Things You Must Do Before the Year Ends

Posted January 16, 2019

The year is almost at a close and the time has come for virtual assistants like you to look back at what you’ve done for the year, what’s still left for you to do, and what you regret doing. Before you start listing your new year’s resolutions, you need to focus on making the best out of the remaining days of the year first.

To help you provide the best virtual assistance service possible, here’s a rundown on the top things you must do before the year ends.

Master the art of time management.

This is a skill that you need to have no matter what your line of work is, so learn to master it as soon as you can. At the end of the year, you need to be able to have a trusted time management and/or productivity app, a planning strategy, prioritization rules, and so on.

Say goodbye to your procrastinating ways.

At this point, you should have been able to get rid of cramming completely. As a student, when only your grades were affected by your procrastination, it’s still understandable. But now that you have clients and entire businesses relying on you, you should have been able to get rid of it completely.

Learn how to say no.

Wanting to impress your clients and coworkers is an impressive trait, but when it comes to the point where you can’t say no to anything at all, then you have to reassess your attitude. Don’t take on more work than you can handle.

Ignore the call of work.

In the age of smartphones, it has become even harder to ignore work emails or chat messages from your clients or coworkers. But being too attached to your work can be unhealthy. Learn to ignore non-urgent messages and tackle them only during your designated work hours. Turn off your phone notifications if necessary!

Take more time off.

A common occurrence among virtual assistants is their hesitancy to take more time off work. Most VAs barely get days off and paid holidays, at least not as many of them as regular office workers do. And that’s totally fine. Since you’re working from home, you won’t fall prey to common things that keep people from going to work like traffic or your car not starting, etc. However, working from home doesn’t mean that you don’t need vacations at all. Ask your client for a few days off every few months so you can recharge your batteries and get back to work more efficient than ever.

Learn something new.

Think it’s too late to skill up? Think again! There so many short courses out there that you can take to spice up your CV. For example, getting a Google Search certification is something you can finish over the weekend especially if you’re already a bit familiar with it and just need a little more polishing. There’s always space for more knowledge, so start learning something new today.

What amazing things have you done with your online work this year? What aspects can you improve on? Hopefully, the things above can help become an even better VA next year.