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A Day in the Life of a Virtual Assistant

It can be difficult to explain what a Virtual Assistant does as our days can be SO varied – there’s a LOT of work that falls under the ‘admin banner’. By talking you through an average day…

Emma has chosen a Monday as these tend to be her busiest days!

6.30am

spin bike in the gym
Early morning spin class

I’m up and out the door pretty quick this morning – I always go to 6.30am spin class to kick start the week.

8.30am

Home, showered, dressed, eaten breakfast and at my desk ready to face the day. I always start the day by checking a client’s answerphone – as a therapist she gets a lot of calls whilst she’s in meetings so prefers that I text her anything that comes through.

I open up my emails plus the client email accounts that I have (7 in total) and respond to anything urgent that came in over the weekend.

I write up a list of everything that I need to get done this week. I normally find the big list quite daunting so I highlight 3 things that I must get done by the time I finish tonight.

11am

My next weekly Monday morning task is to draft up social media content for 3 of my clients. They need to approve these ready for scheduling by Thursday. Although we don’t offer social media as an individual service, these are all long standing clients where we’ve added it on. This normally takes about an hour.

12.15

Beckhampton Gallops
Roxy on a walk at Beckhampton Gallops

The dogs start to get restless so we stop to have some lunch and take them for a walk. I really enjoy this period as it’s a screen free time and the ability to get out in the Wiltshire countryside.

2pm

Back at my desk and I look at the 3 ‘must do tasks’ for the day. This includes a ‘brain dump’ email a client sent over the weekend so I make a start on the various bits and pieces. This includes some Canva images, contacting people on her waiting list to make appointments and uploading some of her receipts into My DocSafe so that her accountant can view them.

3pm

I write a monthly blog for a client who is a Travel Counsellor. He goes on a LOT of trips and likes to document his travels for his customers but has no enthusasim for writing up his experiences. We’ve scheduled in a call so that he can talk to me about it and I can scribble notes down. Once we’ve finished the call, I immediately type my notes up – if I leave it too long, I can’t read my handwriting! Another one of my ‘must do tasks’ for today.

Notebook on pink background
Making a list…checking it twice!

4pm

Whilst I’m in the middle of writing up the blog, another client calls me with some urgent work for tomorrow regarding rescheduling some meetings. There are a couple of other bits and pieces (can’t reveal what they are!!) that she needs doing in preparation for a big project she’s working so I switch from writing about a cruise to concentrating on these tasks.

5pm

Due to the urgent piece of work at 4pm, I don’t start my third ‘must do task’ until this late in the day. The client isn’t expecting it but I’d like to make a start. This task is transferring some CV’s into their recruitment template. It’s simple copy and pasting so despite not starting it until now, it’s not too heavy on concentration.

6pm

I know it’s time to stop…the dogs are sat my the side of me starring – it’s time for their dinner and to prepare our dinner! I have a quick look at my diary and see that I’m with a client for the morning so I make sure my out of office is on.

Throughout the day, emails are popping up continually so I’m constantly jumping from one client to the next. This doesn’t bother me as in my old job, I worked on 5-6 projects at a time so this is ‘normal’!

If you’re wondering how to work remotely with a Virtual Assistant then have a read of the Benefits of Working with a VA post or the 5 Reasons to Outsource your Admin post

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