Anyone who knows me knows that my guilty pleasure is listening to and watching Tedx Talks in the bath. They are short, (14 minutes) uplifting, and a productive use of time for those of us who are not naturally gifted enough to sing in the shower!
It was one of these episodes that was my inspiration for the blog today – and I promise you that this is the best 14 minutes you will invest watching Darria Long who talks about triaging her busy life and making time for the real essentials – Lessons from the ER. Yes, I am a massive New Amsterdam fan! (I have included the details of the TEDx talk below).
I am drawing from her Crazy Mode to Ready Mode transformation because we are all guilty of saying incessantly… We are “Crazy Busy!”
Prioritize Relentlessly:
Yes, we have a lot of productivity blogs on the Assistants4Hire website because this is what we do! Let life, including our own life, become productive.
Remember when you are faced with multiple situations at once, fall back on the 4 D’s:
Do
Defer
Delegate
Drop
Do… Things that you can get off you list in less than 2 minutes
Defer… Schedule your other activities that take longer; time block to get it done.
Delegate… May we suggest a Virtual Assistant when cloning yourself is impossible.
Drop… If you really don’t see it adding value or is causing more stress than good.
Expect and Design Processes:
The worst feeling is when you are unprepared, have to attend to things on the fly, and things keep spiraling, especially when you don’t have a process or sequence to follow. Been there ever? Felt like Alice falling through the rabbit hole?
Having a To-Do List and having policies and procedures of how you do things will make your life simpler. By putting into place a policy, YOU...
Look at simpler ways of doing things
Create an orderly step-by-step process
Make it easier to hand over or train another person
Create order in chaos
This is something we do at Assistants4Hire. We create process manuals where it is non-existent or that need a rewrite so as to simplify those manuals that are archaic and too rigid that no one follows them… but everyone knows they should!
Get out of your head and get out of your own way!
The negative self-talk in our heads will always make things seem impossible. “Oh, I should… but I never have the time…” MerriLyn’s favorite term is “Should-ing all over yourself!” You need to step out of your head to get out of your way. The first step is to realize you are doing this, and the next step is to ask for help and get out of your own way.
Think for a moment of the peace of mind of having a multi-talented team behind you who all love doing what they do… producing quality and timely work that you can depend on!
You can take that vacation and still have your social media go out, have your blogs published, and your bill payments attended to!
As promised, here is Darria Long’s Tedx Talk! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Want to learn more about our business and what type of services we provide?
Visit us at:
Written by Tatum De Souza