Interview: Managing Physical Media

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What is your single most important tip for keeping your books, magazines, software and other physical media organized? (549)

The key to keeping your physical media organized is to have as little as possible. Only keep the absolute essentials and either trash or convert to a digital file what you want to keep.

For example, I don’t purchase any fiction books– the library is perfect for that. I only keep books that I will either read again or reference in the future.

CD’s and DVD’s are easy to convert to digital files and centralize on an external hard drive (be sure to back it up!)

Basically, if you drastically reduce the amount of physical media in your life the problem of organizing it will resolve itself.

Sam from Sam I Am (rss)

Sam’s answer was the highest rated from this question. Using the library is something I often overlook. I have converted almost all of my CDs to digital and I now store them in a large box in a barn.

Purge! You can’t organize clutter…and clutter is stuff that you don’t use or love.

If you haven’t read a magazine in three months, throw it (and consider your total amount of subscriptions).

If you clean out your computer, purge the software.

Give yourself permission to never read the stacks of books that have piled up and get rid of them. If you decide you really want to read it in the future, you can get it from the library or buy it again.

LJ from simpleproductivityblog (rss)

With the second most popular answer, LJ encourages us to get rid of stuff we don’t need. With the cost of books being so low (especially getting things used on Amazon) it can make sense to get rid of something and just buy it again when it is needed.

My secret trick to keeping physical media organized is to have as little of it as possible.

I don’t buy books very often–I check them out from the library, so I don’t have to worry about storing books. I used to get a number of magazines, but this year I unsubscribed from all of them. I’ve kept my old magazines (they’re on a shelf in my closet), and I still enjoy looking through them sometimes, but I don’t have to deal with a constant influx of reading material.

Just streamlining possessions really helps cut down on clutter.

Sharon Sarmiento from eSoup

A related tip is to only buy something when you are going to use it immediately. If a book looks interesting, but you won’t have time to read it right away, just write the title down and keep it in a list of things to read later. When you have time to read it you can purchase or borrow the book.

Get the digital versions if possible. If they are not available, using magazine holders and having lots of book cases are what works for me.

Oh and… when in doubt… throw it out…

John Richardson from Success Begins Today (rss)

I don’t mind digital versions of magazines, newspapers, and fiction on my Sony Reader, but I tend to want hard copy of books that I might use again or loan to someone else. On bookshelves, I bought a bunch of folding wooden bookshelves when they were on sale for half price. They fold up so they are easy to move and they are real wood (not particle board) so they tend to outlast other shelves.

Digitize it. If you can get it in a digital format, you’re off to the races.

If you can’t, the traditional old bookshelf or filing cabinets are a great start, as long don’t give yourself too much room to expand. This sounds counter-intuitive, but if there’s a space, something will fill it, and you’ll end up with more clutter. Having just enough room to contain your essential physical media without much room for growth forces you to get as much done or acquired digitally as you can.

http://www.joelfalconer.com from Joel Falconer (rss)

If you have a bookshelf with extra space, consider putting a plant or picture in the extra space. You can remove it when you need the room, but it will help keep you from just throwing something else in the space because it is empty.

I think the best way you can keep your books and magazines organized is by arranging them according to topics and subjects and then keeping them in order of their priority. Like , if you read any particular book or magazine frequently, keep it on top of the pack or in front portion of the shelf. This way you won’t need to disturb the pile of books when you want that particualr book.

The same goes with softwares and physical media. Here you may also consider sticking small labels onto them which can help you identify them easily when you need them.

Abhijeet from Jeet Blog (rss)

Topical organization for books is a great idea. If you have a house with bookshelves in various places you can arrange topics based on location. Cooking books near the kitchen. Business books near the office. Picture books near the den.

For me, my biggest struggle with physical media is the sheer amount of information contained in the books I read that needs to be used in my blog. I use sticky notes and mark pages with the info I want. When finished reading a book, I record all those notes into a spreadsheet.

Later, when I’m creating a blog post and I’m trying to remember where I read something, I search the spreadsheet, locate the page number, and have the full reference in front of me. It has saved me tons of time.

Jason from World Fitness Network (rss)

Jason has a great method for keeping track of information. I’ve heard some other people say that they read a book with a voice recorder handy and note the page number and any thoughts they have as they go. They then send the audio file off to have it transcribed.

The biggest tip would relate to books. I like reading books a lot, but don’t have a lot of space, so I check books out of the library. I take notes on the books I read online, so I can refer back to them later.

Anne from Writers Cabal Blog(rss)

Another vote for making better use of the library.

Don’t have too much of it! Set limits on how much of this stuff you have and then it’s easy to organize.

Ariane Benefit from Neat & Simple Living (rss)

Getting rid of things that you don’t need any more can be very valuable. That book on photoshop might be worth $7 now, but will be worth nothing in two years. Selling the extra items on Amazon helps move things out and gives you some cash as well

Forget about alphabetizing. It can drive an obsessive person crazy, and alienate everyone in your home and office. If you have an extensive collection of “things”, I would recommend software called “Paper Tiger.” It’s an all-inclusive product with multiple licenses where you just place your media/books/magazines in a row, enter the location and place a number on the item. When you are looking for something, you simply check the program. Our company has implemented it for a Sony design library and a Natural Foods Bakery accounting office. Does away with the need to alphabetize and you can check things in/out which works well for architectural and interior design firms with extensive collections of drawings and samples. http://thepapertiger.com/

John Trosko from OrganizingLA Blog (rss)

I haven’t ever used The Paper Tiger, but the idea sounds interesting. Unfortunately all I can find is a PC version.

Purge your media! I use the library and SimplyAudiobooks.com as much as possible, taking notes and then returning the books in order to keep clutter to a minimum.

Eva Holtz from College Admissions Secrets (rss)

I use to use Audible back when they had a really good subscription plan. I could get all the books I could listen to for about $20 per month. This worked great until they changed their plans.

I use a relatively unconventional method. I have 3 stacks (literal stacks) of books. If it’s on or under my nightstand, it needs to be read. That is my primary stack. If it’s something that I’ve read and I think it has great information that I think I will reference frequently, it’s in a stack nearest my desk. The third stack are those books that don’t fit on my bookshelf

Nathan Snell from The Technopian(rss)

This is a new method I haven’t heard of. I’m afraid my stack of things to read would topple.

Contests

Just a reminder about two current contests.  First we have the Belkin Concealed Powerstrip giveaway.  When we get to 1250 email subscribers of them will get the powerstrip.  (We are currently at 1088.  It has been slow because many people have been switching over to feedreaders.) Second we have the Bento software giveaway. The last person to comment on the post gets the software.

Past Post: Paradox of Powerful Tools

Paradox of Powerful Tools - Simple is often better.

Younger Look for Resume

Thursday’s WSJ has an example of how a 49 year old woman was able to get more attention for jobs by adding a photo to her resume where she was dressed to look younger and trendy.  She also tried to minimize the length of her experience by removing her graduation date and some of the earlier jobs. What do you think of adding a photo to  your resume?

Review of Shoeboxed.com

At times, the amount of paperwork that one person has do deal with can become extremely overwhelming. Many people find that a pile of unorganized paper can have drastic effects on the amount of work that they accomplish. For many of us, the motivation to organize the chaos is sometimes too much to even contemplate. However, an enterprising business has found a way to make the lives of the ordinary person much simpler.

Shoeboxed.com is an organization that provides a service that categorizes and organizes your receipts in a hassle-free manner. There are several levels of service that the company provides. One is the free version, in which you must scan in or direct your online order receipts into the account and organize them yourself. They also offer Basic, Classic or Express accounts.

The Basic account offers international service for customers with a relatively small volume of receipts to process for a price of $9.95 per month.

With this option, Shoeboxed will scan in and organize your receipts for you and shred them to protect your privacy.

The Classic account is their most popular account that is suited to one’s personal or business use at $19.95 per month. With this account type, Shoeboxed processes and organizes your receipts, scans them, and sends them back to you in an envelope.

The account level with the most options and fastest service processing is the Express account. For a fee of $59.95 per month, Shoeboxed provides even more efficient service to a client, with tasks being processed in 1 business day. The Express offers the same options and processing capacity as the Classic version, but the Express completes processing the task in a shorter amount of time.

Because so much of a person’s time can be taken up by frustration and disorganization, the service that this business provides would be very helpful to anyone that either does not possess that knack of organization or simply does not have the time to organize and keep track of their own receipts. The system is straightforward and fairly easy to understand, and also provides the option to export the scanned-in receipt information into Excel spreadsheets and other programs that work with large amounts of financial data. Someone who does not have a substantial number of receipts to keep track of would most likely not benefit from this program. However, for those that are searching for a way to keep control of their purchase records, this tool could become indispensable.

Boston Magazine

Productivity501 got a nice little mention on page three of the Boston Magazine on an article about American Express Concierge services. This explains the surge in comments from people doing “damage control”.

Virtual vs. Inperson Assistants

It is hard to beat having someone you can send to the store with your grocery list or wait in line for you at city hall.  Maybe I just lucked out, but my non-virtual assistant is really cutting down on the amount of running around I have to do.

Past Posts: Personal Productivity From Management

Personal Productivity From Management Theory - How academic management theories can be used to help improve your self management.

Bill Gates on XP

This email is a pretty interesting account of Bill Gates trying to install Movie Maker.

DevonTHINK’s Classify Feature

As part of my paperless office experiment I’m finding that scanning is actually the easiest part of the whole setup. A lot of what is difficult is finding a workflow that makes sense.  For example, if your assistant scans in 250 documents from your file cabinet, you need some way to classify and organize those into your system.  Obviously you can look at each one and figure out where it goes, but this is very slow.

DevonTHINK has a feature that helps with this.  It looks at the text in the document you want to classify and then looks at the text of documents already in the system. Then it suggests a location that puts it with similar documents.  This is extremely useful–especially when dealing with bills.

In this video I do a brief demo of how this classification system works.  I’m trying to make the videos a bit more usable, so let me know if this is an improvement over the others or not.

The video is a bit on the rough side, but I wanted to go ahead and get it put up to get some feedback from readers. I’m planning on doing some more with a better camera and in a better controlled environment. (I’m not sure if you can see me trying to shoo the dog away that is trying to rest his wet nose on my leg.)

Past Posts: The Rat Experiment

The Rat Experiment - How your expectations determine your results.

Interview Posted

Kris from FreshFocus (rss) did an interview with yours truly that you may find of interest.

Telecommuting From Home

This post is a series of links I asked my assistant in India to compile and summarize on telecommuting. With skyrocketing gas prices, now is a good time to consider telecommuting.  You can even approach your boss about doing it to help the environment. (We’ve previously written about how to approach your boss about telecommuting.)

• Ever Given a Thought to Telecommuting? - Vishal P. Rao
  Should you be confused about telecommuting, this article acts as an eye-opener. Starting with a perfect definition of the term, the article also gives the advantage and the steps that can eliminate the drawbacks involved. The author also provides a link to gain additional knowledge and help you get started.
• Thank Goodness for Telecommuting - The Monster Bloggers
  Author feels with the entry of telecommunication, productivity at different sector of economy is sure. Tedious tasks get simplified and reduce stress that is otherwise involved. Personally, the author is dispirited that this mode of communication has not received its full recognition, but certainly thanks his employer for having him availed this opportunity.
• Telecommuting: Not Just for Disaster Response - Mike Gunderloy
  Everyone has a view about the entry of a new technology. You would have supporters and critics. The author brings to light different viewpoints, both the positive and negative side of telecommuting.
• But is telecommuting right for you? - Brian Sommer
  Helpful article for those who would like to be employed and work from home. Helps to determine the qualities and the appropriate time of career to accept this option. Bringing to light about the personal experience and that of a reputed firm. The author also shares his perception on whom to offer this option.
• Telecommuting Has Mostly Positive Consequences - ScienceDaily
  Based on the results of the study, this article highlights the positive aspect of telecommuting. Both employer and employee are benefited with this approach at work. With hardly any negative aspect listed this article, the reader is bound to give telecommuting a shot.

Past Post: Two Types of Technology Users

Two Types of Technology Users - A short look at how different people approach technology.

Links of Interest

This is a very large list of links to articles we found interesting here at Productivity501 on no topic in particular. If you like these you might want to add Productivity501 as a friend on StumbleUpon, Digg, and/or Twitter. Also consider subscribing to our RSS feed.

