Annie:
Welcome to The Whole Assistant Podcast. I'm your host, Annie Croner. I'm a former assistant who's passionate about our profession, and I'm also a certified coach who's invested in your success. You've come to the right place if you want to know what it looks like to stand in your power and achieve success as an assistant from overwhelm and burnout. Now on to today's episode. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Whole Assistant Podcast. So today we are going to be talking all about the power of prioritization. But before I get there, I do want to share about an upcoming free event for you all.
Annie:
And this event is happening because I have learned just how powerful it can be when we all get together and just network and get to know one another. We're going to share stories. And I hosted back an April live event online to this end on administrative professionals day. And I polled the group at that point, and I asked how many people would appreciate these, these events that I host more regularly. And nearly everybody on the call raised their hand. So I am now going to be hosting these much more regularly, so please stay tuned for more. The next EA mingle. That's what I'm calling it.
Annie:
Executive assistant Mingle will be on June 14, which is a Friday at noon central time. So that's June 14 at noon, and you can go to wholeassistant.com/mingle or click the link in the show notes. I'll be sure to link to it in the show notes to register for this free event. They're just so much fun, and nobody's sponsoring it this time around. I believe that the admin day event was sponsored, but this event will not be. So it's just gonna be a good time of everyone coming together and getting to know one another and sharing fun stories. And we also do kind of a speed networking where we break out into small groups for just a few minutes. Then we come back and.
Annie:
And I typically give people a topic because I don't want to leave you all hanging and staring at each other randomly. So I will give you a topic to discuss, and then you're going to come back and we're going to share the best of the group stories. So I just love these events. I love to host them. I love how it brings everyone together, and it's just a great way to connect with other people who understand what you're going through, and that can be really, really a powerful thing. So please join us again to go to wholeassistant.com/mingle to register for this free event on June 14. Please feel free to tell all your EA buddies or all your administrative buddies about it. I am not a stickler, guys.
Annie:
I do not care if you're if you're considered an administrative assistant, an executive assistant, a general admin, or if you just want to join in the fun regardless of your title. So please show up. It's going to be a good time. And today we are talking all about prioritization. So one of the reasons I want to focus on this topic for today is you can be the most organized person in the world. But if you're giving equal weight to all your tasks, a this will make you less effective as an assistant and b it can cause overwhelm. So I just want to make sure that we are optimally prioritizing our time so that we can show up effectively in our roles and kick butt as strategic business partners. So how do we actually prioritize? And my first kind of tip or strategy for you guys is to really align with your executive.
Annie:
I also have a free resource for this as well. If you've shown up to any of my free masterclasses or my most recent free masterclass, I talked about this as well. You want to align with your executive, which means that you want to align with their priorities. And one of the ways that we do that is by helping our executives get clear on their priorities. So I have a strategic planning session guide on my website. The link is down below as well to where you can grab your strategic planning session to hold with your executive. I like to hold these sessions quarterly with my executive, or I like to when I was an active executive assistant and I found that quarterly is a great place to start, especially if you're introducing the strategic planning session for the first time. There was one executive where I did this annually with, but I do know that if you can actually help your executive get clear on their priorities, it can really help you strategically align with them as well.
Annie:
So go to wholeassistant.com or click the link in the show notes below to grab your strategic planning session guide where I walk you through soup to nuts on how to plan out and execute your strategic planning session. Okay, now another way that we align with our executive is by just simply observing. Where do they spend most of their time doing? Step into your executives priorities, into your executive shoes for a minute. What are their priorities? Or what do you think their priorities should be? Keep the lines of communication open when you go through this process of figuring out what your executive's priorities are. And when you align with your executive, and I'm so sorry if you hear jingling in the background. That is our dog, Milo. I typically close my door when I record these podcast episodes, but he actually snuck in and so you may be hearing his caller, and I apologize for that. That's just the life of working from home.
Annie:
So we want to just make sure to keep the lines of communication open. Ask about priority level as things come in, communicate what you have on your plate. This may look differently for all of us. Some of us send weekly update emails. I know that was with my last executive. That was our typical standard of operation. Whenever we were communicating with one another, I would just send him weekly updates via email because he was seldom ever in the office. He's actually sell them in the state as well.
Annie:
I mean, he lived here in Denver, but he also had homes elsewhere and he would spend a lot of times in those homes. So for us to actually have a weekly sync, it just wasn't really a priority for him and therefore it wasn't a priority for me. I basically had a good understanding of his priorities, though. So first of all, aligning with your executive on what their priorities are will help you to know what your priorities are or should be. Now, a few things I want you to consider as you go through the process of actually prioritizing your day is a few things. So I want you to consider the amount of time it will take to complete a task. If the task is going to have high impact and it's going to be a one off quick win, do the task right like that. That would be a higher priority item.
Annie:
Another thing to consider is whether the task is important or merely urgent. So often our desire to help and to be helpful, or our feeling of obligation to our colleagues and co workers will come into play with this one to where something is really urgent for the person bringing you this task. But in terms of your list of priorities, it's not always so urgent. It's not so important, right? So we can get caught up in making sure everybody else is taken care of and not keeping the main thing, the main thing, which is really high level support for your executive and showing up strategically for your executive. And we can be pulled or swayed to kind of reprioritize in a way that isn't helpful. And I will tell you guys, we say no in order to make room for yes. If you're saying yes to everybody and everything, that may not be a winning strategy to show up as a more strategic business partner. So that's just something to watch out for and to ask yourself in the moment, like, is this task truly important? Is this something that really cannot wait? Is this a fire drill that I need to involve myself with? Or can I empower this person to handle this task in another way that won't require so much of my time and energy? I really want us all to consider that question so that we don't end up spending our time doing things that we shouldn't be spending our time doing.
