As a very successful virtual assistant firm; I often wish I had a personal VA to help me. It’s like the house cleaner who cleans everyones homes and leaves them sparkling, only to return home and wish she too returned to such a sparkling one.

I must admit that when I first heard about this book which recommended outsourcing everything in your life to India, I was a little skeptical. And I am not entirely sure that I still agree, but what I do admire in this book are the amazing strategies that teach us how to become more effective and organized each day to increase our ‘LQ’. Lifestyle Quotient…and by the way, mine was 240. Apparently ‘0′ is the best score to have.

Right now the business world is buzzing about “The Four-Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss, and I must admit that I originally thought, this is some CEO who already has lots of money, an office full of contractors and he can afford to delegate everything and just work four hours a week. I say that, because I have worked for many of those sorts before, and often (okay begrudgingly often… :-)) thought how nice it is for you to only work three days a week!

But I was checking out Timothy Ferriss’ Blog and I was captivated! I kept investigating and I was really intrigued by how he did it; he seemed much more involved than someone who spent only four hours a week working, he was living the life most of us want to live. Then I read his Manifesto (which you can download here); and I realized that it wasn’t just about getting someone else to do your work, he was communicating about how it is impossible to continue working the way we do.

+As he was relating some examples of his work day, I gasped because it sounded exactly like my work day! And I realized it wasn’t effective. Timothy goes on to say that our society has an epidemic of Information Abuse and Information Addiction. The concept that they must be available and stay connected all the times and that checking e-mails 100 times a day and having a Blackberry attached to your head is how you will become more productive.

As a virtual assistance firm, this was what our clients paid us for. They hire us to be available, so they dont need to be. So needless to say I was really pondering “how does a Virtual Assistant who is hired to read, sort and research endless information on behalf of their clients apply this concept of unplugging?”

Here is an excerpt from Ferriss’ book — can you relate?

“The problem is clear when we look at the best case scenario: If you get what you want—for example, a promotion or 10% more customers per month—and get 10% more e-mail or phone calls per month as a result, are your behaviors and routines scalable?

Can you answer 1,000 e-mails as easily as 100? If not, at what point will you become a bottleneck that creates a permanent backlog of unread and unanswered items?

For me, it was June 14th, 2004.

From August 10th, 2000 to June 14th, 2004, I checked Outlook 100-200 times per day, first as an employee, and later as the founder and CEO of a Silicon Valley-based firm with more than 300 full-time and contracted workers. In June of 2004, I was working from 7am to 9pm, including weekends, and receiving more than 1,500 e-mails per week. It was unsustainable and 100% unscalable. Deciding that incremental changes wouldn’t solve the problem, on June 14th, 2004, I decided to conduct an experiment at the opposite extreme—I left the US to run the business from wireless locations in more than 20 countries. There was just one rule: I couldn’t check e-mail more than once per week for 15 months. To be honest, I expected the experiment to fail.

Instead, profits increased 30% in the first four weeks alone. How did it happen? In retrospect it was simple. I had decided to cultivate the rarest of skills in a world of infinite interruption: selective ignorance.”

Then Ferriss provides strategies about to become more productive. His blog even has videos for how to organize your inbox for e-mail overload. And to summarize; this next excerpt about wraps it all up, as much as the multi-tasking blood runs through my veins as a woman, I realize the importance of this statement.

“Multi-tasking is dead. It never worked and it never will. Intelligent people love to sing its praises because it gives them permission to avoid the much more challenging alternative: focusing on one thing. “Single-tasking,” creating an environment that permits the start-to-finish completion of high-impact tasks, will be the defining feature of top performers in a world of ADD-enabling technologies.”

At first I struggled with the fact that The Pillar Group IS the company that you outsource to — so how would this work?

Then I relized that we have to set the example. We train our clients and our subcontractors how to communicate with us; how to become productive and efficient. By implementing these strategies ourselves as the ‘hub of the company’ we force our clients and our ‘clients, clients’ to evaluate their workload, and to think more carefully about their reason for interrupting us. It helps them to decrease meaningless and time-consuming back-and-forth communication. They begin to know when to contact us, what they should be handling themselves and what information is worth sharing, and what isn’t. So to conclude; is this really about outsourcing? Surely an Outsourcing Firm can’t outsource; can we?

My take is this:

1. Establishing boundaries and train clients how to use e-mail effectively. E-mail Abuse is is not productive. Be clear about how many times a day you will check your e-mail and advise your clients when you are available online.

2. Using Instant Messengers too frequently, back and forth e-mails, and too many frequent questions lowers your productivity. Empower others to make decisions on your behalf. Most likely you trust whom you are working with. Allow them to find the answer, give them the authority and power to make it happen. This saves a lot of back and forth and also lets people know where they stand and what they can handle for you. (i.e. bookkeepers, accountants, subcontractors)

3. Don’t be afraid to unplug. Timothy recommends setting up an autoresponder telling people that they can call you if something urgent is needed. Each e-mail response generates 1.5 to 2 return e-mails, thus generating more e-mail. Try to complete the communication through another method (i.e. an IM, Twitter, a phone call, a calendar item).

4. Only respond to what is necessary, and delete what is unimportant or save it in a ‘done folder’ for later reference.It really is true what they say…. Ignorance is Bliss!

   Blissfully yours,

   Amy Ewart
   Secretarial Solutions.ca
   <a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/fqgq3ddzi” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

Last 5 posts by Amy Ewart

• Roll with it!! - November 24th, 2006
• In Just 5 minutes... - October 29th, 2006
• Stop trying so hard... - October 14th, 2006
• Solo-E's - Entrepreneur of the Year Award - Nominate Now! - August 23rd, 2006
• Good Morning - Good Night! - July 10th, 2006

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 10:44 am and is filed under Solo Entrepreneur Mindset, Solo Entrepreneur Lifestyle, Virtual Teams, Delegation, The SELF of Self Employment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.