• Matt Goes Digital - Matthew Cornell
  Matt Cornell shares some tips on moving away from a paper based system. Particularly useful if you use a Mac and OS X.
• Organizing Your Desk and Paper-Ariane Benefit
  Some helpful advice for keeping you desk from becoming one massive pile of clutter. Also gives tips for using items you already have around the house to help you become more organized.
• Research That Reveals New Paths to Productivity-Penelope Trunk
  This article speaks of the newest research related to productivity, such as days of the week that we tend to be productive and other factors that affect our efficiency. A few tips from the article are to make exercise options readily available and to stop obsessing over each and every decision.
• 10 Useful Steps for Optimizing Ubiquitous Capture-Getting Things Done
  Advocates getting things done through using simple tools, using tools that are fun, and also finding tools that are inexpensive. This author also recommends creating your own shorthand and date-stamping all documents.
• Search Commands: Find What You Are Looking For in Word 2007-GTD Wannabe
  This page offers some helpful advice for anyone who is slightly stumped to where some commands are located in Word 2007. The article tells about a new program that is specially designed to help users find things that are switched around from the locations on previous versions of Word.
• Linked In and Productivity-Productivity in Context
  This article tells how using LinkedIn can improve your productivity while searching for a job. This resource also highlights just how critical a good list of references can be in finding a new job.
• The Morning Tea Break: Making Better People Out of Nurses-LifeDev
  Some interesting insight as to how a short break during shifts can help nurses be more productive. This study also shows an improvement in morale as a result of these breaks.
• 10 Steps in Overcoming Clutter-Life Lists
  This article offers some helpful advice for reducing clutter in your home and office and, as a result, reducing stress in the process. Some suggestions include minimizing unnecessary belongings, carefully considering purchases and creating a recycling center.
• My Top Three Habits for an Organized Office-My Bad Habits
  This article gives three highly useful tips for keeping an organized office. One of these tips is to throw anything that might become just more clutter, away.
• Speeding Your Email-WOWNDADI
  Tells how you can eliminate any unnecessary messages that are cluttering up your inbox. The author recommends deleting irrelevant messages right away and separating actionable emails from unactionable ones.
• I’m Still Here I Promise-Sam I Am
  This article offers some helpful advice on how to keep your stress level down when you seem to be working through a mountain of different tasks. One idea that the author mentions is to keep your immediate surroundings orderly.
• A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words With Evernote-Stress-Free Productivity
  This site offers tips for stress-free productivity. In this particular article, the author explains how useful Evernote Beta can be in a business setting.
• 7 Ways to Increase Productivity…By Moving Stuff-Simple Productivity Blog
  Helpful tips on how to help simplify your life and increase productivity by simply moving things to different stations within your home or office. This helps organize things in an effective way.
• 5 Minute Calendar-Success Begins Today
  This site offers some practical and useful ideas for creating a calendar that you can carry with you on the run. This guide takes you through the steps to create a convenient 5 Minute Calendar.
• What Causes Clutter in Your Life?-Unclutterer
  This page talks about the different things in your life that may result in an increase of clutter in your office or home. Some of these causes include physical exhaustion, emotional avoidance and lack of time.
• Got Supplements?-World Fitness Network
  Offers some good advice on which dietary supplements are beneficial to take, and which supplements you might need to take, if any. The author also discusses the elements needed in a healthy diet.
• Turn Your Computer into a Fax Machine-Apace of Change
  This article explains how to use your PC as a means to fax documents to businesses that still use that medium of communication. This author guides you through the steps to send a PDF or other file to a fax machine.
• Productivity Boosters-Organized Thoughts
  Gives a few simple and easy steps to increasing your productivity. Some of these steps are getting an adequate amount of sleep, drinking plenty of water and eating healthily.
• Engage: Get Moving-David Zinger
  Explains how exercise is so beneficial to us mentally. He recommends that a person get up and moving every hour or 90 minutes.
• 5 Ways to Market Your Business for Little or No Money-Drew McClellan
  This article outlines several different ways to market your business without hurting your bank account. The author gives a few tips, such as hanging out at places where you can interact with potential customers.
• Wannabe Clutter-Ellen Hankes
  Talks about a phenomenon that most of us, if not all have experience with: wannabe clutter. This clutter is a result of projects that we have lost interest in, and the tools for that project now are nothing more than items that collect dust.
• How Do You Introduce Yourself?-Escape from Cubicle Nation
  A guide on how to introduce yourself in a business setting. One of the topics discussed is how to meet potential angel investors that might be interested in supporting your business venture.
• How to Deal With Rising Food Prices-Fiscal Musings
  This page offers some helpful advice on how to save, even with food prices rising to new heights. Making changes in the quantity and type of the food you buy could have a positive impact on your grocery bill.
• Make A Productive Visit to Your Local Library-Productivity 101
  Tells how enjoyable and productive it can be to spend an afternoon at your local library. The author discusses the benefits of a library trip being refreshing, inexpensive and informative.
• 10 Steps to More Productive Feed Reading-GearFire
  This page offers some tips to make it easier for a person to keep items in a feed reader organized and clutter-free. It also discusses the importance of using a good feed reader.
• The Manager’s Most Useful Tool-Andrew Rondeau
  This article offers some insight as to what a manager’s priorities are or can be. It examines the way that managers interact with the employees under them, and the results of that interaction.
• Eight Tips for Making Yourself Happier In the Next Hour-The Happiness Project
  Provides some insight as to how a person can boost his or her energy level, reduce stress and get nagging tasks out of the way. This article would be a helpful resource for anyone that is struggling with a lengthy to-do list.
• Black Light: Dealing With Criticism-InMyHeels.com
  This article is a good resource for anyone who is dealing with heavy criticism in the workplace. It explains the difference between positive and negative criticism and how to discern the two.
• Organize Your Life Online With SnapPages-jeetblog
  Tells how SnapPages can have a big impact on a person’s life through the tools it provides for organization. SnapPages allows people to keep track of their photos and calendars.
• How to Keep Your Idea File Alive and Useful-Joel Falconer
  This article would be a helpful resource for anyone that is constantly coming up with good ideas and then forgetting them. The offer recommends using an “idea file” to store these thoughts before they are lost.
• Next Actions 101-Rephrase Dormant Tasks to Spur Action-Andrew Flusche
  This article would be a helpful resource for anyone that has started a big project and feels “stuck” in the middle of it. The author offers some advice for re-invigorating these dormant projects.
• Change Your Mindset to Improve Your Productivity-Donald Latumahina
  Offers some tips as to how an improved mindset can benefit someone attempting to use productivity techniques. The author explains how strongly our mindset affects our level of productivity.
• Give Me 5 Minutes and I’ll Make You a Faster Reader-Miguel Pineiro
  This article provides some resources that would be helpful to anyone that needs a way to read a large amount of material consistently in a very short amount of time.The author also mentions that this method would be very useful for students.
• 10 Financial Tips for New Grads-My Dollar Plan
  This article provides some tips for new graduates on how to conserve money and invest wisely. The author recommends getting health insurance immediately, and starting a 401K account for retirement.
• Saving Time With Index Cards and a Timer-Nate’s Productivity Tips
  This article explains how using note cards for your to-do list can improve your efficiency and productivity. The author also mentions using a stopwatch to improve efficiency.
• Ideal Client Mix-Nick Rice
  Tells how essential effective marketing is to a small business. The author discusses the effects that a good marketing strategy can have on a small business’s performance.
• The Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles Can Make You More Productive-Organizing LA Blog
  This article speaks a bit about how much time malls cause a person to waste in just one day. Because malls generally attempt to cause customers to stay in the building for as long as possible, they cause customers to lose valuable minutes.
• Excel Keyboard Shortcuts-Practical Productivity
  This article offers some tips for completing documents in Excel quickly. This can be accomplished by simply learning the shortcuts listed in the article.
• Simplicity, Complexity and Productivity-Productive Flourishing
  Explains why spending time developing and implementing your own productivity system can ultimately have time-saving results. The author mentions that, though the implementation of this system may seem to be a waste of time, it will make a person’s life much simpler in the long run.
• How to Get Things Done Using the “Prioritizer”-Steve Bannister
  Would be a good guide for anyone that is looking for an efficient way to prioritize their tasks. This author provides some resources that will help you reach your goals.
• How to Overcome the #1 Fear: Public Speaking-David B. Bohl
  This article offers some tips for overcoming a fear of public speaking. Some of the recommendations include lots of practice, selecting a topic that you would be able to speak about well, and to simply be yourself.
• 10 More Work At Home Ideas You Can Do In Your Fuzzy Bunny Slippers-Sparkplugging.com
  This article clarifies and debunks the myth that those who work at home are not as motivated or as hard working as any other employee. The author states that, often, those who work from home work more hours than other employees.
• How to Win Hours Back Every Day: A Presentation and Resource Guide-Technotheory.com
  This article provides resources for those wanting to save time using computer software. The author lists many different links to information about these programs that will help you make the most of the time that you have.
• Quiet Moments That Boost Productivity-The Daily Saint.com
  This article speaks about the importance of setting aside quiet time that will boost your productivity. The author provides some tips for making the most of the time that you have set aside.
• How To Make Your Own Laundry Detergent and Save Big Money-The Simple Dollar
  Some neat ideas about saving money by making your own laundry detergent. The cost of ingredients allows the cost spent per load of laundry to be greatly reduced from that of detergents bought from a store.
• Can You Have Too Much Insurance?-The Wisdom Journal
  This article discusses the importance of having adequate insurance coverage. Statistics show that a person is often at much more of a risk for becoming disabled than that person may realize.
• The Difference Between Phone and Email Interviews-thursdaybram.com
  Discusses the benefits of interviews done through email rather than in person or over the phone. The author lists advantages and disadvantages of each of these types of interviews by comparing and contrasting them.
• No More Stress-Varsity Blah
  This article offers some helpful advice for those that want to find practical ways to deal with stressful situations. The author recommends meditation, relaxation and expression as the keys to ridding your life of stress.

Non-Virtual Assistant Story

Jed has a post about using a non-virtual assistant to facilitate going to a show in Chicago.

Poisoning Her Husband Slowly

There once was a woman who hated her husband. She decided to kill him. After contemplating a direct murder, she couldn’t come up with any plan that seemed unlikely to result in her getting caught. Finally, she settled on poisoning him with a bad diet. She figured no one would suspect her if he died from eating a typical, American unhealthy food.

To accomplish her evil intent, she started cooking for him. She made him all kinds of fried, fatty foods. She fed him donuts and always encouraged him to eat an extra large helping of dessert. The husband of course thought he was in heaven as his wife tried to slowly kill him. In the end, they worked things out and she stopped trying to kill him. (To the best of my knowledge, this is a true story, but I can’t remember the source.)

What you eat is directly tied to the way you function. It determines how well you mind works. It determines how much energy your body has. It can even determine how much sleep you need.

Take a look at your diet and make sure you aren’t eating consistently from the deadly menu the woman was trying to use to poison her husband.

Quote from Buckminster Fuller

“If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top . . . that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver, but this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings.”

Should You Use a PDA?

Many people believe that having a personal digital assistant like an iPhone/IPod Touch, Palm Pilot or Windows Mobile device greatly increases their productivity–regardless of whether or not it is true. These devices can be great, but they don’t help everyone. It is important to consider the cost of technology, not just in terms of money, but in terms of time. I’ve seen people spend hours and hours trying to get their calendar synchronized when their pocket calendar did the job much better for a fraction of the cost. This article should help give you some things to think about when it comes to deciding if a PDA would be beneficial to you. To start off with, lets look at some reasons you might benefit from a PDA:

1. Easy access to calendar.
2. Easy access to contacts.
3. Mobile email (in some cases)
4. Notes and other databases

From 2001 to 2004 I tried a number of devices and finally gave up. I just couldn’t find something that would work well for me. Once I started syncing my contacts and calendar with my phone, my use for a PDA dropped and I finally gave mine away and just stuck with my cell phone.

Here are some of the downsides I found in trying to use a PDA:

1. Steep learning curve
   A lot of devices require a decent amount of time to learn. This is particularly true of some of the ways you have to enter data. Some devices expect you to learn a special alphabet.
2. Extra bulk to carry around
   If you have a cellphone, wallet or purse, keys, and a PDA it can be a bit much to carry around everywhere with you. When are are traveling, the extra charger, and sync cables or cradle can add a lot of extra stuff to your baggage.
3. Expense
   While there are a number of inexpensive devices, it is common to spend $400 or more for a well connected device.
4. May be slower than paper based alternatives
   This is something many people overlook. The speed of checking or modifying your calendar using a paper based planner is very difficult to beat with a digital device. You may save time by keeping multiple calendars synchronized, but depending on your workflow, there may be very little benefit in speed.
5. Durability
   Having managed an IT department, I’m very aware of how often these devices are broken or dropped in water. A paper-based system offers a degree of durability that just can’t be matched with electronics. (I once had a conversation with the CFO about how expensive it was becoming to replace broken PDAs and the need to have some type of policy in place. The next day I chanced by him right as he accidentally dropped his Palm Pilot onto a tile floor. He sheepishly mumbled something about “needing that policy”.)

Around 2006, I got my first Blackberry and found that it gave me all the parts I wanted in a PDA in the same device as my phone. I tried out several different models by buying them off ebay or from friends and eventually ended up on the 8830 from Sprint. The dimensions of the device give it a physical volume comparable to other phones and the world wide connectivity and battery life is pretty much impossible to beat in other products.

Here is a list of the features I’ve found that are the most important to me:

1. Mobile email
   The ability to get pushed emails to the device wherever I am is vital. Even though I usually have my laptop with me, the ability to quickly check messages while running to the store allows me to stay in contact with my clients. My ability to respond quickly helps encourage people to use email for communication.
2. Modem data service
   My Blackberry allows me to start a Bluetooth connection from my computer and use the Blackberry as a modem. The speed of this connection is surprisingly good–comparable (and sometimes faster) to a basic cable or DSL connection. With a tethered connection and a good signal, I can get speeds comparable to a mid tier DSL plan.
3. Full keyboard
   One of the biggest problems I’ve had with other devices is trying to use their input methods. The stylus input is just too difficult and I found it extremely frustrating. When you spend 30% of data entry time just trying to correct what you wrote, it isn’t efficient. I have played around with the iPhone interface, and so far, I prefer the Blackberry keyboard because it is much faster and more accurate.
4. Mobile web
   For a few applications, the mobile web browser is a real benefit. This is particularly true of Google’s feed reader since it lets me read and mark feeds during the little spaces of unexpected downtime.
5. Audio support
   When someone leaves me a message on one of my telephone numbers, it is sent to me in an email. With the 8830 I can listen to these messages while I’m away from my computer.

There are a bunch of other features, but these are the five that I have found to be the most important. Notice that the traditional uses of a PDA (calendar and contacts) aren’t on the list. While I do use these features, they can be accomplished just as well (for me) with paper, so it would be difficult to justify the device based on those capabilities.

Password Creation Technique

I ran across a nice post on creating unique passwords today.  Also see our previous post on the subject.

Twitter

I’ve been playing around with Twitter on a test acount and have finally created my “real” account for Productivity501.

Creative Bookshelves

Weburbanist published some pictures of highly creative bookshelves. There some very interesting space saving ideas. I particularly liked the invisible bookshelf.

Virtual Box

Sun has released a free virtulization tool that is similar to Parallels and VMWare Fusion.  If you have a Mac and need to run another OS, this is worth looking into.  The have a commercial and opensource version.  I haven’t tried it yet.  If you have used it, drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Bento

I was sent a free copy of Bento to try out. Here is my take on the software after playing around with it for awhile.  We are giving the software away to a reader.  See the bottom of this post for info on how to win.

What is it?

Bento most reminds me of the database program that came with Appleworks on the Apple IIc. It isn’t so much that it works the same, but it is geared toward the same type of market. People who need to store database type information without becoming an expert at understanding databases. The program runs on OS X and has the nice look and feel that you’d expect from an Apple application.

Libraries and Collections

Bento uses the idea of Libraries and Collections. If you think of your address book, that would be a library. If you think of all of the address records of your college friends, that would be a collection. AddressBook in OS X works like this now. You add addresses to the application and then add them to groups. The application corresponds to a Library in Bento and the group corresponds to a Collection.

