We are juggling 7-10 small or medium sized projects as well as having one or two other VAs handling our extra workload. This can be stressful. I remember times when I was literally frozen because I did not know what to do next. In this 15 minute Interview with Erin Blaskie, of Business Services Etc. and The VA Coach, we discuss her systems and processes for managing all the multiple projects she has going on while making sure her client’s and her personal projects get done on time.  Erin talks a little about Basecamp, My hours and some of the other Project Management tools she uses.

Listen to Erin tips below…

See ya soon-

Here is a demo of what is in her first two lessons.

Enjoy!

Once you have been in the Virtual Assistance field for a while no doubt you will have lots of projects going on at the same time. And if you don’t use some kind of system you will go nuts. Before I turned to Virtual Assistance I had been a Project Manager for about 5 years and even so, I was pretty frantic when I got too many projects. I was so reactive. I felt like I spent about 5 minutes on each project before I would get an e-mail that I would have to check right away that would get me immediately into a different project and it would go on like that all day.

I didn’t really discover the whole idea of batching until about six months ago.

Basically, batching means you do all of a certain type of work in one session before you move on to something else. The virtues of batching are as follows:

• It gives you the time to develop focus.

• It removes distractions.

• It prevents you wasting time on re-engaging with tasks

As I spin many plates, I’ve found batching both projects and tasks to be incredibly useful. I allocate one day a week to write posts for my own blog. This means that I can enter a writing flow-state (and not worry about client commitments for the rest of the day). Other tasks I’ve begun to batch are emails, feed reading and, of course, client work. I will do all the work for client A from 9-11 then Client B from 1-3 and so on. I feel much less fragmented and much more productive as a result.If you’re constantly flipping and changing between projects, your attention will be fragmented and you won’t be able to do your best and fastest work. If you’re keeping multiple plates in the air, focus on one at a time, rather than all of them at once. The secret to any great juggler’s skill is the ability to focus only on the single item entering and exiting one hand, regardless of the five or ten items currently suspended in the air. Manage your projects like a great juggler.

Best,

The offer

I was asked to take on the creation of a database that was an add-on to an existing Website. Because I had been a Project Manager of database projects in my former life I had no problem saying yes, even though I knew I would need to outsource it- as I have no database programming skills myself. The money would be good and I would only need to oversee the work of the programmer and the database consultant. I decided to use Rent-a-coder as I had used them quite successfully in the past for short (4 week or less) custom Website projects and was always quite satisfied. Rent-a-coder is fabulous as long as the project is well define, of short duration and you won’t need any follow-up after the project is over.

The Reality

I picked the wrong coder. I had many bids but none of them were in my price range except one. The bid was really low. The coder had just one rating it but it was good one. I figured I would give him a chance. I asked my husband if I should go with someone who had a super low price and just one rating and as a business owner he told me flat out “no” because the project was too large and could potentially drag on forever if the guy was not experienced. Did I listen to him? Of course not. I hired the guy.

The Conclusion

The project was supposed to be done back in early December. It is now late February and he is still working on it. The client is getting irritable. I’m losing money and have learned some valuable lessons.

1. Never choose the cheapest person unless time is of absolutely no importance. They are probably cheap because they have little experience and will be learning on the job.
2. If you have a big job don’t use someone who has only one testimonial or only one reference. If the job is large go with someone who can prove their experience by providing you with at least 4 or 5 people who can vouch for them.
3. If you don’t have any idea of how to do the work yourself, go with someone who can communicate pretty well in English so there will be no misunderstandings about scope or deadlines.

So, as the project drags on and I continue to dread the never ending list of bugs that keep popping up I am thankful that I have now met some great local VAs to outsource to that are providing me with the best of service (i.e- David Burch with VirtuallyYours.com)

• It makes me look more professional and organized to my clients by having all our project information in one, easy to access location
• It allows my clients to add items to my “To Do” list, see when they have been completed and how long it took me to do.
• It is great to be able to store all the project documents in one, accessible location
• It has a chat room available which works nicely if your team is scattered
• It has a message board which I use to send status reports or any communication that may need to be saved
• The Writeboard is great for keeping track of all my client’s various logins and passwords
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Let me show you how I use it in the following demo

3 minute Demo