Get Your Focus Back
Virtual assistants always have lots of balls in the air. That’s just the nature of the work. The downside of so much activity, however, is that sometimes we fall into a habit of doing what’s in front of us instead of thinking through the best next step on our ever-growing to-do list.
In this episode of The RocketGirl Show, I'll share three things to do to get back on track.
TRANSCRIPT
I'm Belinda Wasser, also known as RocketGirl. Today, we're going to talk about how to get your focus back.
When you're a virtual assistant, you typically have so many things coming at you - client requests, emails, text messages, all kinds of information coming at you. And sometimes it's easy to lose your focus.
For the most part, I can usually reset in the day, but from time to time I know that I need a major focus reset, like a hard reset on my phone. So today we're going to talk about what to do when that happens because we want to make sure that we're being thoughtful about how we spend our time and not just move from thing to thing to thing, just because it's in front of us. We want to be much more deliberate about that. And these three tips, I believe will help you do that.
Alright, the first one, you want to clear the space. What I mean by clearing the space is the physical space. So take everything off your desk. If there's a bunch of extra stuff around your desk, like piles of equipment or wrapping paper from the last holiday, just remove all of it, clean your desk, take a moment, and put everything back except the paper. Don't put the paper back yet, but look at each thing and think, "Is this something that should be on my desk, or is this something that I put there a month ago that I don't even see again anymore?" And I think what's going to happen is that when you clean it off, you're going to just feel a sense of space like space around you to use your brain in a productive manner. So definitely reset the space.
Now, let's talk about the work and the paper. If you have stacks of paper, what I want you to do next is go through them and organize them in terms of 'I don't need to look at it right now, 'I never need to look at it again, but I need to keep it' or 'I don't need it'. And then the really critical pile of 'I have to take care of these things before I have to fold them into my workflow.' So these things are important. I do the same thing with emails, work requests. Just try to figure out how to organize it so that you can really focus on what the priority is.
Then what I want you to do is create room. And what I mean by that is you want to think about how to settle yourself down, whether that's music or taking a break, taking time to clean your office. For me, energy is all about space, and you want to make sure that there's enough space so that things are not coming at you and you can clearly decide how you want to spend your time and what to do.
I really believe that by doing these three things, clearing space, creating room in your brain, and getting clear on what the next priority is, will help you stay focused.
Before we go, oh, and the last thing, before we go, working harder is not the answer, so I know a lot of you might think, "I'll just put my head down. I'll just push through it. I'll power through it . I'll get it done." That is not the answer. The answer really is in a case like this, hitting the reset button, so I encourage you to do that. Even if you don't feel like you have the time to do it, I think you'll have much more mental time. Absolutely.
So now, before we go, I want to invite you to my free online classroom. It's called The Virtual Assistant Connection. It lives over on Facebook. We have a wonderful community with over 13000 members, and I'd love to have you join us over there. Lots of videos, lots of blog posts, lots of community, and lots of fun. Whether you're just starting out as a VA or you've been on for a while.
So type the Virtual Assistant Connection in the search bar at the top of Facebook and click the join button. I'd love to have you. In the meantime, I'm Belinda Wasser signing off, until next time. Bye-bye.