Bento can pull in your AddressBook, iCal Events and iCal Tasks and display them as Libraries. They are kept synchronized. If you delete an address from AddressBook, it disappears out of the Bento AddressBook library.

In addition to these build in Libraries, you can add a number of other predefined Libraries or even customize your own. So there are libraries for To Do Items, Projects, Events, Exercise Log, Expenses, Membership Lists etc.

Customizing Libraries

You can customize the existing Library templates or create one from scratch. Bento gives you all the fields you need to add text fields, date fields with calendar popups, pictures, calculated fields, etc. This makes Bento a very good general tool for keeping track of almost anything. Data can be imported and exported so you can easily get data in or out of the system.

Some of the different customized fields can be seen in the image on the right.

Linking Libraries

This is one of the more advanced database functions and Bento does a good job of keeping things simple. The items in a Library can link to other items. For example, if you create a Projects Library you can create records for each of your projects. One of the fields on each record is a list of team members. You can type in team members directly into the list or pull them in from the Address Book.

You can add these types of linked records to your own Libraries. For example, if you have Library that holds all your Projects, you can add another Library that contains To Do items and then link them so you can see all of your outstanding To Do items for each Project from within the Project record.

Working with Your Data

You can view your data as a table (like a spreadsheet) or using a form. You can create multiple forms to hold your data fields. Adding fields to the forms is a simple matter of dragging them from a list and dropping them where you want them.

The fields are easy to work with and you can do a lot of drag and drop. For example, you can drag an image from a web browser into the graphic box and then resize it using the same type of tool that is used to add images to Address Book.

Impression

Overall Bento seems well polished. Databases aren’t particularly easy to make simple, but Bento does a good job. Once you get familiar with how it works, you’ll find yourself thinking “this feels easy” as you make changes and customize your database. If you need a simple database, Bento is worth checking out–especially if you use iCal and AddressBook in OS X already.

Give Away

I have a copy of Bento to give away, so we are going to have a contest. Whoever is the last person to comment on this post, gets a free copy mailed to them. When 48 hours goes by without a comment, the last comment wins. Good luck!

That being said, it isn’t something I’m probably going to use personally. However, for many people, it can be an ideal way to keep track of information.

Laptop Unfriendly Library

I went to a library today to do some research and some writing on my laptop.  The internet browsing library informed me that I wasn’t allowed to plug my computer in to the outlet.  I asked why and he said it was “library policy”.  This wasn’t an answer–he was just being redundant.  I prodded a bit more and found him even less helpful–probably because I was infringing on his valuable web surfing activities.  I gave up and just used my battery.

Most libraries are trying to redesign themselves to attract people.  I’ve been to some where they added rows and rows of tables with Ethernet and power jacks for people with laptops. This one seems to be concerned that patrons might actually come to the library.  Has anyone else run into this at a library?

Fear of Interruption

I have a phobia that prevents me from operating at my full potential. It isn’t athazagoraphobia (the fear of forgetting) or atelophobia (the fear of imperfection). I also have no fear of looking up (anablephobia) or of peanut butter sticking to the roof of my mouth (arachibutyrophobia).

My Phobia

In fact, I haven’t been able to find a name for my phobia and as you can tell I started with the A’s and worked my way down. My phobia is fear of being interrupted. Obviously this hasn’t crippled me in any significant way, but I consistently find myself not working on my most important task because I’m afraid I’ll be interrupted. I put them off until I feel like I won’t get interrupted. In the past I’d wait until late at night and then start on the important tasks that required concentration. This worked for awhile, but now that we have a daughter (who is an early riser) it doesn’t work out as well and I’m trying to protect more of my evening hours for being with family.

Multitasking Computers

As I’ve thought about it I’ve come to the conclusion that certain tasks require an expensive shift in thought in order to get refocused on the problem. There is an analogy to this in the world of computers and it is called “shifting context”. When a computer is multitasking, it has to shift back and forth between the state required to handle one particular problem and the other problems it is multi-tasking. There is a special type of memory called registers that basically dump directly into the processor. Whenever the processor has to shift context, the computer must reload the registers with the previous state of that task so the computer can resume its process on that task.

This shift in context requires overhead. Two equivalent tasks, will not complete in multitasking as fast as they will complete in sequence. This is because of the overhead of changing the context back and forth. Unlike humans, computers can perform this shift in context very rapidly. The whole myth of multitasking comes from not understanding the difference between how computers and people shift contexts.

Expensive Context Shift

Once interrupted it requires an expensive (in terms of time) readjustment to get back to work again. The biggest area I encounter this is in programming but it happens in other areas as well. I was reading an interview with the founder of Delicious yesterday. He started the project while working full time at another job. When asked how he handled both simultaneously, he said that he kept his code organized so it was easy to focus on a very small part and make a change. That allowed him to make progress even if he could only give it 15 minutes per week.

Granted, this won’t work with every type of project, but it is a good thing to consider. If you suffer from fear of interruptions, it may be an indication that you can better organize your work process in order to minimize the expense of an interruption.

WebObjects is a web framework that was designed to let programmers really focus on what they are trying to accomplish instead of focusing on how to make the framework perform. It had a well designed simplistic graphical interface to represent information from multiple sources in a way that could be understood much faster than looking at multiple files of code. When interrupted, it was always easy to get back into a WebObject project because the time to shift back into a complete understanding of the code at hand was minimized.

With other programming environments this has been less the case–primarily because they lack the intuitive and simple graphical display that WebObjects had.

Minimizing Shift Expense

The other day I was doing some calculations for maximizing the solar efficiency of a house and I realized that I was using the approach similar to WebObjects programming to help minimize the risk of interruptions. looking back at my notes, I see that in addition to doing the math, each calculation has a sketch showing exactly what was being calculated along with the result. Even now, I can look at the page and immediately jump back into a particular point in the process. If I had simply done the math in a spreadsheet without the sketches this would not be possible.

If you have projects that require a lot of time to shift back into context, look for ways to minimize the expense of the context shift. Here are a few ways to minimize the expense of an interruption:

• Keep your files and resources organized so the time spent finding this is minimized.
• Keep your computer desktop organized for a particular task. If you are going to be working on something that requires an expensive context shift, close all unnecessary programs and open just what you need. This will make it easier to get back into the project if interrupted because you won’t have to determine what relates and what doesn’t.
• Keep your physical desktop organized for the task in the same way.
• Draw pictures. A sketch can help you quickly remember where you were in the process. It is common for something to take 10 minutes to understand again by looking over text that can be easily grasp in 30 seconds looking at a diagram or sketch. I find it is useful to work with a blank sheet of paper in front of me to use as a brainstorm pad. If I get called away and return, my notes and sketches are right in front of me to help me get back to the same “state” I was in when I left.

In the ideal world there wouldn’t be interruptions while working on something that was hard to restart again. Admitting that this is never going to be the case lets us focus on creating an environment to minimize the expense of interruptions.

Back to My Mac

I’ve recently started trying out the Back to my Mac feature of Leopard that works with a .mac account.  It didn’t work at all until I installed 10.5.3, but now I’ve been pleasantly surprised. In a nutshell it lets you access computers as if they were on your local network–even if one computer is at your house and the other is at Starbucks.  It makes it easy to look over the shoulder of my assistant if she needs help with something or quickly transfer a file.

Vote on Interview Answers

If you can spare a few minutes to vote on some of the answers from interviews it will help us improve the quality of upcoming posts.  Pick an interesting question and then choose the best of the two answers provided.

Interview: Hard Drive Organization

We asked a number of bloggers to share their tips for keeping their computer organized. The answers fall into two camps. One group prefers a good folder hierarchy while the other prefers no hierarchy and just uses search. I use the latter method for my email, but I’m still getting a lot of benefit from my file folder structure.

What is your most important tip for keeping your computer hard drive organized? (837)

A folder structure that makes sense is essential. I’ve seen people with a folder called “Work” and a folder called “Personal” and nothing more, each containing hundreds or thousands of files without any semblance of organization. I’ve also seen structures with more folders than there are files.

It’s important to find a way to separate data into folders that tell you where things are intuitively without going overboard to the point where it gets confusing and takes ten minutes to find a spot to save your file!

http://www.joelfalconer.com from Joel Falconer (rss)

Joel’s answer was by far the highest rated. It is easy to start out with a two folder system like what Joel describes and then never get around to creating anything more organized. I’ve seen a lot of people who just have a Documents folder with hundreds of items.

Just like with a filing system, set up some major categories. For items that relate to more than 1 category, use file naming conventions that include searchable key words and then use a great search tool like X1 to always be able to find the documents you need. Someday we’ll be able to “tag” our documents. But for now, I find it helpful to use “tags” in my file names.

Ariane Benefit from Neat & Simple Living (rss)

I haven’t used X1, but Ariane has some good suggestions here. If you use Spotlight or Google Search it can make it a lot easier to find documents, but don’t let that be an excuse to not create a sane folder hierarchy.

For me, it’s mostly all about keeping the Documents folder organized. About once a week, I’ll go through my Documents folder and sort everything that’s not sorted into the places where the things should be.

Trent Hamm from The Simple Dollar (rss)

Trent’s approach will help make sure you create new folders as they are needed. I’ve found that it is easier to keep things organized when I can create a document directly from my file system. That way I first go to the folder where I want to put something, create the file and then start working on it instead of first working on the file and then trying to figure out where to keep it.

Store like items together and purge regularly.

I make sure that all program files are stored in Program Files; not all programs pick this as a default. In My Documents, I have the following structure:

• Current Projects: everything I am working on at the moment
• Reference: everything I have worked on, or need for future reference
• Inbox: where things end up before being filed in one of the above folders
• My Pictures: I keep this separate because I back it up separately
• Code: my programming projects, past and present
• Webs: my web solutions, past and present

Keeping everything together has its advantage in I know where everything is, plus it makes for easy backups.

Purging is necessary to keep everything under control. When I am done with a project in the Current Projects folder, I go through its project folder and remove all junk. Then I move it over to the Reference folder. Once a year, I clean out my reference folder (after doing a backup).

LJ from simpleproductivityblog (rss)

I don’t tend to purge much as far as deleting items. However, I will move stuff that I don’t expect to use into its own folder. That way it is there when I need it, but doesn’t clutter up my main work folders. I like LJ’s InBox idea, but whenever I have tried to use it it just becomes a catch all for me.

Don’t use your desktop for filing! Not only does it make it difficult to find anything it also creates distractions

Use you documents folder to categories items by context, project or client - whatever works for you.

Also, regularly defragment your hard drive and clean off all the old rubbish that you’re not using anymore.

Katy Whitton from Flipping Heck! Productivity, Project Management & Motivation Blog (rss)

I tend to use my desktop as a work space for my current project. When I’m finished I simply delete anything that was just temporary and move all the important files into a project folder. This works well as long as I don’t forget and end up with multiple projects on the desktop.

Well defined folders and sub folders. I personally don’t like desktop search from Google or Microsoft as they tend to slow the machine down and they are always sourcing the hard drive.

John Richardson from Success Begins Today (rss)

I have had good luck with Spotlight on OS X. Also I think the search can sometimes work better if you limit it just to your documents folder. Still search is no excuse for not having well defined folders or subfolders. This is especially important if you start working with an assistant as it is much easier to figure out a good hierarchy than guess the right search terms.

Be sure to put files in their proper location right away, don’t build an “Inbox” folder on the desktop as you’ll never do an “Inbox to Zero” because you can’t see the files. Everything looks clean to you, but it’s really a mess.

Putting your file in the proper location will take you a matter of seconds, don’t delay.

Neil Kelty from Political Equinox (rss)

Another tip along these lines is to immediately save any document before adding any content. That way you put it in the proper place and it also makes sure that saving the contents is only a keystroke away so you are less likely to lose anything.

Folders, folders, folders. Put everything in a folder and it’ll be very easy to find anything.

Anne from Writers Cabal Blog (rss)

I suggest that your top level Documents folder contain only other folders. If you let yourself start putting documents in your top level folder it all goes downhill from there.

Use the Delete key more often. If I haven’t opened a file or program in a year, it’s toast.

MIke Sansone from ConverStations (rss)

This can be great advice, but I tend to keep things around a bit longer. At the very least, I’ll archive things off before deleting them.

Get a good desktop search tool. My favourite is Copernic Desktop Search (CDS). This lets me have a shallow folder structure with several key folders. Sure, I sort things by project (e.g., Paper X, Review Y, etc.), but for a lot of stuff, I just dump it somewhere and depend on CDS to find it for me. Kind of like gmail for your files.

GTD Wannabe from GTD Wannabe (rss)

I haven’t ever used Copernic. I kind of use a system like this for my email though. For files I prefer a bit more structure. That way I can grab and archive a group of files all at once. I can also do things like move all my client folders off my computer when I’m going to be traveling and there is a chance that my laptop might get stolen.

Combine a typical hierarchical system (a directory tree that makes sense to your specific situation) with powerful auto-indexing and searching capabilities of, for instance, Copernic Desktop Search.

gtdfrk from Getting Things Done (rss)

Another vote for Copernic. I’ll have to check it out sometime when I’m using a Windows machine.

Short and simple: reduce the amount of folders you have. Rely on the search capabilities of todays software and don’t spend too much time on deciding where to put files and finding out where you put them.

Fokke Kooistra from Productivity 101 (rss)

Fokke’s advice runs counter to some of the other suggestions, but depending on your particular work style it could be just the thing for you.

I have a sort of “annex” system like the library system that my university (U of Guelph) and two others use (WLU and U of Waterloo). When a book is not being checked out a lot, they send it to the Annex. You can request books from the Annex, but it takes about a day. The universities use this system for space-saving reasons. I use it for efficiency reasons. I want to be able to get to my key files quickly By “annexing” the files that I use infrequently (at best), I de-clutter my directory tree.

Ian Newby-Clark from My Bad Habits (rss)

Interesting idea. Do you move them off to a different drive or just to a different folder?

Three main folders. Inbox, Archive, and In Progress. Everything downloads to the Inbox, current projects go to In Progress, and everything else is Archived. Within the Archive folder I have folders for the major responsibilities in my life (i.e. School, Work, Extracurriculars etc.). Being diligent about putting files where they belong goes a long way in keeping things organized.

