As you rise in your company's ranks or your business increases in size, you may feel understandably overwhelmed by all the new tasks you take on alongside the old ones that never went away. Adding to your to-do list in this way can not only be exhausting and unsustainable, but it can also interfere with the professional growth you and your business can undertake. Fortunately, hiring a virtual assistant is a simple way to reduce redundant tasks and free up your time for more essential pursuits.
Virtual assistants can offset many of your tasks, making your day-to-day more manageable and freeing up your mental energy to focus on tasks that grow your business.
Benefits of a Virtual Assistant
Virtual assistants are professionals who work with you and for you remotely, often handling smaller or more repetitive tasks so that you can focus on larger and more pressing ones. Many higher-ups hire assistants to schedule their meetings, organize their calendars, screen their emails, and even book their travel. Virtual assistants can do all of these tasks and more without needing a spot in the office.
Tasks like these are essential, but they often require much more time to complete than they are worth to the business or company, especially since leaders are paid to carry out other high-level tasks that have a more significant impact on the company.
Small Tasks Can Burn Out Your Mental Energy
Any person in a high-level position, such as a manager, leader, or business owner, can tell you that these positions require immense focus on critical thinking skills to make crucial decisions for the company, its employees, and its customers day after day. The best decision-makers find a way to keep their brains energized and block off time to think deeply, which usually comes from delegating tasks to others to focus on critical factors of the company, like new strategies and significant investments.
Those who fail to do so regularly experience burnout, a psychological condition that stems from chronic overwork and fatigue. Some signs of burnout include:
- Emotional exhaustion
- Cynicism and detachment from work
- Reduced self-confidence
Nobody can perform at their best while struggling with burnout, and undergoing intense fatigue from a chronically long to-do list makes it nearly impossible for you to make sound decisions and think creatively.
Get More Time from Your Week
Many leaders have hectic schedules that require them to run around and meet with dozens of people every day, perform numerous administrative tasks, and shift into deep work mode to strategize and lead effectively. As such, most leaders and business owners take at least an hour out of their mornings to review their calendars and make sure they're ready for every meeting and event on that day. Over time, these hours spent on tasks that someone else could easily perform add up substantially.
Having a virtual assistant perform duties like this for you can add an extra hour, or more, of deep thinking time per workday, which translates to dozens of more focused blocks over a month. Your mind will also be freer to think creatively because you won't be stuck worrying about scheduling meetings, booking your upcoming accommodations, or data entry and analysis.
Having a virtual assistant tackle your administrative tasks for you makes your calendar likely open up substantially, allowing you to schedule more blocks for deep thinking, which leads to a higher degree of genuine productivity for you and the organization.
Tasks Virtual Assistants Can Handle
Although each virtual assistant has their own unique set of skills to offer, virtual assistants can generally tackle the following tasks:
- Researching, planning, and booking travel and accommodations
- Scheduling meetings, screening phone calls and emails
- Creating graphics, reports, and slides
- Proofreading documents and presentations
- Entering and compiling key data into reports
- Bookkeeping and banking tasks (with proper credentials)
- Sending gift baskets or thank-you cards to clients and business partners
It's easy to get stuck spending way too much time on any of these tasks as a business leader. How many times have you set out to create a presentation, for example, only to get held up on choosing the font or in graphic colors? Minutes spent on unimportant tasks like these can quickly turn to hours, or entire days, reducing your capacity to do the critical work you are paid to do.
Allowing a virtual assistant to handle them instead can free up all your time on these tasks to make you feel more relaxed. A relaxed state of mind, after all, is most conducive to high-level thinking and excellent decision-making.
Consider Adding a Virtual Assistant to Your Team
Although some don't view hiring virtual assistants as a worthwhile investment, those who give it a chance are often delighted by how much more smoothly their workdays go thanks to the efforts of their VAs. Virtual assistants may not benefit every business type or manager. They can undoubtedly shorten your to-do list, keep you more organized, and give you more space to consider tough decisions.