Annie:
And I will also say, too, this is the last thing to consider when you're interrupted by somebody. It's okay to assess where the new request fits in terms of your priority list. So you can actually see your priority list externalized, which is why I'm such a huge fan of a digital centralized test tracking system, because you can actually see what the priorities are. You can actually see it all in one place. You aren't having to scroll through your inbox. You aren't having to look at a paper paper notebook on your desk. You aren't having to do all of that because it's centralized, it's digital. You can actually see it.
Annie:
You can also access it from your phone, which is really great, especially when things would hit my brain and I'd be hanging out with my partner after hours. My husband and I'd be sitting on our couch, and something would come to mind. I wouldn't have to get in my inbox to email it to myself. I could just pop into my Trello board right then and there and add it as a task to handle the next day. Right? So those are some things to consider. Where does the new request fit into your list of priorities? Now, I will say that if it's a priority for your executive, it should probably be a priority for you as well. And then here's kind of how I manage priorities, or how I thought about prioritization, especially when I was an executive assistant. But I still try to keep these things in mind today as I show up and support other executive assistants on their paths.
Annie:
So I would handle the tasks for which there is a hard deadline or others are waiting on. So tasks like this include expense reports, meeting requests, report polling, reservations, that sort of thing. Typically, there's a deadline for expense reports, meeting requests, report polling, all of those things. All of those things are very time sensitive. So that time sensitivity, the nature of those things, automatically bumps those up on my priority list. And I will also say it's important when working with others to request clear guidelines, including deadlines. So if someone comes to you with a request and it's kind of nebulous. And you aren't quite sure what the priority level should be because there has been no true guideline with regard to deadline.
Annie:
There is no guideline with regard to urgency, that sort of thing. It can be really tricky to prioritize that task. So whenever anybody brings you anything, asking about a deadline, asking if the deadline is malleable, and also asking yourself whether or not you should be handling this thing right. So just pay attention to those things. And for those truly competing priorities, I see no problem with having the conversation with your executive or supervisor about those things and asking them, hey, where is this fall on the list of priorities? Should I be handling this? What are the priority levels here? And I just want to make sure that I'm maximizing my time and I'm being as efficient as possible and that I'm getting to the high priority items. And it seems like these two are equal. So you tell me which of which is a priority for you, and they can give you some guidance there as well. And sometimes I would try and guess what my executives priorities were should be, especially at the beginning, especially as I was getting to know my last executive.
Annie:
And what I discovered is that just having the conversation with him, this was a him. Having the conversation with him was very helpful in clarifying for me what my priorities should be. And then once you get a handle on what the priorities are, and you get a sense for what their priorities are, and you're having those open lines of communication, and you've helped your executive strategically align with his priorities or their priorities, then you can then strategically align with their priorities as well. And then you'll be able to better dictate what the priorities are. Okay. And then second, so handle the tasks for which there's a hard deadline or others awaiting on. That's number 1. Second is handle the tasks that are important but don't have a hard deadline.
Annie:
So an example of this may be data entry. Data entry can be extremely important, especially if you work in a sales environment or you're dealing with income or that sort of thing, and you're like working within a CRM or something like that. Data entry can be extremely important. I also was in my executives financial world, so I was constantly doing data entry into other, like software for finance things. And that was really important work that needed to be done, but didn't actually have a hard deadline. But I knew I didn't want to get too far behind on it. So actually then prioritizing those important tasks based on your executive priorities that need to get done. And then third, handle the tasks that are necessary but of low importance.
Annie:
Examples include filing, so that's like the best example I have of a necessary but low importance task in terms of priorities and how I prioritize my time, especially as an executive assistant. I will also say that if you actually prioritize your time like this, and if we were actually incredibly clear on what your executives priorities are, this will eliminate overwhelm because then you'll be able to focus on the next most important thing and see it through to completion and then move down your list. I'm not saying that you're going to have like a whole day of just focusing on one task or one or one situation. But what I am saying is that if we guard our time effectively and we actually know what our executives priorities are, then we can work off of those priorities in a really meaningful and very cool way that will actually serve to support you as a human being as well as an executive assistant. So there are my best strategies for prioritization. I hope you found it helpful. Just a little reminder, I think that a lot of us, we kind of get lost in the weeds sometimes and we prioritize things that may not be the most helpful for us. They may not serve us or our career or our executive in the most beneficial way.
Annie:
So I hope you found this episode really helpful in terms of how to prioritize and how to think about your work. And really, guys, I'm telling you, the secret sauce for prioritization is really finding that alignment with your executive, knowing what those priorities are and then executing off of them. And another like thing that I mentioned earlier about having a digital centralized task tracking system will revolutionize how you work. I'm not even kidding, so please give those a shot. I don't care if it's Trello. I don't care if it's, you know, Microsoft, a Microsoft product or Monday.com or Asana or wherever you want to manage your tasks. If it's digital and centralized, I'm a big fan. We are always on our phone.
Annie:
We are always connected. And so if we can actually harness the power of our digital world, then that can only serve and support us. That is what I have for you guys today. Be intentional. Be whole. That is all for now. I help assistants apply the concepts I share on this podcast. If you're ready to take your growth deeper and you're curious whether working with me in a coaching capacity is right for you, please email me at [email protected] to schedule your complimentary discovery call.