Sam from Sam I Am (rss)

This is an interesting setup. I think Sam’s point about being diligent putting files where they belong is probably the most important aspect of keeping things organized.

Keeping things off the desktop. Icon blight feels to me something like an overflowing inbox—all these items that I need to deal with, at some point. On a Mac, Spotlight and Quicksilver make it easy to work without desktop shortcuts (aliases). Windows users might like Launchy.

Michael Leddy from Orange Crate Art (rss)

I haven’t worked with Quicksilver yet, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. Regarding the desktop, it seems like a lot of wasted space if you don’t use it for anything. At the same time it can become a catch all full of junk. Setting your web browser to download to a specific directory usually makes a drastic improvement in your desktop management.

First: I suck at it.

Only recently I have organized them again and deleted all duplicates. The main thing I was thinking was:

“Why didn’t I spend 5 seconds thinking about where to correctly file this?”

It took me over 4 hours to get organized again, and I had to really put effort into not getting distracted. There’s hardly anything more boring as organizing your computer’s file system!

Lodewijk van den Broek from How to be an Original (rss)

This exercise has a potential advantage of being so boring that you’ll always place a file correctly when you save it in the future.

I am a MAC user, so strict drive organization has less relevance. With Spotlight and third party tools like Quick silver it really doesn’t matter where the files are located. With these tools, I can search my local drives or dot Mac in a matter of seconds.

This means I only have to maintain a high level tree structure.

So my tip is– Get a MAC

M Nassal from Stress Free Productivity 101 (rss)

I’m pretty happy with Spotlight, but I wouldn’t go so far as to abandon folders entirely.

Controversy over Virtual Assistants

My posts on virtual assistants generated more controversy than anything else I’ve written and got me called an ignorant coward. Check out the comments and add your opinions.

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Cordless Phone at Odds with Skype

Skype usually works great for making phone calls, but when I moved my office a few weeks ago people stopped being able to hear me.  I finally traced the problem to my cordless phone that was now sitting near my wireless access point.  I moved it 3 feet away and Skype call quality returned to normal.  So if you are having trouble with Skype on a wireless network look for sources of interference.

Offending the Entire VA Industry

Let me start off by saying that this is a long post, but I wanted to share the story of my experience interacting with virtual assistants other than India over one of my previous posts. If you are an easily offended virtual assistant you might want to skip this. If you think you might ever want to use a virtual assistant, read on.

Ok so I haven’t offended the entire industry–just a subset of the people on the Virtual Assistant International Group. My Ultimate Guide to Virtual Assistants generated a lot of input from virtual assistants. Most of them were telling me that I could get much higher quality help if I was willing to pay more money. The idea that paying someone four times as much for ten times the amount of work is not lost on me so I started wondering if there were some large projects where I should try to use a virtual assistant based in an American English speaking country.

At first I enjoyed reading the comments. I figured we’d all learn something, but I noticed some people were attacking things I hadn’t said. Here are some of the comments:

think you will find that if you focus more on finding a quality VA rather than a cheap one, you’ll be more satisfied with the results. Remember, you get what you pay for. An experienced, professional, and competent VA is not going to work for $6 or $7 an hour.

Seems like good advice. I was very happy with Brickwork’s service–I just found a way to get American English instead of Indian English for about half the cost. However, I was suggesting that you’d pay $8 to $15 per hour for a good Indian virtual assistant–and I had been paying at the high end of that. The $6 to $7 per hour is what it takes to get a smart employee in rural Kansas–not a virtual assistant. It sounds like they may not have read the post.

I think your “guide” to virtual assistance paints an extraordinarily unrealistic picture of the industry and the profession. How long would you stay in business at your prevailing local rate of $7/hour?

My goal wasn’t to promote the profession or industry. I was just trying to show people how a virtual assistant could help them get more done based on my experience. Once again I was suggesting that it worked out better for me to pay $7 per hour to hire an employee than the $8 to $15 for a virtual assistant from India. Maybe they didn’t read the article either.

Mark, generally speaking, professional experienced VA’s are independent contractors. It is actually quite rare for a professional VA to work full time for one client. You wouldn’t expect an electrician to dedicate their whole working week to you at a rate that wont even cover business expenses, so why would a VA?

As far as I am concerned, working for one client makes you an employee. And in your case, the employee isn’t paying superannuation, taxes, holiday or sick leave. What a life!

I think she meant to say that “the employer isn’t paying superannuation,” etc. This is the first time I’ve been called out for not paying into the Australian pension fund (superannuation). I doubt this will be a problem, but I suppose the tax laws are always changing. I do pay my portion of payroll taxes, unemployment insurance and all the other required items in the US.

The way you write about VA’s makes them sound like they aren’t worth the $7 you offer. In actual fact, we are often integral in the growth and expansion of a business, community group or organisation. My clients are always looking to me for advice and ideas on how to make things happen for their business.

I agree on one thing though, perhaps we should change what we are called - so many people like yourself believe an ‘assistant’ can only be of lower rank than the business owner.

There is that $7 again that everyone is misreading. $7 per hour is how much I’ve been able to hire a recent college grad for who is very bright and is working out very well and is happy to be doing something interesting instead of working as a waitress. Rural Kansas isn’t exactly a hot bed of fascinating work opportunities. She isn’t a virtual assistant. She is hired as an employee. Besides, I think I made it very clear that I was extremely pleased with Rajani from Brickworks. There were just more differences in the language than what I expected and when I found I could hire someone for half the cost who could handle writing and proof reading and could also run local errands, it was an easy decision.

In regards to the idea of an assistant being a higher “rank” than their employer/client: I’ve always felt that ranking people is a dangerous thing unless you agree on specific attributes–circumference, height, distance between eyes, IQ, number of arms, etc.

Consider the attributes of education and salary. A business person with a Master’s degree who earns $1,000 per day, is unlikely to look for someone with the title of “assistant” or “virtual assistant” who charges $2,000 per day and has a PhD. (This doesn’t make the business person a better person than the virtual assistant or vice versa.) If the assistant has a PhD. and wants to charge $2,000 each day, they probably need to market themselves as a business consultant, marketing consultant, or something like that. I’m not putting virtual assistants down here, but if you “out rank” all of your clients you are going to be selling yourself short by calling yourself a virtual assistant. If you are CEO material, people will think it odd if you apply for a job as the CEO’s administrative assistant. They aren’t going to think “Hey lets make the secretary CEO!”.

As a response to another post I made about learning to delegate a virtual assistant posted this:

VAs are not just “assistants” - we are coaches. mentors, problem-solvers, marketing gurus and so much more.

From a semantic point of view “virtual” usually describes where the person is working or whether or not they are real. Virtual doesn’t mean super or mega or uber. I just have a hard time imagining that an executive is going to look for someone with the title of “virtual assistant” when they need a business coach or mentor. I think they are going to look for someone who isn’t marketing themselves as an assistant. (An uber virtual assistant maybe–but probably not.) That is like saying “I can answer your phones, do mail merges and chair your board of directors.” Maybe it is just me, but I would expect to pay a lot for a business coach or marketing guru and I wouldn’t want them doing any secretarial work for me.

Most VA’s are experienced at using the type of technology listed and often are skilled in a wider range of software and hardware products, and do not need to be trained. We are talking about an industry of experienced administrators who are computer savy and have a knack for hunting down the best technology available.

I’m more computer savvy than the average person, so I can imagine there are some great things a virtual assistant can do with no training for someone who isn’t particularly familiar with technology–especially if they need help with Office, Quickbooks, or other common applications. The things I expect to train an assistant to do are pretty specialized tasks often on custom programs. In the past I’ve written our own software to make things easier on my assistant. I didn’t want her time wasted by boring repetitive work that I could automate. I didn’t go into great detail about many of the things I have an assistant do because my goal was to help others use an assistant–not describe my workflow.

VA’s are also independent business owners who can provide you with advice and guidance on building your business. They are partners in your business and committed to helping you make your business a success. Would you honestly pay someone $7.00 per hour for this level of service? Get real, there is a fine line between exploitation and and value for money.

*sigh* The $7.00 per hour isn’t for a virtual assistant. It is for… Oh never mind.

Can you get a good virtual assistant for $7 or even less? Maybe, but it depends on what you need done and how well defined your processes are. I was looking for top of the line people, so I went with one of the most expensive Indian companies with the best reputation I could find. I can’t tell you what you’ll get for $7 per hour in India. (Either I’ve lucked out or you can get a really smart person for $7 in rural USA.)

Obviously many of the virtual assistants who were responding were not reading the article or they were reading it through some strange type of translation service. I wondered where they were getting their information. Looking through the server logs I saw some traffic from the VAIG group at Yahoo. So I requested to join the group. In the request to join I said that one of their post’s linked to an article of mine and I wanted to read it. (That is in bold for virtual assistants who plan to comment without reading anything on this page.) A few minutes later I was approved so I went looking for the post.

Subject: Oh the ignorance…

Hi All,

I’m restraining my outrage on a post about our profession that was incredibly ignorant. Kathie I noticed responded twice (Yeah Kathie!) but I couldn’t resist. I can’t believe people are taking this guy seriously. Oh dear, I think I’m venting a bit.

Its an article called “The Ultimate Virtual Assistant Guide” that basically encourages you outsource to the cheapest source possible and how to “train” your VA. Sound familiar?

http://www.productivity501.com/ultimate-virtual-assistant-guide/813/

What struck me and I’m sure you all will notice as well, that no research was done on finding appropriate qualified professionals. I dislike this fellow is getting attention, any suggestions how we can appropriately respond? This is also a hot topic on the IVAA forum, several VA’s are responding with carefully diplomatic responses, other feel the best thing is to ignore it so word does not spread further.

Is there a way perhaps to rank blogs? I read so few (time is a factor) I’m not up on methods to rate them, I just enjoy the information.

Okay I feel better now venting a little, : )
Bertha

I’ve removed Bertha’s last name and signature. My goal isn’t to hurt her business, but to just give you an idea of what you may find working with various virtual assistants. She claims to be a virtual assistant that specializes in creating websites for clients in a particular niche. Her website looks reasonable, but none of the links work–at least not in Firefox.

Note: We had some back and forth on this article.  “Bertha” asked me to take down the quote of her post and I replaced it with a summary.  Later she gave me permission to put it back.  We are now back to pretty much the original version.

On the cost side of things, I suggested that to get someone good in India you should look at $8 to $15 and I mentioned that I had been paying at the $15 end of the range. Bertha may charge more for her services (and might be well worth it), but for India where I was hiring I was paying a lot of money–definitely not the cheapest option available. On top of that I was hiring them pretty much full time which meant they didn’t need to spend time trying to find other work.

She seems particularly upset about the idea of a virtual assistant needing to be trained as did one of the comments I mentioned above. I figured that possibly I was wrong in my assumption that most virtual assistants would require some training so I decided to take a look at the message board to see if they referenced any of the tools I use. I looked through the list to see if anyone there had used Netsuite (an ERP/CRM product that I expect to have to train any assistants on). No one had mentioned it. This doesn’t mean that no one uses it, so I tried SAP. The only reference I could find to SAP was from 2003 where they said it was HR and student records system.

Next I decided to see what was said about Wordpress (another thing I expect to train assistants on). There was a mention of Wordpress from Bertha saying that you should use Dreamweaver to edit the content in content management systems like Wordpress (I’m at a loss as to why you would do this). But several virtual assistants listed their blogs at wordpress.com. So it is possible that I could hire a more expensive virtual assistant that wouldn’t require less training on Wordpress.

There did seem to be quite a few people using Aweber and iContact which are two products I use and at least one person was using MYOB. No one seemed to be talking about using ssh or the macro tool I use. There was a lot of discussion about doing things in Microsoft Office though, but most of the questions were on the basic side of things (how to do a mail merge and get commas to show up in numbers, how to create a PDF, etc.). I didn’t see anything on some of the advanced features I tend to use a lot in my business. If they mention the simple stuff, but not the complicated things it takes some Cirque du Soleil class mental acrobatics to assume that they have the complex features down, but need help with the basics.

So there are a few things that might require less training for certain virtual assistants. For an executive that has no idea how to use Microsoft Office, a virtual assistant with a lot of Office experience could be very valuable. Since I use to train executive assistants on Microsoft Office, I tend to want to show people how to do anything that isn’t simple. There are often many ways to do something and I’d rather show them once how to do it correctly than have them running in circles trying to figure out something that is fairly trivial or making things harder than necessary–especially if I’m paying them $30 to $50 per hour. Some of the questions on the list indicate that this is still a good strategy. I have seen executive assistants come up with extremely clever, time consuming work arounds when they didn’t know how a particular feature worked.

If I only needed someone to help with Microsoft Office, I’d be looking for someone with a great deal of experience with pivot tables (crosstab reports), the vlookup function, all of the date and string manipulation functions and creating very complicated formulas. I’m sure there are some virtual assistants out there that can do at least some of those things, but that is just for Excel. It is a lot more cost and time effective for me to find someone smart that doesn’t mind being trained than to try to find someone who knows everything I need them to know already.

Going back to the email that purported to expose how my experience with virtual assistants was “ignorant”, I replied saying that I wasn’t trying to offend them, but offering some suggestions if they were looking for ways to respond to posts they dislike about virtual assistants. Many of the responses I was seeing were not helping their cause.

I went on to point out that while Bertha was offended at the idea that a virtual assistant would need training, her question about how blogs are ranked showed that if she were to do the tasks my assistant in India had been doing, she would require training–and based on her signature she was more familiar with the web world than the average virtual assistant. Someone talking about training a virtual assistant shouldn’t cause an consternation on her part.

I concluded my message by thanking them for their perspectives and expressing interest in doing a large group interview with all of them on virtual assistant topics. (I figured that would give them a chance to show their view point and would probably be very interesting.)

I saw a few responses. No one mentioned any of my suggestions. No one talked about idea of the interview. They were just horrified that a non-virtual assistant had somehow made it onto the list and I was booted off. Later someone told me that the group admin had told everyone that I had joined under false pretenses (I had not) and that emails sent to me had bounced. I’m not sure how they messed up sending me an email to my yahoo/att address. It seems to work for everyone else and I got other emails from them. Giving them the benefit of the doubt I sent myself a message to just make sure–it came through without a problem. Any assistant virtual or not I have ever worked with would have been able to sent the email without any problem. The email I did receive from them said something along the lines of “If you accidentally unsubscribed, please signup again.” I didn’t bother.

