarly we’ve all had experiences where we’re sure we’ve explained something clearly, only to realise later that key instructions we perhaps took for granted were missing.

So if you’re asking for a 300 row spreadsheet, consider asking them to check back with you after 20 rows; or ask them to present initial research findings to help you better direct the task.This is even more important for the first few tasks you set.

Empower action.

You can save a lot of to-and-fro and make things vastly more efficient if you consider the next steps in a task. Consider the following:

Please find me a good mechanic near my home.

Now compare that to:

Using Yelp and Yahoo, find two mechanics with decent ratings that are located within 10 minutes of my home (W14 8JJ, London).

Call them both to get quotes on having the oil changed and fixing a tire leak.

Set me up an appointment for any morning this week with the cheapest.

Set time limits.

Since your PA works on an hourly basis, it is important for you to think about the task in terms of hours. Determine the amount of time you would like to assign to the task, and communicate that when you create the task.

If you’re aware that the time you have assigned is brief, please say as such. Eg “Please spend no more than 2 hours researching this, since I’m just looking for an overview at this stage.”

If your personal assistant thinks that the time is not sufficient, they will come back to you with suggestions as to how to proceed, perhaps only doing part of the task, or suggesting how long they think the task will actually take.

Note: You may consider they spend too long on some of the tasks. Be merciful. It is sometimes hard to find out information, especially if one is unaccustomed to the subject at hand and needs to acquaint oneself as one goes. Remember that the next time you ask a similar question, they will be faster. It is not so much the time that it takes them, as the cost to you. Consider if it is still saving you YOUR time.

Set deadlines.

If you have something important due, set a date for it. This will help your assistant prioritise your tasks. It’s also worth setting the due date a few days early so you have time for follow-up tasks and comments.

No such thing as too small.

If you have a task that you think will only take you 15 minutes, yet could be explained in 5 minutes, you might be inclined to just do it yourself. But when you do 5 of those tasks it starts to add up. Even small tasks can be well worth handing off, especially the recurring ones.

Set recurring tasks.

If you find yourself doing a 5 minute task every day, such as checking orders on a website or confirming bookings, you could save half an hour every week by delegating it. These activities are ideal for your assistant to handle. Your assistant can provide summaries, filter information, and alert you to only important updates.

Be specific about the deliverables.

Your requirements and expectations are likely to vary from task to task. You can save yourself time (therefore money) by specifying the standard of work required. For example a research project could be just clippings and bullet points, or a more comprehensive document.

Make sure you are spending your additional time as you had hoped.

Think about the things you’ve always wanted to do. Want to scuba dive off the Great Barrier Reef? There are probably a dozen initial action and research items that your assistant could handle well. – 4 Hour Work Week

Most of these tips are aimed to minimise the time you spend managing your assistant and your tasks. With the right techniques and some practice, outsourcing will give you more time to focus on the things that bring you the most income and/or happiness.

Summary

You can easily remember these when writing the tasks by using a simple, and appropriate, acronym:

• S pecific, significant
• M easurable, meaningful, motivational
• A chievable, action-oriented
• R ealistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding (for you), results-oriented
• T ime-based, timely, tangible, trackable

If you have any suggestions to add, please let us know!

Sources / see also:

• Zen Habits
• Enlightened outsourcing
• Tips for Outsourcing to a Personal Virtual Assistant

If you read the 4 Hour Work Week, or pretty much any other business or sociology book, you’ll have come across the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle which states that

• 20% of X will consume 80% of Y (eg one of the five paragraphs in a press release is going to take much longer than the others to write)
• 80% of A will be generated by 20% of B (eg 80% of your income will be generated by 20% of your clients)

Now that we can proceed with the weight of maths and science behind this point, let’s take an example:

Say you want to book a flight from London to Kashmir to go skiing in the Himalayas. You want to be sure you’re getting the best deal, with the fewest changes, the best airline, and so forth. If you’re new to working with you’re PA you’ll be harbouring doubts that they’re going to represent your interests as well as you’d like, and may just find you a pretty cheap flight, but not the very very best flight, like you would if you were looking (though we do this for a living, and have to keep you happy else we’ll not have any clients!) but in the interim we can earn your trust.

The task “book a flight from London to Kashmir” breaks down thus:

• Set dates for travel, and their flexibility
• Determine the route options
• Select the best airline (ie which won’t go bust whilst you’re out there)
• Find the most suitable permutation, by date, by price, by airline, and by route

This will take you a reasonable amount of time to research for yourself, whereas if all the information were presented to you on one page, clearly broken into recommended, alternative, and eliminated options, it would take you just a few minutes to choose one.

So when you next have something to do, remember that you can delegate just small chunks of it, leaving you to make the important decisions.

Quite a lot of the time you’d be absolutely right, in which case we’re happy to serve as the catalyst that helps you churn through your own to-do list — you’ll almost certainly find that things don’t take as long as you think.

