ARE YOU SAFEGUARDING YOUR TIME?
Resources and links mentioned:
Register for my free mini-masterclass, 3 Steps to Beautifully Banish Burnout here: https://www.wholeassistant.com/3-steps-to-beautifully-banish-burnout-registration
Connect with me on LinkedIn here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/annie-croner
Join our FB Community, Assistants Who Self-Care, here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WholeAssistant
Check out the video transcript:
Do you ever feel like your time is not your own because you feel obligated to help everyone with everything? If you answered yes to this question, you're going to want to stay tuned for this episode of the Whole Assistant Show, where I'll be sharing with you three questions to ask yourself in order to regain your sanity and time.
Assistants, if you would like more self-care and productivity strategies geared towards you, please subscribe to my channel and click the bell to be notified when my weekly videos go live. This season of the Whole Assistant Show is all about exploring the intersection and overlap of self-care and productivity. On this episode of the Whole Assistant Show, I'm going to share with you three questions you can ask yourself in order to take back your time and gain clarity around your day.
The first question I would encourage us all to ask ourselves when given a task is, is this task appropriate for me to handle or is there someone better suited to take this task on? Oftentimes, people will come to us because we are competent and we know what's going on and they'll ask for our help with things when it isn't always appropriate for us to take the task on even though we could. I think this is a burden of competent people and especially of assistants who want to be helpful, is that we often feel the need to take on tasks that aren't necessarily appropriate for our role or our position.
Now I'm not saying don't be helpful and don't offer as much help as you want to everyone, especially your executive. But if someone's coming to you asking you to schedule a meeting on someone else's calendar and they're circumventing that assistant, maybe you should redirect that person to that assistant. So my solution for you is to actually redirect your colleague or coworker or the person who's asking this of you or whatever task of you to the appropriate person. Now, if this is you or if you're the person that everyone turns to in your organization, I want to hear from you. Please leave a "that's me" in the comment section below.
The second question I want us all to ask is where does this task fit in my priority list? So we've determined that the task is indeed appropriate for you to do, it is within the scope of your job. And so the next question is to really get clear on where this task fits in your priority list. Oftentimes, we lose track of our time and of our day because we feel the need to respond immediately to requests, and we want to be helpful immediately. But oftentimes, the need isn't immediate and can wait until other more priority tasks are completed before we get to this particular item. So I would encourage us all to take a really good, close, hard look at our priority list and then plug that item or that task into the appropriate place on our priority list.
Once this task is prioritized appropriately, then you need to communicate with your colleague, or coworker, or whoever asked you to handle this task what the expectation is in terms of timelines, so give them clear expectations so they know when they can expect to get this task completed. And the third final, and probably most important question we need to be asking ourselves is what am I going to have to say no to in order to make room for yes. In order to give this person what they want, inevitably, I'm going to have to say no to something else. That's just how life works. There are only 24 hours in a day. And so how we spend our time, if we want to take back control of our time, we're going to have to be really mindful of what we allow into our day and to safeguard those things that are really, truly important to get those needle-moving tasks completed and accomplished and off of our plate.
And now it's time for this episode's self-care pro tip. Honor yourself by saying yes to yourself a little bit more. We get going through our day taking care of everyone and everything and often we forget to carve out time for ourselves. If you decided you want to take a yoga class over lunch, honor yourself by signing up for the yoga class, and actually showing up for it. Your future self will thank you.
Now you have three great questions in your tool belt that will help you safeguard your time and manage your time more strategically. If you're interested in avoiding burnout and developing better self-care strategies, please check out my free mini-masterclass, Three Steps to Beautifully Banished Burnout linked below. To continue this discussion and receive support from your fellow assistants, head on over to facebook.com/groups/wholeassistant and join our assistants only community. If you liked this video, please let me know by hitting the like button below. Also, be sure to subscribe and share this video with your fellow administrative professionals and assistants. And last but not least, if this video has helped you in some way, I want to know about it, so please leave a comment below sharing how.
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