I also learned that Bertha called me a coward because my email bounced and told everyone that I don’t know what I’m doing because my blog is hosted at Yahoo (it isn’t). My email is fairly public on this site. The thing that looks like an envelope in the upper right hand corner–it links to an email address. I was very clear about who I was on the list so I’m not sure how their confusion over how to send an email makes me a coward. (I’m not sure where the conversation went from there, but it would probably be interesting and pointless to follow.)

I was showing my assistant some of the fallout from the post and she was laughing. She said, “well think about the personality of people who would want to be a virtual assistant in the US. They are likely to be a type A person and at least a bit high strung.”

And so here is the point of my post: If you are looking for a virtual assistant, keep in mind not only the cultural and language differences, but be sure to consider their personality.

My non-virtual assistant is easy going, but very brilliant. She rides a dirt bike to work and plays bass guitar for shows on the weekend and is interested in learning to surf (a sport that is having a hard time taking root in Kansas for some reason). Her personality is very good to work with and she enjoys learning how to do new things. Rajani (the Indian assistant I worked with) was also very smart and enjoyed our work because she was always learning to do something new. (They can both send email to Yahoo addresses with deft precision.)

I would be very wary of working with a virtual assistant who gets offended at the idea of doing any type of training to learn anything new. If you just need someone to send out letters or do very basic office work it might not be an issue, but someone who loves to learn is going to be a better choice in the long run.

I would also be wary of someone who gets offended at the idea that you can hire someone full time for $1000 to $2000 per month. If their service has real value to your business or personal life they aren’t going to be upset that someone somewhere in the world can do some parts of what they do for less money. Think about it, if Tom Peters hears that you can get a business consultant for $4 per hour do you really think it will make him angry?

Here is some free business advice for people trying to market their virtual assistant services or any service for that matter:

If someone tells me that my rates are too expensive and they can get someone else for cheaper, I’ll tell them to go for it. They don’t need me. I might even make some suggestions of where to look. If I charge $xxx and they can get someone to provide as much value as me for $x they would be foolish not to hire the less expensive option and I would be cheating them if I tried to convince them to use me. The more time I spend defending my cost, the less likely it is that I’m really adding value. Here is an example:

I had a Fortune 100 client ask me for a quote on a small project. I came back saying I’d be happy to do it for $5,000 and it would take two days. I then suggested that they could easily find someone within their large company to do the work–it might take a bit longer, but it would be much less expensive. I was told, “no we want you to do it.” I then offered to give them some instructions for free to help them get started. They still wanted me. I eventually stopped trying to talk them out of it and did the job.

If I’m on my client’s side trying make sure they really need my services, it is pretty obvious I’m not going to sell them something they don’t need. I can tell people exactly how I’ve helped other clients, what my skills are and what type of results I can help them achieve–but if I ever get to a point where I’m trying to defend my rates I’d expect to lose the customer.

The more expensive virtual assistants would do well to embrace the less expensive options and point out what types of things someone in India might be really good at and what types of things require their higher priced service. I like the idea of a virtual assistant in the US who has a virtual assistant in India. Once they built a good working relationship they would be able to do things fairly inexpensively for clients without any of the cultural or language barriers.

Ok that is enough free advice (which will probably be ignored anyway). Back to using a virtual assistant yourself.

Here are some suggestions on finding a virtual assistant if you don’t want to go the India, China, or Philippines route:

1. Try to find things they have posted online. This should give you a good idea of whether or not they are someone you’d want to work with. If you find someone who gets offended at the idea of doing any type of training it could be a warning sign (depending on what you need). If you can find someone who is articulate and can clearly state what they do that is valuable, you are in luck.
2. See what type of questions they ask. If you can find them participating in online forums, see what type of questions they are asking. Ideally you want the person who is answering questions for all the other virtual assistants about topics relevant to your tasks.
3. Some of the trade groups for virtual assistants may be valuable. But watch out for groups where the focus seems to be “defending their industry” instead of explaining how they add value. You want to find people who are talking about how they work behind the scenes to make their clients incredibly successful.
4. Beware of someone who claims to do everything. Someone who claims to be an expert in secretarial services, celluloid trimming, graphic design, foley sessions, web design, snake milking, marketing consulting, and will act as a mentor is just a bit too diverse. This doesn’t mean you don’t want someone with a wide range of skills, but if they think that a rudimentary knowledge of Photoshop puts them on par with a trained graphic designer be careful. You want to work with someone that knows when it is time to bring in a specialized expert for a project.

Here area few other thing I learned from the list and comments:

1. There are certifications for virtual assistants. I’m not sure how valuable they are, but you can check them out at http://www.vacertification.com/. I looked through some of the things they list as the skillset and there are items like “self-discipline” and “project management skills”. I’m not sure how you measure someone’s “self-discipline”. But it might be worth investing some time looking into them.
2. There is quite an industry around teaching people to become virtual assistants. I’m not sure how valuable the training is but it looks like there are some people making significant money running the training programs and selling ebooks about it.
3. General virtual assistant rates for someone in the US run around $30 to $50 per hour. Brickworks (which I was very pleased with everything except for the differences between American and Indian English) was $15 per hour. If you need a skill that you don’t possess yourself (and can’t train someone to do), this can be a great deal. For example, if I wanted to setup meetings in various cities that were open to the public, it might make sense to find a virtual assistant who specialized in event planning. Of course I might be better off just to work directly with an event planner that only does event planning.
4. Many virtual assistants are upset that the term “virtual assistant” is being used. Some are proposing that there should be a minimal skillset before you can call yourself a Virtual Assistant and everyone else has to call themselves a virtual assistant (lower case).
5. Tim Ferriss and A. J. Jacobs are thought to need some “re-education”. It seems like a lot of the disgust with the two of them is the fact that they use the term virtual assistant for people that these virtual assistants want to be called something else. I think some of these virtual assistants are getting client inquiries from people looking to spend considerably less than the rate they want to charge.

I tend to want to hire someone smart at a lower pay rate that I can train over someone expensive with lots of experience that doesn’t directly match up with my needs. I might be interested in hiring someone who is more expensive if they had a lot of experience with the exact software and tasks I need done. But if I’m going to have to train someone anyway, I’d rather train a virtual assistant at $15 per hour than at $30–assuming I’m starting with someone smart. I would definitely consider the people I worked with at Brickworks to be smart.

In the end this benefits both of us. The assistant gets some very valuable job skills while getting paid to learn. I have more of an investment so it is beneficial to me to keep the relationship going to acquire savings over time. This is particularly good for someone in India. Rajani had previously worked as a customer service coach Dell. After our first day of training she said, “thank you for not yelling at me” in reference to something that I had to show her twice instead of once. (It took me way more than two times to learn what I was showing her, so I thought she was doing great!) Her comment may have been more of a reflection of what it was like to work at Dell, but it made me realize just how badly some of these people in India are getting treated. If they can find a good client and keep the relationship going for a long time, it is extremely valuable to them.

And there you have it, my random musing about interacting with virtual assistants. I hope it was useful to some of you that are looking for help in getting things done.

Since I pointed out that there are at least a few virtual assistant that I would be hesitant to work with, I think it is only fair to mention one who stood out in my mind as someone who I’d might actually like to hire and that was Katie Baird. That isn’t to say that all of the rest would be bad to work with, but I think I’d start with Katie if I was looking for someone in the US.

By the way. If you are a virtual assistant, you probably should check out the VAIG group. I don’t want to paint a picture of it being bad–I’m sure there are some great people on the list who would be valuable to network with and they seem to do a great job of helping each other with the little technical issues you are likely to encounter which is good for the VAs and good for their clients.

Wireless Card Reader

I have been attempting to move everything possible to wireless.  There is only so much you can do to route wires to keep them from looking sloppy.  Getting rid of the wires entirely is ideal. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my new printer (HP 2605dtn) has a memory card reader that shows up on as a network drive in OS X. I can stick in a card and then pull it down to my computer over my Wifi network.  So there is one less device and wire I have to keep on (or near) my desktop.

Batch Processing

Darren at Problogger has written a great post on Batch Processing. Basically he has found that he can get more done by batching similar tasks together.

I generally set aside Monday mornings (and usually Wednesdays also) for writing posts. I take my laptop - camp out in a cafe - spend most of the morning off-line (so there are no other distractions) and just write. My goal is to write at least 5 posts that I can then use later in the week. Quite often I’ll write as many as 10 posts in a 5-6 hour period.

About twice each year I do something similar for Productivity501. I’ll spend about a week writing posts for the next 6 months. I’ll spend 3 or 4 hours a day for 4 or 5 days just writing posts and scheduling them in the future. I’ve found that this helps me really get into my work zone and I get much more done in a shorter period of time than if I tried to do a bit each day.

I have discovered that most of the activities that I do in my work can be ‘batched’ in one way or another. I have discovered that many ‘urgent’ things can wait and in fact to make them ‘take a number’ and ‘get in line’ brings order to mess.

There are a number of “urgent” things that become much less important once you decide they will have to wait.

Darren goes on to talk about how he thinks this works well for him because of his personality type. I think it is more than just personality. When you switch from one task to another there is always some overhead. In computer terms this is referred to switching context. If your computer is updating your clock and then switches to deal with some data coming over the network, it has to switch context or load everything back into the CPU necessary for that particular task. Computers can do this fairly quickly. Humans cannot. The more you jump around, the more you lose time between the tasks.

This is easy to overlook because you will feel busy, but a lot of the busy feeling comes from making the switch–not from actual work being accomplished. It is like walking to the store taking 10 steps forward and 9 back. Just because you feel tired doesn’t mean you are accomplishing more.

Check out Darren’s full post.

Credit Cards as a Productivity Tool

Credit cards are an important part of how I manage my finances efficiently.  I don’t recommend them for going into debt, but the can make it much easier to track expenses and do things in a paperless manner.  One big time saver is the ability to give an assistant their own card on your account.  You can setup whatever limits you need (if you don’t trust them completely) but it sure is easier than trying to deal with giving them cash to run errands for you.

How to Make an Insanely Simple Paperless Filing System

This is a guest post by Arjun Muralidharan, author of The Productive Student, a new blog about productivity for college students and all productivity buffs.

Mark’s paperless project has always been a favorite of mine to follow. He uses DevonThink to manage incoming documents from his Fujitsu ScanSnap.

It’s a good system, but for me, it lacks two things:

1. It doesn’t handle all my files, such as Word documents, Keynote presentations and other file types well.
2. Third-party software independence.

In accordance with GTD, I like to have a comprehensive system that’s cross-platform and can live independently from software such as DevonThink.

While a system with DevonThink will work for many of you, I’m sure some of you out there will value a more flexible, portable system.

Here’s my filing system, using just Mac OS X and Quicksilver, and optionally, Leap.

The System

Single Alpha System

I have hanging folders for each letter of the alphabet as my physical storage system. I find this system works extremely well, as far as retrieval is concerned. There’s a maximum of 26 places I can look for in the worst case, usually you can narrow it down to 3 or 4.

It takes 10 minutes to make but is extremely easy to navigate as you’ll see.

This system resides within a Reference folder. This folder practically holds my entire life.

Filing Stuff

This is where Quicksilver comes into play. Quicksilver can be described as a launcher for Mac OS X, but it basically provides instant access to a lot of functionality and interaction with files. You can get it at Blacktree Software.

Let’s take a typical scenario:

You have file that’s landed in your inbox, either by downloading it from the internet, an email attachment, or a direct PDF scan from your scanner. Here, I have an eBook version of George Orwell’s 1984.

I want to achieve the following: Put the file into my system in a folder named “eBooks”.

Two problems arise:

1. The folder eBooks doesn’t exist yet.
2. Conventionally moving a file is a pain in the backside.

With Quicksilver, it’s easy:

1. Highlight the file with your mouse (click once).
2. Invoke Quicksilver.
3. Type “E” to go to your “E” folder.
4. Press Tab, and type “N” to select the “New Folder” command.
5. Press Tab again, and type “eBooks”, and Enter to create the folder.
6. Now type Command+G to drop your highlighted file into Quicksilver.
7. Press Tab, and type “M” to choose the “Move to…” command.
8. Press Tab and type “E” to go to the E-Folder.
9. Use the arrow keys to drill down to the “eBooks” folder, and hit Enter.

While the instructions seem lengthy, once you get used to it you’ll find it extremely fast and comfortable to do. The last two steps are necessary because Quicksilver will not have indexed your newly created folder yet, so you have to manually drill down. No big deal.

Retrieval

Finding a file is extremely simple, thanks to Mac OS X and the OCR software included with most scanners these days, including the Fujitsu ScanSnap. Since the files are simply living as normal files within the OS, Spotlight search finds them with ease.

Hmm… I had that cool novel about Big Brother… what was it called?

Ah, there it is!

That’s my portable filing system. It’s flexible, cross-platform, and I can whack all my files on a thumb drive and walk to Windows as well. If you enjoyed this, be sure to stay tuned to Mark’s blog right here and my new blog over at The Productive Student.

5 Tips for Dealing with Mail

Everyone gets mail. It can consume a lot of your time, effort and storage space to process and store. Here are 5 tips to help you manage your incoming mail.

1. Open your mail over a trash can.
   This simple tip can help make sure that any mail that doesn’t belong in your house gets taken back out. If you have a trash can outside, that may be an even better place to open it. This is a particularly good way to make sure that the envelopes and generic mailings don’t clutter up your work area.
2. Get off the lists.
   If a company has you on their mailing list, but you don’t want to receive anything else from them, simply ask to be taken off. It is better for the company, better for the environment, and will save you time in the long run.
3. Be careful what you do with personal information.
   Back to the idea of opening the mail over the trash: Do not simply throw away mail that has personal information on it. Credit card applications shouldn’t just be trashed, they need to be shredded or otherwise destroyed. Think in terms of “What would someone be able to do if they had this information?” Even if it seems harmless, think about what they could do if they put that information together with the other information you throw out over the course of a month.
4. Throw away extra sheets of paper.
   Next time you get a bank statement in the mail, look at how much you don’t really need. Usually there is a single page with the important info for your records, a page of advertising, a second page that contains not useful information, and sometimes even more pieces of paper that are useless to you. If you can throw away (or shred) those extra sheets before you even try to process your mail, it will save you time and helps make sure you aren’t storing useless information.
5. Online statements.
   It doesn’t work for everyone, but consider going to online statements. Most places don’t have a good infrastructure for sending you statements by email, so it might take more time than it is worth to log in to a bunch of different websites. But if most of your mail comes from one place, it might be worth considering for that one place.

