Wanting to get more done in the day is hardly a new phenomenon. However, when you’re faced with hours of meetings, personal to-do’s, and more work than you can manage, it’s a challenge. That’s why having a personal assistant is so helpful.
From managing your schedule to ensuring nothing is forgotten at work or home, they do a lot. But what if you could provide tools and resources that could improve their productivity even more? And maybe make their lives a little easier? Here are a few to consider.
How to Increase Your Personal Assistant’s Productivity
1. Link Your Calendar Information
When you’re busier than ever, your calendar is a priceless tool. Its accuracy guides your day and fundamentally influences what you can accomplish. So, it’s only natural that linking calendar information with your personal assistant helps streamline this process.
Giving them full access to your personal and professional calendars ensures efficiency. Instead of asking you if you’re free next Tuesday, they can see for themself in a few clicks. If a meeting needs to be moved, it can be done in a matter of seconds. And any other calendar-related task is never too far out of reach. That level of control and insight empowers them to do their job well and encourages productivity.
Start by learning how to share Outlook calendar. Open Outlook and go to the Calendar section. Click “Share Calendar” and choose “Share with specific people.” Enter your assistant’s email address, set the desired permissions, and send the invitation. It’s a very similar process for Google. Verify the sync by creating a test meeting and ensuring it appears on both calendars.
2. Share Your Work Style
When you’re busy, it’s easy to get caught up in the need to do more. Take more meetings, squeeze in one more task, and get up earlier to tackle one more to-do. While that approach will likely yield more accomplished tasks in a day, it can be challenging to maintain. Translation: You become hard for your personal assistant to keep up with. That’s why level setting together is so important.
Put your go-getter mentality to the side for a few minutes of genuine conversation with your assistant. Ask them what their work style is, how they organize tasks, and any other top-of-mind work questions. Then, share how you work — like if you’re an early riser or a night owl — to ensure they understand your style, too. Once you’ve covered the basics, keep up with check-ins so neither of you is out of the loop.
The time spent discussing these things could be used for something else. But the benefits you’ll get from being on the same page far outweigh the costs. And that’s something anyone, even the busiest of people, can get behind.
3. Set Clear Expectations
Personal assistants are intimately involved in your daily life. They manage phone calls, know your schedule, and learn your habits. They’re often glued to your hip tending to your minute-by-minute needs. But they can’t be the most productive in their role if you’re not providing clear expectations.
Start by thinking through what you ask your assistant to do most frequently. If they’re mainly fielding phone calls, give them a list of people you don’t want or need to speak with. When booking flights and travel accommodations, lay out your plane seat preference and hotel requirements. If they manage your calendar, inform them of your preferred lunchtime and other break needs.
Ultimately, these directions provide the guardrails your assistant needs to know to do their job. They’re essential when new to the role, but can be referenced later as needed. Plus, you save yourself the trouble of repeatedly having to clarify what you need. That helps you be your most productive self, too.
4. Invest in Technology
Although it’d be nice if plans were set in stone, that’s not how the real world works. You may think you’re meeting with a client one day but need to move it to the next. Emergencies could pop up that take you out of your routine to focus on something more pressing. With as many adjustments as can happen in a day, ensuring your personal assistant is available is key. That’s where modern technology comes into play.
A phone from even a few years ago may not be able to keep up with today’s needs. Apps won’t update, the storage space is lacking, and the battery dies before the day is half over. Instead, invest in providing your assistant with a reliable phone. You’ll be able to communicate much easier, making managing your time more streamlined.
Don’t forget about software either. Get on the same page about apps and tools used to communicate, track hours worked, and so on. Having systems in place that work, are reliable, and are user-friendly means less time wasted trying to troubleshoot. And that has a direct tie to productivity.
5. Automate When You Can
Some tasks require you or your assistant to do them first-hand. Others, though, are mundane and repetitive, making them the perfect opportunity for automation. It’s just about finding the right approach for you and your needs.
Start by familiarizing yourself with AI productivity tools and plug-ins for your favorite apps. Many calendar tools have AI integrations that can summarize meetings and make scheduling them much easier. Email providers offer AI features to sort your inbox and flag messages that are the most pressing. Find which ones best suit your daily needs and enable them.
Then, it’s just about verifying they work and tweaking the tools to ensure you get what you need from them. Your assistant can then focus their time on other tasks that can’t be done with machine learning. That opens doors to new possibilities of productivity that weren’t there before.
Productivity Unlocked for Your Personal Assistant
Ending the day knowing you accomplished a lot is satisfying. You can rest assured that you did your best. When you work closely with a personal assistant, the feeling is exacerbated by their wins, too. Ultimately, the two of you coming together to be productive leads to even more success. And that’s the best kind of work relationship you could ask for.