But if you have a repeating task, or if it’s going to take more than 20 minutes (and be realistic here) you’re probably going to be better off delegating it.

It’s hard to think of everything to put in the task, too, to be sure that your PA has enough information to do the job properly.

So here’s a challenge I’m going to make to you existing clients: delegate things you’re not confident in delegating, and risk being as succinct in your tasking as you dare. We’ll come back with an outline of what we think you’d like us to do, we’ll ask questions if we find we need more information, we’ll set a time estimate for the work, and – here’s the best bit – if you don’t like what we do, we’ll not charge you. How’s that sound?

If you need a hand thinking of or buying presents, send us a list of those you’re looking for, their relationship to you, and any key words or ideas we should be working with, and we can create inspired present lists for you to suit any budget.

Similarly if you’re too busy to plan a company party, we’ve just organised one, so we’re in the zone to do more!

It’s like a notepad or scrapbook where you can add text, paste images, clip from web pages, and so on. You can then group pages into notebooks and add tags for easy groupings. It’s great for to do lists, research, and ideas.

But what’s best of all is that the whole thing syncs online and onto your mobile phone, so you always have all your lists with you.

If you ever wish your lists and notes were more organised, take a look at http://evernote.com

Say you’re earning �35 per hour. Any time you spend doing a task which you could pay someone less than �35 (eg �15) per hour to do is money lost (�35 – �15 = �20 per hour).

Let’s say you pay an assistant �10 per hour to do the work. You have just made �25 profit on that hour, and have one extra hour you didn’t have before, so you can use this “extra” hour to earn at �35 per hour.

�35 from the work you’re outsourcing�� PLUS
�35 from the work you’re handing yourself�� MINUS
�10 that you’ve paid the assistant

Equals �60 per hour income, whereas before you were making �35 per hour, an increase of 71%.

Clearly you’re not going to be able to outsource ALL your work, but in every job there is work that simply does not need you to do it.

If you’re a web developer, for example, how long do you spend populating clients’ sites with their material? Formatting from Word and constructing forms? Too long? Wouldn’t you rather get someone else to do that?

Or if you’re doing research, how long does it take you to turn a long-list into a short-list?

Or if you’re running an online store, how much of the order processing is a constructive use of your time?

Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground. — Theodore Roosevelt

Lacking time, money, or something.

We know what our goals are, we know what needs to be done to achieve them, but for some reason we still find it necessary to spend time doing things that do not directly move us in the direction we wish to go.

The most common reason I’ve seen is fear of having to deal with what comes next, because that’s most often a Scary Unknown. Which is silly, really, because you WANT to deal with whatever comes next, since that’s going to move to you towards your goal.

I don’t have any magic tips for dealing with this strange, self destructive behaviour other than to recognise it for what it is, then stop it. Just find a way of doing what needs to be done, then do it. And if you don’t know how…

Get a mentor.

Other people can help you. More over they actually really want to help you because being asked for help is a form of tremendous flattery. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. See also the foot in the door technique. You can get some of your best advocates by asking favours.

Attitude.

Whether you think you can, or you can’t, you’re right — Henry Ford.

Enough said.

Poorly defined goals.

If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else. — Yogi Berra

It’s been said before, but it’s worth repeating: make your goals SMART.

• S – specific, significant
• M – measurable, meaningful, motivational
• A – achievable, action-oriented
• R – realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding (for you), results-oriented
• T – time-based, timely, tangible, trackable

Information overload.

You’ve been reviewing so much information you’re now swamped and not entirely sure what to do next. You’re in for a treat. This is the one time when it really serves your purposes to do nothing at all. Go to a film, go get some exercise and take a stroll outside, have a nap. Whatever you do, remove yourself from the flack of daily life.

Your brain has a wonderful way of processing and ordering this stuff in the background whilst you get on and do something else entirely.

When you do get an idea, though, write it down. Don’t think that you’ll rememeber it, because you won’t. You know that by now. Your brain is making sense of so many ideas that it really doesn’t seem to have the resources to remember the ideas it creates. Additionally once you’ve thought of the idea it will immediately change, being built upon with still more new ideas. This is not always a good thing. So write down the first idea immediately. You can always cross it out if a better one comes up.

Whether it’s remembering that you’re due to make a dental appointment, or remembering to book a train, or look into legislation around something, the only way to deal with all the stuff in your head is to get it off your mind.

To handle these ideas, thoughts, and tasks more effectively, turn each into an actionable task. So “Oh I must make a dental appointment” becomes “Call Dr.Pullen on 0207 123 4567 and book an appointment on the next available Friday”. This will help you get it done by making it real and tangible.

Now you have made it actionable, ask yourself “Could someone else do this for me?”

With your online personal assistant just an email, SMS, or form away, you can look forward to a life with less hassle and more time for concentrating on the important things.