Don't Skimp On Your Workspace

For anyone who works at home, not having a dedicated space is simply a bad idea. You don’t need to have an entire room for your office, but you do need to have a dedicated place where everything you need is at your fingertips and where you can leave work-in-progress. In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll share some tips for setting up your ideal VA workplace.

TRANSCRIPT

My name is Belinda Wasser also known as RocketGirl. Today, we're going to talk about the importance of not skimping on your workspace.

When you're a virtual assistant it's important to have a workspace that's wonderful. And I know in the very beginning we work at the dining room table and we have a laptop and we move to the kitchen table and you know we might even be working on the couch.

But it's really important to give some thought to where you're working because it's going to affect your productivity and your mood. So let's look at four things you need to have in place. 

The first thing is you want a permanent spot. Now, it does not have to be a whole room. I'll say for the last nine years of of my career as a Virtual Assistant, I've worked in a bay window in the dining room. I had my desk tucked in there. I've worked in part of my bedroom. I've worked in a little nook in my living room so it doesn't have to be a dedicated space. 

I have an office now but I didn't have that until just recently but it does need to be permanent so you're not always picking all your stuff up. you want to be able to just sit down and work and leave everything when you're finished. You need to think about a desk that can handle your work. I have had a dining room table as my desk for years because they're nice and deep and I have room for all three of my monitors and I even have my laptop set up and and you know the papers that I need on my on my desk as well. 

So make sure that you have a desk that can really handle your work. You want to have all your supplies at your fingertips like for example, I have you know my favorite pens my scissors right here. I also have you know my tripod, all the things that I need right here. So you don't want to be running to the kitchen to get the scissors or running you know to the junk drawer to get the tape whatever it is that you need you want to have right at your fingertips. 

You need to plan for paper. Paper it exists so what I have is a dresser next to my desk and it has drawers and you don't need a filing cabinet like we used to have in the olden days but I do have my files organized into file folders and because I hardly access them. I just have them stacked up so if I need to pull the stack up and just look through them to get what I need I can easily do that. But you do need to plan for paper. 

The other thing which I didn't mention but I want to make sure that you think about is that It's an inviting place. That it's not cluttered that maybe you have a picture of your family on your desk. You have a place for a cup of tea or whatever you like to drink. But make sure that it feels productive and a little homey and like a place you want to be. I think of my desk as my money-making cockpit so I have ever you know I'm just always prepared right here so have some fun with it. 

And before we go today I want to make sure that you all know about my free online classroom "The Virtual Assistant Connection". You can find us on Facebook by typing "The Virtual Assistant Connection" in the search bar at the top. We would love to have you. We have a large community of over 9 000 members and it's filled with community and it's also filled with people helping each other, asking questions. It's a place to get your questions answered, that's for sure, lots of videos, lots of trainings happen. We have a weekly webinar series every wednesday for an hour with information about being a Virtual Assistant. So please come over click the join button and we'd love to have you in the meantime. I'm Belinda Wasser RocketGirl signing off.

Bye-bye.