I don’t suppose a day in the life of a Virtual Assistant will be that interesting to a lot of people, but I thought it might be nice for those of you that are interested to get an idea of why I love my job!
Background
Having taken voluntary redundancy back in July I decided I wanted to work from home, utilise my skills but not be tied to a 9 – 5 job anymore. The commute alone was taking nearly 4 hours out of every working day so to work from home would benefit me not only because I would be at home, but I would gain more time to get the jobs done I needed to.
I started my business almost immediately, I hadn’t planned it that way, I thought I’d take a couple of months ‘off’, but I was so excited about getting started that’s how I went from ’employed’ to ‘self-employed’ in a matter of days. After a couple of months I also relocated to France, and the process of becoming ‘self-employed’ here then began again.
So onto a ‘day in the life’ of a virtual assistant…
Generally I will get up around 8am, take breakfast and a shower and then sit down at my laptop and check emails, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, VirtualAssistant Forums and Google Analytics (for the previous days stats). I like to write a brief to-do list the day before so it gives me an idea what I’d like to have achieved the following day.
For the rest of the morning I work on client tasks (such as scheduling blog posts, tweets, formatting eBooks and other documents) and if that’s a bit slow I will take a look at some blogs that interest me and maybe comment on a few. I like to schedule a few Twitter posts at the beginning of the week, just so that my online presence doesn’t wane if I am not at my desk. I tend to do this on a Monday for the rest of the week, and also at the same time schedule tweets for my clients, that way I know that the work is covered if something urgent comes up which takes me away from my laptop.
Around midday I switch into my other role as girlfriend and start to make lunch for my boyfriend who usually arrives home between 12.30 and 1pm. We usually take at least 1 or 2 hours for lunch together (that’s what the French do, it’s not taken long for me to adapt!).
In the afternoon I spend a few hours on client tasks and then for the rest of the day I look at promoting my business on social networking sites, coming up with new ways to work and making the all important to-do list for the next day.
I do love to work in the evenings, it’s when I’m most creative (such as blog writing – it’s currently 9pm), but I also need to spend time with my boyfriend so while watching TV I tend to scroll through Twitter on my iPhone so I can keep up with what’s going on and checking out blogs of interest. I’ve also recently come across Flipboard on the iPhone which is great for checking out the best posts for the day and being able to share them quickly.
Overall I love my job, I get to work the hours that suit me and I don’t have anyone telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing. If you’re thinking about working from home too, I recommend it!! You must do your homework though, it’s not easy and for it to take off you need to be disciplined and put in a lot of hard work. Take a look at my recent blog post ‘Freelancer? How Do You Manage Your Time?’ or if you’d like some examples of how I help clients, my post ’20 Reason’s For Hiring a Virtual Assistant’ will give you some ideas.
Are you already self-employed? I would love to know how you organise your day?