Ease of Collaboration

Most people completely overlook the collaboration tools they have at their disposal.  If you find yourself doing a lot of inefficient collaboration, take some time to learn how to use some of the following: Comments in Word, tracking changes in Word, Shared Google App Documents, and Wikis.  Investing in a little education about your tools can pay very high returns.

Controversy over Pay by Pound Flight Idea

In May I asked if readers would be willing to pay by the pound for airline travel. (The idea sounds fair to me.) The comments are pretty interesting to read so I thought I’d point them out for anyone who is interested. Bloomberg has a story about the idea as well.

Stop Reading on the Internet

A few weeks ago my eyes started bothering me when reading things on the computer.  I think they were just tired because they seem fine now.  However I did make one small change that has proved useful.  I’ve tried to stop reading news on the Internet.  I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal and it comes every day with more news than I care to read.  If I catch myself starting to go to a news site on the internet I stop and pickup the news paper.  I’ve found that this reduces the amount of time I spend reading news and the quality of what I’m reading is usually higher.

Your House Temperature

Quick Question:  As summer weather sets in, what do you keep your thermostat set to?  I’m just curious how our 77 degrees compares to other people.  Also do you keep it constant (we do) or do you change it based on the time of day.

Quick Paperless Update

My paperless experiment is going well.  Most of my incoming paper gets filed in DevonTHINK and I’ve been very happy with the the results.  DevonTHINK will let you do stuff like put the same file in two folders.  Once you get a number of documents in the right folders, DevonTHINK can automatically suggest where to put new incoming documents.  This is surprisingly helpful and extremely accurate.

The ScanSnap is good with flat paper, but sometimes has trouble with items that have been folder (think anything that comes in the mail).  I’m contemplating looking for a higher end scanner just to simplify the scanning process.  It isn’t bad, but it isn’t a smooth as I’d like it to be.

Learning to Delegate

When working with an assistant it can be difficult to learn to delegate.  One way to practice is to find a task that they can’t mess up.  For example, getting quotes on a print job from a handful of print shops.  Let them know that there isn’t anything they can mess up and tell them you want them to handle the process on their own.  Give them as much info as they need and ask them to clarify if they have any questions.  Then turn them loose on the project and don’t interfere.  This is good practice for you and good practice for them. It will teach you both how to work together more efficiently.

Take a Vacation to get Ahead

40% of the workforce took a vacation last year.  This year 33% of workers plan to take a vacation. Don’t underestimate the value of having a week away from your job.  It can make a marked increase in your productivity.  Make sure you are in the 1/3 of your coworkers to go on vacation this year.

How To Memorize Resources

Here are some great resources on memorization in addition to our popular post and memory tool for memorizing verbatim text.  If you like this collection, please consider signing up for the daily email or rss feed.

• Memorizing Lines - Grace Fleming
  Looks at how to decrease the effort of memorization by including multiple senses. A combination of sound, sight and emotions can do wonders. Steps are provided to include each sense organ.
• Strategies to Improve Memorization - Joni Rose
  Different techniques to help you remember better. This simple article covers a lot of different ideas in memory technique.
• Memorize This - 7 Ways to Memorize Anything! - Gideon Addington
  Each of us are unique and have different ways to memorize data. The author has detailed about 7 different techniques one can commit to memory. The method offered in the article focuses on learning languages with ease.
• How to memorize a book - ewonk
  Most of us are good at remembering stories that we hear or read. The concept behind this is the ability of our brain to remember things when we visualize. The article gives some techniques to make this fun and easy. Not only can you use this method to memorize words but also other basics like addresses.
• How to Memorize Anything - John Place
  This article talks about the method John uses to memorize. The technique used has helped the author to memorize 23,000 words of Psychology text. The author has some tips for keeping the brain from getting stressed out while memorizing.
• How to Memorize a Poem-Sheila Hageman
  This article offers some fun and helpful tips for anyone that needs to memorize poetry for school, for a speech, or simply just for fun! Short poems that have a regular rhyme scheme are often the easiest and most enjoyable to commit to memory. Another thing that helps keep the information in a person’s memory is reading over the material before going to sleep!
• How to Memorize Lines-Howcast
  This particular article is presented to the reader in video form. This short film gives the reader step-by-step instructions to successfully memorizing lines for play performances and other various performances that require memorization of text.
• How to Memorize Using Mnemonic Devices-Book Rags
  This article talks about something that we often hear about in our classes in grade school. This method, which uses mnemonics to aid memorization, is very affective outside of grade school, as well. Any student or public speaker could use this type of a memorization aid to keep their thoughts organized in an effective manner.
• How to Memorize Using Notecards-Book Rags
  Throughout all the years of a student’s schooling, the notecard method is often suggested to students as an effective way to memorize large amounts of information. Somehow, seeing information in this manner allows the reader to see the information in such a way that it enters into memory faster than a person would think.
• 10 Sure Fire Techniques to Memorize Anything-Study Skills
  This article summarized 10 different ways that a person can commit information to memory. These methods are some of the most tried and true that are available for someone that needs a bit of help while studying, preparing for public speaking, or any other activity that requires the use of information recalled from memory.
• How We Remember-California Polytechnic State University Student Academic Services
  In this article, the author explores not just how to remember, but the reasons behind why we remember information that we put in front of ourselves. The answers to effective memorization lie in what the brain does when it receives the input of this information. The article also points out that it is very helpful to see the information from as many different angles as possible.
• Memory Techniques-Strategies for Success
  In this particular article, the author discusses the differences in how various people learn. The two main types or ways of learning are through the auditory and visual channels. Visual learners are usually the ones that benefit greatly from taking extensive notes and auditory learners tend to gain knowledge the best by listening.

Interview: Getting Organized

As part of our interview questions on organization we asked people what tip they would share with someone looking for a single way to better their organization skills. Then Productivity501 readers were asked to vote for their favorite answers. The results below are organized based on the results of the voting. (You can still vote on answers to other questions.)

What is the single most important piece of advice you would give to someone looking to better organize his or her life?

Start by reducing clutter and getting clear about your priorities. It’s a lot easier said than done, but it’s true. Disorganization starts with indecision caused by your own conflicting needs, values, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs - then it shows up all over your home or office!

Ariane Benefit from Neat & Simple Living (rss)

Ariane answer received the most votes for this question. She makes an interesting point here. The process of getting rid of clutter is really about clarifying your values and determining what is important to you.

Declutter. If you don’t love it or use it, get rid of it. Let’s face it - grandmother’s lace tablecloths may be important, but if you have been storing them in paper bags in the garage for the last five years, they are not important enough for you to take care of. Things like that need to go.

Once you have decluttered, you can set about getting organized.

LJ from simpleproductivityblog (rss)

LJ’s answer can in with the second most votes. I think everyone can identify to something like “grandmother’s lace tablecloths” that are being stored somewhere. It is easy to forget that every thing we acquire requires some type of maintenance. It is a good idea to look at stuff in terms of how much of an investment they are going to require over time.

One thing that helped me reduce clutter is to keep one box of mementos from the past. If the box is full I have to get rid of something before I can add something new.

Act now. Don’t put off anything. Don’t say, “Oh, I’ll get to that tomorrow.” Because something else will happen tomorrow that will cause you to put it off again.

Oh, and set goals. They are important.

Michael Morton from Marketing Monster (rss)

Making at least a little progress every day is valuable. Michael’s suggestion to set goals is particularly useful if you set things in small enough chunks that you can get something done each day–even if it seems small the cumulative benefit and momentum is very valuable.

Eliminate, eliminate, eliminate.

Reduce your possessions, commitments, and obligations to the true essentials. It’s much easier to organize when you have already eliminated the bulk of your extra stuff– both physical and mental.

Sam Spurlin from Sam I Am (rss)

It is a great feeling to use that thing you’ve been saving for five years, but you have to be honest with yourself and get rid of anything that there isn’t a very high probability that you will use.

Choose one gadget (digital or analog) for keeping track of your responsibilties, and make sure that everything ends up there. I use a Moleskine pocket datebook, one page a day, with extra pages and a manila envelope in the back for sundry items.

Michael Leddy from Orange Crate Art (rss)

I recommend the Franklin Covey training–at least the way it was done in the mid 90s. Their system of keeping track of everything was very valuable to me.

One sentence: Everything in its place.

Benjamin from WOWNDADI (rss)

This is what I like about the toolkit my brother gave me a few years ago. Each item has a specific place. It is much easier to keep it organized than my old toolbox where everything is just thrown in randomly. It is also easier to put tools up because they go in a specific spot.

My most important peice of advice for someone wanting to organize is to take a few minutes in the morning to visualize your day. Visualize the positive feelings when you do things, especially at important crossroad events throught the day. Such as wanting to check your calendar in the morning as if you might discover a treasure, making that grocery list with a smile because its perfect, remembering to get the groceries before you pass the exit and feeling awesome because you did, and enjoying organizing your desk like its a high performance machine.

Ryan Cole from Practical Productivity (rss)

Taking pleasure in your organization tasks is good advice. I think it is easier once you get to a certain level of organization to be happy about maintaining it.

Set long and short term written goals. Once that is done start using a daily planning sheet. Keep it where you work (desk etc) and write things down. You can download a free printable version on my blog.

John Richardson from Success Begins Today (rss)

I have recently started taking a single piece of blank paper and using it to write my important tasks for the day. John has some interesting forms on his site that will help you with planning if need a place to start.

Rest is the basis for activity. If you are rested mentally and physically, you will think more clearly and, as a result, behave in a more organized and intelligent manner.

Going to bed before 10 PM has a miraculously good effect on the next day’s productivity. More things will get done with less effort thereby leaving more time to enjoy and, of course, more time to rest.

When you try it, you will be amazed at how much your luck seems to improve. Being well rested mentally and physically is a major key to being successful.

And if you want to take your rest to an even deeper level, I would heartily recommend the practice of Transcendental Meditation (www.tm.org). I’ve been doing it for 40 years and have loved every minute of it.

Fred Gratzon from The Lazy Way to Success

Most people are sleep deprived. The Promise of Sleep really changed how a view the need to get rest. The biggest change in my sleep patterns has come from having a 1 year old who gets up at 5:30 each morning. This has forced me to go to bed earlier and I’ve been happy with the results.

De-clutter. I’ve been a huge pack rat my entire life, and it’s only in the last 2 or 3 years that I’ve been able to tell myself, “No, you really never will use that ever again.” Throw out anything you don’t need and scan important paper documents to PDF. In both my personal and professional lives, I’ve found that eliminating excess material makes it so much easier to focus on tasks at hand, and I’ve been much more productive and efficient for it.

Damian Bariexca from Apace of Change (rss)

Even if you occasionally throw out something you need and have to repurchase it in the future, you will usually be better off simply by having less stuff.

By simplifying your life - work on putting order into your working and home environment. Each area in your home should serve a specific function, cutting down on unnecessary clutter means you have less to organise. By assigning items a specific place you make sure that you know where things are when you need them, cutting down on wasted time and making life easier, leaving you time to focus on achieving your goals.

Grace Smith from Postscript5 | Freelance Web Design

It takes a great deal of effort to keep things simple and most people aren’t willing to invest the time and money into simplifying.

It is important to breakdown the task of organizing down to small pieces. Start with one aspect, work on it a little bit a time. Otherwise it will seem like an unsurmountable task and you may not pursue it.

Rolando from macNwinblog (rss)

I think it can also be valuable to divide your tasks into initial organizing and maintenance organizing. I may only need to reorganize my office once a year if I do some basic tasks each day to keep things in an organized state.

Write it down!

GTD Wannabe from GTD Wannabe (rss)

I would say write it down and be willing to purge items. Just because you wrote something down doesn’t mean it is really worth doing. But getting stuff out of your head and onto paper is very valuable.

I am a disciple of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. It really does works! If you are waking up during the night, stress all day long, juggling all your tasks in your head, then GTD is for you. It will help you get your life back and increase your productivity.

M Nassal from Stress Free Productivity 101 (rss)

My personal feeling is that GTD can encourage you to do less important tasks because you don’t automatically forget the less important items. I would rather have 3 important things to do each day than 100 trivial items. Overall, I like the methodology as long as it is approached in a way that gives you the flexibility to change things to meet your needs.

Find your life purpose. Your life purpose is the central point of organizing your life. It’s useless to do things the right way if you do the wrong things.

Donald Latumahina from Life Optimizer (rss)

This gets back to the idea that you can’t really organize until you’ve defined your values.

If you’re not that organized, ask for help. I’m not an organized person, but I’m constantly asking others how they do it. Not all of their advice will work for you, but it’s certainly better than going it alone.

Anne from Writers Cabal Blog (rss)

At the same time, it is important to make sure you look for things that work for you that no one else would ever suggest. Look for advice, but don’t let the way other people do things keep you from discovering what works best for you.

Get an axe, and start chopping up your life. If you aren’t organized, you won’t be organized until you let go of all the crap and clutter and extra responsibilites that aren’t getting you anywhere.

Don’t bother trying to organize your life until you have removed every last bit of clutter from your life. If it moves, remove it.

If, in a month’s time, you’re disorganized again, it could be one of two things:

• You skipped that step, or you didn’t declutter enough; you might be holding onto things too tightly that could be easily axed.
• You need to work on your self-disclipine abilities. No point trying to organize if you have no self-discipline first.

http://www.joelfalconer.com from Joel Falconer (rss)

Getting rid of things (physical items as well as activities) can be extremely painful, but very vital if you want to move to a state where you can keep things organized.

Eliminate all activities that don’t help you achieve your life goals one way or another.

Lodewijk van den Broek from How to be an Original (rss)

Once again this comes down to clarifying your values before you can really know what to keep and what to jettison.

Read Unclutterer.com, of course!

Erin Doland from Unclutterer (rss)

This answer is kind of cheating, but I agree. Erin’s site has a bunch of great tips on getting organized.

Early Withdrawal from an IRA

If you have a lot of money in an IRA you might be interested in 72(t) distributions.  They allow you to start taking a certain amount of money out now (and paying normal income tax on it) instead of waiting until you are 59.5.  For most people this isn’t a good idea, but it is a good option to know about.

Ultimate Virtual Assistant Guide

I have been experimenting with using virtual assistants. I’ve worked with two, one in the US for about two weeks and one in India for two months. It has been an excellent learning experience and I wanted to share it with everyone in the form of this guide. My goal is to give readers a good idea of how a remote assistant can help them, along with an idea of the benefits and drawbacks. This guide should give you a pretty good idea of what you need to get started working with a virtual assistant and should help you avoid some of the errors I made in the process.

I am also going to look at the idea of having a local assistant and how that compares to working with their virtual counterpart. It is easy to get enamored with the concept of a remote executive assistant and overlook local options that may be much more appropriate.

If you want to read a story about interacting with US and Australian virtual assistants checkout: Offending the Entire VA Industry

My Experiment

I worked with a virtual assistant in the US for about two weeks. She ended up just disappearing and I lost some money on it. I had her do a few tasks, mainly as an experiment, to see how things worked out.

My second experiment was working with Brickworks India. They are a very reputable firm and I thought I would have better experience working with them rather than trying to find someone on my own. I was right. They were extremely professional. I hired one of their remote executive assistants for 40 hours per week for two months.

My assistant, Rajani, worked from about 3:30 am until 1:30 pm. I was always a bit confused on the exact time, because right after we started, daylight savings time kicked in and threw things off. In addition, India has a timezone that is offset by an additional 30 minutes to what we are used to in the US, so that added to my confusion.

Rajani was extremely competent. She had previously worked at Dell as one of their customer service reps. Her spoken English was perfect. I had Rajani do a lot of work related to Productivity501. For example, she compiled a list of related bloggers for our last big interview project. She also handled locating and resizing images for the new layout of the site.

I found that it usually took a bit longer to train her how to do something than I anticipated. However, once she learned it, she would remember it weeks later without needing to be shown again. For example, I had her setting up email campaigns for one of my clients. It is a fairly complicated process of pulling in an email template, creating a target group, and then scheduling the email. We did a screen sharing session and went through the process several times. The first time, I did it and just let her watch. The second time, she did it and I walked her through the process, the third time, she did it and I just watched–only intervening if she got really stuck or was about to do something that would cause a problem.

Several days after I showed her how to do this, I got an email from her, saying, “I see there is a new event scheduled like the one I previously sent out a campaign for. Would you like me to do the same for it?” I was very impressed with this because she wasn’t just working off of a task list. She was anticipating future actions based on previous ones–something that is very valuable to me.

At the end of two months I decided to not renew the retainer. While I was very happy with her work, I realized that hiring someone locally was more cost effective for me–especially given the part of the country I live in where $6 to $7 per hour is considered pretty good pay for many people. Also my parents are both local teachers–one at the local junior college and the other at a small private school. This means I have two great sources for locating up and coming talent who will soon be looking for jobs.

What a Virtual Assistant Can Do

Most tasks that need done on a computer can be done by a virtual assistant. It all depends on your current work flow. If you use a paper based system for managing addresses, they probably can’t help you with that unless you are willing to go digital. As long as it can be done remotely they can do anything from acting as a virtual secretary, virtual receptionist or virtual personal assistant.

Here are a list of things I had Rajani do that worked out well:

• Research other websites that met a certain set of criteria
  Specifically, I was looking for blogs about productivity topics whose authors might be interested in being interviewed. I provided a great deal of guidance, showing her where to look for sites, how to tell the quality of the site, etc. She produced a spreadsheet with all the sites and attributes I was looking for.
• Email people about interviews
  Rajani did a great job of sending out my interview questions and then compiling the results. She would let me know if someone had a question that I needed to respond to. At first, I had her send these out from her own account, but then I just gave her access to do it from mine. That way I’d see any responses that came in during the afternoon and could reply to any questions.
• Organizing contacts
  I wanted to keep the people who responded to the interview in my address book. Rajani used Plaxo to add people to the appropriate category. She broke everything down by which questions each person answered so I could notify people when their answers went live.
• Setting Appointments
  It was Sunday evening, and I needed to get an appointment to have my car serviced when I was in another city. I sent Rajani and email asking her to find a VW dealership and set up and appointment for me near where I would be staying. Monday morning, as I was on my trip, she emailed me the appointment time, address and contact number. This was in stark contrast of trying to use the Amex Concierge service.

Here are some of the things that didn’t work quite so well:

• Compose and send an email
  While Rajani’s written English was excellent for communicating with me, there are some major differences between Indian English and American English. If she wrote something, I usually spent time correcting it to make it more “Americanized” and usually this took as much time as it would have taken to write it myself. Instead I started just writing an email myself and sending it to her to send out to several people–or to customize and use.
• Editing and Proofreading
  Once again, the differences in English showed up. Editing and proofreading didn’t seem to be something that worked particularly well.
• Writing Summaries of Articles
  I had Rajani locate 10 articles on various topics and then put together a post along with links. She did a great job of locating the articles, but the summaries still suffered from the differences in the language. At first I started to try to change them, but found it was faster to just write them myself.
• Writing Biographical Summary
  I was looking for some biographical information about George Washington to use at Leadership501. It turns out that this type of project is difficult to do without the cultural context. If you want to see for yourself, try to write a short paper on the first president of India and then give it to someone who was born and raised there to read.

As you can see, most of the things that weren’t successful were related to language differences. It is easy to underestimate the differences when you can communicate with someone verbally with out any issues.

Virtual assistants can’t do physical tasks. Personally I found that a number of the things that would really save me time are physical. Depending on your needs, you may find that a lot of the benefit of having an executive assistant is to do physical stuff. Here are some of the things that would save me a lot of time but require physical presence.

• Running to the store to get something.
• Working with local companies where doing things in person will help get things done much quicker.
• Sending out information packets.
• Taking my car to the shop.
• Unpacking books and files.
• Organizing physical items.
• Tidying up the office.
• Picking up dry cleaning.
• House/Dog sitting.

How Much Do Virtual Assistants Cost?

The rates charged by virtual assistants is highly variable. I have had people offer to do stuff for me for as little as $1 per hour. If you look at ODesk, you’ll see many people looking for work at $2 to $5 per hour. With a global market, you can often get much more than you pay for.

With some of more reputable companies in India, you’ll be looking at paying $8 to $15 per hour.

Brickworks is setup on a retainer model. In general, for a remote executive assistant you will pay about $2,000 per month for someone full time and $1,200 for someone half time. While this may be more expensive than someone you could find on your own, they have a technical support staff to help them. The IT department keeps their computers virus free, limits internet access to sites related to their work, fixes any problems that arise, etc. If you are extremely technical it can be frustrating because you will want to change something on their computer to tweak this or that. If you aren’t extremely technical, it is wonderful because you don’t have to worry if your information is going to be stolen by some piece of malware that was inadvertently installed on their machine.

Make sure you understand how vacations work and factor that into your cost analysis. If you are paying for a monthly retainer, you will probably be paying for vacation time as well. This isn’t a big deal, but it can change the amount you end up paying per hour.

If you are looking for someone based in the US, you’ll still find a wide range of pricing.  It is possible to find people in the $7 per hour range–particularly if you look at people who live in parts of the country where the cost of living is very low. Most of the people who are working full time as virtual assistants say you should expect to pay $20 to $50 per hour for a good administrative assistant.

Virtual vs. Local

There are some advantages to hiring a virtual assistant–someone who works from somewhere else. Here are some of the main advantages:

• Simplified taxes. With a remote assistant, it is rather easy to show the IRS that they aren’t an employee.
• Lower prices. If you live in a very high cost area, you can hire someone from a low cost area. For example, if you live in LA, you may get a much better deal hiring someone from rural Nebraska than locally.
• Better talent. It might be possible to find better talent than what is available or what you could afford locally. An MBA in India could cost you significantly less for better skill than what you’d pay in NYC.
• Work hours. If you hire an assistant in a different timezone, they may be able to do a lot of work while you sleep. For example, if you send them a project at 7 in the evening, they may be able to have it completed by the time you get ready to work in the morning.
• Different attitude. In some cases, you may find you like the attitude of a virtual assistant much better than someone you could find locally. This can be related to cultural differences, but it also can be related to how much someone is being paid relative to their living expenses.
• Pay only for what you need. Sometimes you can structure arrangements to only use services when you need them. This can be much less expensive if you have a a very low number of tasks that can be outsourced.
• Flexible number of workers. Some companies will give you one primary virtual assistant and add as many helpers as necessary to get your job done in time. This doesn’t work for every type of task, but if you need to do a bunch of data entry or something similar it can help you get things done very rapidly.
• No physical space. A virtual assistant isn’t going to take up office space. You won’t have to purchase another desk or chair and most of the time you won’t need to buy another computer.

Here are some of the disadvantages of working with a virtual assistant:

• Communicating. It is more difficult to communicate effectively over email, chat and phone. There are nuances of human communication that just don’t transmit over those channels very well. You will have to place more effort on communicating.
• Physical tasks. You can’t have a non-local virtual assistant run a package down to FexEx for you. They can’t run to the store to do some last minute grocery shopping, return or get a library book, tidy up your office, clip articles from the Wall Street Journal or wait in line for you at City Hall. You might be able to have them stuff envelopes to mail or something like that if they are in the same country. Physical tasks may take more of your time than you realize.
• Language barriers. Just become someone speaks English, it doesn’t mean they can send emails on your behalf. Different parts of the world have different forms of English. If you need someone to handle correspondence or other writing tasks, you may spend more time proofing their writing than it would take to do it yourself.
• Cultural differences. If you hire someone from another country, they may not know what the cultural norms are in your country. Sometimes this can be a good thing–they will proceed with a project with an audacity that gets things done where someone local might back off. Sometimes, though, you have to explain things in much more detail than you would with someone familiar with your culture.
• Local spending. While not a huge consideration, if you can keep money local, you are doing something to benefit the economy that will eventually benefit you. Hiring a recent high school graduate will keep your money hard at work in your town, while sending it to India will not.
• Security. If you are giving someone access to personal information, there are security advantages to having someone local who you can sit down, interview and get some recommendations on. This isn’t to say the remote assistants aren’t just as trustworthy or even more trustworthy than a local person, but it is usually easier to tell with someone local. (Hiring a remote assistant through a company with a good reputation is one way to minimize the risk.)
• Equipment. This is related to the physical tasks. Having the ability to let someone use your computer, printer, etc. can be a very big benefit. It is possible to set most things up to work remotely, but having complete control over equipment and software has advantages.
• Taxes. Depending on how you arrange things, you may need to deal with withholding taxes and paying half of Social Security taxes. This isn’t a big deal, but it can be a little extra work if you aren’t set up for processing payroll already.

In my opinion, if you are looking for an all around personal assistant, you should try to find someone local and then move to a virtual assistant if you can’t afford or find someone with the right skills locally. If you are looking for an assistant to do a particular highly skilled job, then a virtual assistant may be the right way to go, if you can find someone with those specific skills. But if you are going to have to do a lot of training anyway, local may be a better option.

Don’t underestimate how much of your time is spent on physical tasks. Having someone who can put an item up for sale on eBay and then handle the shipping, throw away files that are older than 5 years old, or sign for an important package while you are away is very valuable.

On the other hand, if you need someone with a degree in statistics to work for a few hours each week, you may have a difficult time finding someone local. If that is what you are looking for, you are probably going to have better luck finding someone in India.

Locating a Virtual Assistant

There are a number of websites where you can find freelance virtual assistants. The advantage of working with them directly through a freelancing site is that you will often get a better price than dealing with a virtual assistant company. The disadvantage is that they might disappear, you won’t have a third party overseeing security, and they will probably be their own tech support. Also, some sites that let you contact freelancers take a cut of your payment. Sometimes they provide services that make this worthwhile. For example, oDesk lets you go in and look at your virtual assistant’s screen to make sure they are working on your projects and not reading jokes online or playing poker.

Here are some of the places where you can locate virtual assistants:

• Elance
• oDesk
• Craigslist
• Guru
• iFreelance

Here are some companies that offer virtual assistants:

• Brickworks India
• Get Friday
• My Employee
• Longer Days
• Tasks Every Day

(Your Man in India has often been mentioned as a place to look, but YMII is really geared toward US based Indian who need things done back home.  They might be good to work with if you need help planning a trip to India or something like that.)

Often the best way to find a good virtual assistant is the same way you would find a good employee. Ask your friends for recommendations. Even if you are looking for someone internationally, this can be a good option. With the global economy, it is likely that you know someone from India already. Sites like LinkedIn and Facebook can also be ways to ask around for contacts.

If you are looking to hire someone from India, send a message to anyone you know who is working from India and let them know what you are looking for. They may know a relative or friend who would be a perfect fit.

If you don’t know anyone from India, you could call up tech support for any major US company. The first person you get will probably be in India. Just ask them if they know of anyone wanting to work as a virtual assistant and see where it goes from there.

If you try to stay in the US, don’t overlook stay-at-home moms or people who are willing to work for a lower salary in exchange for flexibility of schedule or work location.

You should consider your assistant’s work environment. I tried using a virtual assistant in Texas, but it was very difficult to talk to her because she was constantly yelling at her kids while on the phone with me. I’m all for work/life balance, but I think she would have been much more effective in an actual office.

This is one of the things I like about Brickworks India. Their workers are coming into an actual office and working. For most people, this is a better setup because it takes them away from the distractions at home. On the other hand, this adds overhead expense and the company managing the assistants will mark up the cost significantly.

Selecting a Virtual Office Assistant

A good way to find a competent virtual assistant is to try several at the same time. This is particularly useful if you are trying to hire someone from a site like eLance or ODesk. Come up with a few basic tasks that will give you a good idea of their skill level. Ideally use tasks that require several skills. For example, asking someone to research and summarize articles on a particular topic will give you an idea of their research and writing skills.

If you can have 3 to 5 candidates work on the same project, it will give you an idea of how it will be to work with each of them. Take the top candidates and give them a second, more difficult, project and then settle on whomever you prefer to work with.

This means you’ll be spending some money for duplicate efforts, but the benefits of finding a good assistant far outweigh the additional cost

Key Assistant Skills

Here are some skills you want to look for in an assistant.

• Good Spoken English - An accent is fine, but you need to make sure you are going to have an easy time communicating. Don’t forget that there are cultural differences that can make it difficult to communicate–even if you are speaking words clearly.
• Good Written English – Since much of your work with a virtual assistant will be done over email, it is vital that you can communicate effectively in writing. Keep in mind that what is acceptable written English for communicating with you, may not be acceptable for writing to your coworkers or business partners.
• Proactive - This is the most important skill you can find in a good assistant. Someone who can extrapolate what you want them to do in the future based on what you have asked them to do in the past. An assistant who can work off a to-do list can be helpful, but one that can anticipate what you need without requiring you to even think about it is incredibly valuable.
• Quick Learner - If you need to explain how to do a new task, you don’t want to have to explain it 10 times. You need someone familiar enough with the technology or systems you use that they can quickly grasp what needs done.
• Organized - Your assistant needs to know how to take incoming information and organize it in a useful manner. This includes creating folders to organize the work you have assigned, keeping track of multiple versions of documents, and recording any important information that they may need again in the future.

Full Time or Part Time

Most people are looking for an assistant on an as needed basis. If you are hiring someone that is fairly expensive, this can be a good way to go. If you are hiring someone who isn’t very expensive and ad hoc arrangement may not be the best thing for you.

If your virtual assistant has no idea how much work you will need in a given week they will have no idea how much they will get paid. This will lead to higher prices and if your assistant is constantly looking for another job, they may find something that pays better than working for you.

Much of the benefit of having an assistant comes over time, as they become more familiar with what exactly you need and how you like to have things done. If you find someone good, you want to do your best to keep the relationship going for the long term.

Even if you can’t hire someone full time, consider guaranteeing them a certain amount of work each week. This gives them some stability in their income. However, keep in mind that if they are working for you 50% of the time, there is a certain amount of overhead that goes into switching back and forth between you and other clients.

If you are having them do work that requires some creativity, a full time arrangement may give you a benefit of having their mind work on things unconsciously during their off hours. If you are one of ten clients they work for each day, it is less likely that their mind will be mulling over solutions in the evenings than if you are their only client.

If you can find someone remotely who works for $3 per hour it will cost you about $120 per week to hire them. At first this may work out to be more expensive (in terms of the amount of work that gets done) than hiring someone else to work 25% of the time for $12 per hour. But if you are able to train the person working for $3 per hour, over time they may become just as valuable.

Training a Virtual Assistant

It is easy to underestimate how much time will go into training a virtual assistant–particularly if you are working with someone whose first language is different than your own. Here are a few tips to help create good training materials.

1. Use existing resources.
   If you can point your assistant to documents on the web or PDFs that will help them understand a task, it will save you time. For example, I needed to teach my assistant how to use Wordpress. Instead of going through each feature, I had her go through some online video training and then just covered the things specific to my needs.
2. Keep your training resources organized.
   If you end up changing assistants, make sure you don’t have to start from scratch on locating training resources. You want to be able to let them self train as much as possible. For example, if you keep a document with links to everything you have asked your current assistant to read as part of training, it will make your job much easier if you need to train someone else.
3. Create tutorials.
   Creating a list of how to do tricky things step by step will make it much easier if you have to train someone else. It is also helpful if you need your assistant to do something complicated that only happens infrequently.
4. Have your assistant create documentation.
   Once you get an assistant trained, have them create documentation of their processes and the steps to do various things. Not only will this give you great training materials for the future, but you will be able to make sure your assistant is doing things in the most optimal manner.
5. Video training.
   A screen cast can be worth a thousand words and once it is created your assistant can reference it again if they forget something. It can also be used to train others.

Many of these tips are helpful if you need to find a different assistant for some reason, but they are also useful if you are working with a team of assistants, because it will minimize the overhead required to pass tasks between different individuals.

Another useful idea is to have a “skills checklist”. This would include items like:

• Order items from Amazon.
• Send out monthly newsletter.
• Send out client bills.
• Follow up with past due clients.

Only check items off this this when your assistant is capable of performing the tasks without your intervention. The list becomes a great resource if you need to train someone else and becomes an easy way to gauge your assistant’s skills.

Don’t assume that your assistant will automatically find the most efficient way of doing something. Make sure you take the time to train them on best way to do things that can be time consuming. If they do a one off task in a way that isn’t particularly efficient, it isn’t any big deal. It still will save you time over needing to explain a different process to them. However, if there is something you plan to have them do hundreds or thousands of times, make sure you provide them with the training necessary to be efficient.

Managing a Virtual Assistant

Set Task Duration Expectations

One of the most tips for working with a virtual assistant is to set expectations for how long a task should take. Since they aren’t where you can simply look over their shoulder, you want to make sure they aren’t doing something the hard way without realizing it. One way to help minimize this risk is to tell them how long you think a task will take. For example, with Rajani, I showed her how to resize the images for this website and then told her that it usually took me about 10 minutes to select and resize each picture. This gave her some context so she knew that, if it was taking her 20 minutes, she could probably do it faster. It also told her that if it took her two hours, she probably didn’t understand something correctly.

Include Cultural Information

Don’t assume cultural norms are going to be the same for a virtual assistant from another country. Make sure you give them enough background information to work effectively. For example, they may not know that many businesses in the US are closed on Saturday and Sunday. They may not know that when you call someone’s cell phone, they have to pay (in some countries only the person calling pays). These are all very small pieces of information that can have a big impact on how your assistant approaches particular tasks.

Low Priority Tasks

If you hire someone full time or with a commitment of a certain number of hours, always make sure you have some type of low priority task for them to work on if they run out of things to do or get stuck on something when you aren’t available to help them. Here are some tasks that work well for this:

• Reading - If you find websites or PDFs that will help give them background information that will help them perform better, consider assigning these as low priority tasks to do when they can’t work on anything else.
• Training - Online videos or other training materials that will help them do their job better are another good candidate.
• Organizing - Things like running a process to check for duplicate contacts and merging them can be good things to have them do on a regular basis, but don’t have to be done at any particular point in time.
• Research - If you have an area of interest, asking them to research part of the topic for you can be a good low priority task.

Timesheet

Even if you are paying on a retainer model, you’ll want some type of timesheet. This is important in order to make sure that something isn’t taking a lot longer than you expect.

A regular timesheet lets you see what is going on so you don’t have large disconnects between how long you think something will take and how long they think it will take. These types of things are easy to catch with someone in person, but can sometimes be easy to overlook with someone working remotely.

What seems to work well for me is a weekly timesheet done in Excel and a daily email of items accomplished along with a plan for the next day. Here is an example of the daily email:

Today I completed the following tasks:

• Added photos to the unpublished articles.
• Set appointments for car and haircut.
• Summarized 10 articles on optimal sleep.
• Cleaned up all duplicate contacts.

Tomorrow I plan to:

• Contact client about billing issues.
• Send out monthly statements.
• Research the hotels in Mexico for vacations.
• Find the best place to buy 20 radiometers and order them.
• Contact Sprint to resolve billing issue.

This helps make sure that you are both on the same page with what is being completed and with what is planned for the next day. On the last day of the week, a spreadsheet showing the hours worked on each task for the week will help give you a good idea where time is being spent over all. I actually started out using Basecamp for project management and time tracking, but found this method worked better for me and didn’t cost anything.

Screencasts

One thing that I found extremely helpful in working with a virtual assistant is creating screen casts. If there was a complicated process I wanted Rajani to do, I’d create screen cast explaining the process step by step and showing her how to do it. Then I’d upload that to our shared file system and tell her to let me know if she had any questions. This worked out well because she could see exactly what I needed and it was there as a reference for tasks that only needed to be done occasionally.

The screen casts also help make sure that your assistant isn’t doing something in a much slower way that what you’d want. If they see you demonstrating a process that takes 5 minutes, they are going to know there is something wrong if it is taking them 20 minutes to complete.

Screen Sharing and Video Conferencing

Another very useful tool is some type of screen sharing capability. This lets you look over your assistant’s shoulder if they need help so you can steer them in the right direction. It can also be used to let them remotely do work on your physical computer which can be useful as well.

You could set up screen sharing so you can take a peek at what your assistant is working on whenever you feel like it, or set it up so you both have to join a meeting in order to share screens.

Video conferencing can be a great way to communicate–especially at first. Getting to see each other can help establish a better relationship and can help you be more aware of cultural issues.

I was speaking on how technology is being used in the workforce at a local junior college and I had Rajani join by video conference to speak for a few minutes about what her company does in India.

I found that we did not use video conferencing very often, but it helped us to get to know each other when we initially got started.

Timezones

I know a lot of people like the idea of having someone working during the night so everything is ready in the morning. I find that things work better if there is at least some overlap. With Brickworks India, my assistant started work very early in the morning my time. Our working days overlapped by about 50%. This worked out well because it gave us enough time for me to explain anything I needed done and gave her time to ask for clarification on anything that was confusing.

Tools

Here is a list of tools that can be very useful when working with a remote assistant:

• Skype - Supports video conferencing, instant messaging, incoming and outgoing calls to regular phones and file transfers. The only real downside of Skype is the fact that when you call out, your number shows up as 0123456789. This is generally fine for calling businesses, but can pose a problem when calling individuals who might not answer.
• Acrobat Connect - Does screen sharing and video conferencing. Also allows you to remote control someone else’s computer.
• SnapzPro X - OS X tool for doing screen casts and screen shots.
• Basecamp - A project management system. I found it was overkill for what I needed, but it might be useful if you have more than one person working for you.
• Plaxo - Plaxo will let you sync your address book with an online address book. This can be a great way to give your assistant access to your addresses without giving them direct access to control your PC.
• Google Web Apps - Gmail based mail is particularly suited for working with a virtual assistant because it allows you to see an entire conversation in the inbox. If your assistant answered a message for you, you won’t miss it and send a message out again. Also, the tagging allows your assistant to mark items that require your attention.
• LogMeIn - Allows screen sharing and remote control. This can be useful for demonstrating how to do a task or to allow your assistant to do work locally on your home computer. They also offer an easy-to-configure VPN service to allow direct access between computers without exposing them to the entire internet.

10 Articles About Virtual Assistants

Here are some great articles about how people are using virtual assistants and include some tips for getting things done “virtually”. If you are looking for more information, I’d suggest starting with these links.

• The Virtual Assistant: Regain Control and Love Your Job-Therese Drost
  This article explains the necessary skills that a person needs to become a virtual assistant. A few of these skills include good grammatical skills, good communication skills, ability to be responsible and the ability to take knowledge and large amounts of information and process them efficiently and effectively.
• Making Sense: A Virtual Assistant IS Practical-Florie Lyn Masarate
  In her article, Florie Masarate explains how practical and feasible the use of virtual assistants is in today’s world. She emphasizes that the work that many virtual assistants do is high quality, and that the rates for hiring a virtual assistant are becoming very reasonable.
• Outsourcing Your Life, and Creating New Businesses-Nora Dunn
  The author describes how outsourcing jobs to virtual assistants can greatly improve the way in which a business owner uses his or her time. She also discusses how these assistants free the valuable time of higher echelon employees to complete tasks that require more experience.
• I Just Fired My Virtual Assistant-Stephan Spencer
  In this article, Stephan Spencer explains how the cultural and linguistic differences between nationalities can hinder someone while working with a virtual assistant from another country. Because of the differences in language and the way it is perceived, many people hesitate to hire a virtual assistant because of the communications difficulties.
• How to Get Your Virtual Assistant to Schedule Your Doctor’s Appointments-Ramit Sethi
  This article is a helpful guide that explains what information your virtual assistant will need to set up a doctor’s appointment for you. This article also points out that it is better to give detailed instructions to your personal assistant rather than being asked to explain something numerous times.
• Drawbacks of Outsourcing to India or China-Stephan Spencer
  In this article, Stephan Spencer explains in more depth why hiring a virtual assistant from a foreign country can be a potential risk. He discusses the issues of loss of credibility, communications misunderstandings and also the customer service complaints that can result from hiring an under-qualified virtual assistant.
• Two Secrets to My Success-Work at Home Moms’ Talk Radio Blog
  The author centers this article around speaking about all of the good excellent help that the author’s virtual assistant has provided for her. The author points out how important that this virtual assistant is to her business.
• Outsourcing My Life, Part 2: The First Task Completed-Yourdon Report
  In this article, the author relates some of their own experience in working with a virtual assistant from another country. The author also gives a few examples of the rates charged by companies for help from virtual assistants.
• Confession: I Outsourced My Life-Ryan Norbauer
  In this article, Ryan Norbauer relates some of his own experiences that deal with virtual assistants and how they can improve a person’s life. The great advantage of freeing oneself from everyday, repetitive tasks becomes evident when a person has an assistant to help them.
• How Long Can I Expect My Virtual Assistant to Stay With Me?-The Real Estate Training Center
  The author pens this article to explain how our society and workforce are changing, and with those changes, virtual assistants are becoming much more common. The author also explains that there are many different factors that may help determine how long a virtual assistant will stay with a client.

In Summary

Working with a virtual assistant can save you a lot of time and let you get to a lot of those tasks that you’ve been meaning to do, but never quite have time for. Even if you don’t think you need someone right now, I would encourage you to try using a virtual assistant as an educational experience. It will help open up your eyes to how small the world has become.

You might also want to checkout my follow post: Offending the Entire VA Industry

If you have any suggestions of providers, tips and tricks, or things to avoid that would help other readers please add them in the comments.

Michigan’s Big Bet

Recently the state of Michigan made a big bet.  The government decided that they could spend money more efficiently than businesses could, so they raised business taxes.  I don’t understand the logic making it harder for businesses when a good percentage of your work force is looking for jobs.  The result is that businesses are moving out of Michigan.  This along with a number of companies simply shutting down is putting a strain on the economy. 

The thought of “if we only had more money we could fix our problems” is prevalent in government, business and personal life.  If your focus is on getting more money you will often overlook solutions that actually solve the problem.  Worse still, the “money” solutions often turn out to create new problems that are worse that what you were originally trying to fix.

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