How to Be Your Own Executive Assistant in 3 Easy Steps

This is a guest post from Chrissy of The Executive Assistant’s Toolbox. Every Monday is Productivity & Organization Day at Zen Habits.

Being an Executive Assistant myself, I tend to think having an E.A. is an essential component of running a successful company. Of course, many people who are self employed feel they simply can’t justify the expense of hiring a full time assistant. Sadly, these are probably the people who could benefit the most from an E.A.’s professional assistance!

Still, there’s nothing that stops you from being your own Executive Assistant and, in fact, most self employed people (or those looking to become self employed) already are and they just don’t know it yet. Below are a few pointers to help you do it yourself in an efficient and effective way.

What does an E.A. actually do?
Consider them professional organizers, time managers or simply “professional keepers”. An Executive Assistant manages day-to-day workflow, organizes and prepares paperwork, establishes priorities, manages incoming correspondence (phone, mail and e-mail), performs general customer care, and that’s just the beginning.

In general, an E.A. maintains the sanity of your day. A good one can truly act as an “alter ego”, taking your place in meetings and filling in on tasks when you’re unavailable. Being your own E.A. does limit that capability (unless you’ve already mastered the art of being in two places at once).

How to be your own E.A. in 3 easy steps

1. Schedule a specific period of time every day for performing the these tasks.
These are the kinds of tasks that are easy to put off, however, once they pile up become a daunting and overwhelming project. Schedule time (generally about an hour) each day (preferably in the morning) to complete the basic office maintenance that your business requires. This may involve filing paperwork, scheduling meetings, sorting through mail, or reviewing and prioritizing task lists. Simply sit down and take care of these things one by one, before you get busy “doing business”.

2. Utilize tools of the trade.
As your own assistant, it’s critical to develop routines and standard procedures that are rigorously and consistently followed. This will help streamline your daily activities. As an Executive Assistant, I use a variety of detailed checklist to make most activities “standardized”. For example, when gathering materials for a meeting for my boss, I run through a checklist to make sure he always has the same things with him. Of course, there is some minor tweaking for each meeting, but the basics always remain the same. Taking the time now to standardize your processes will save you time in long run.

I also recommend organizing your processes for incoming correspondence, especially e-mail. Below are a few tips for how to do this. Personally, I use Outlook, however, most of these ideas can be set up on any email program.

Establish files for ALL incoming email. There are a number of ways to do this. Some people sort everything into 2 folders: FYI only - no reply and Reply needed. Once everything is put into the appropriate folder, you can then go through them and reply as needed, then re-file into another group of folders. You may want to label these folders by project or client. Here’s an example of some I use: Travel Arrangements, Client Projects, Board Activities. Each folder also has sub-folders, further breaking down each category. This also makes searching for past e-mails much easier.
Flag emails that require follow up actions - set a date and time for a reminder to pop up.
You can set up most programs to automatically file correspondence from specific people into a particular folder. For example, if you are working on the Blue Project with Joe Smith, you can ask the program to file all incoming correspondence from Joe Smith automatically into the Blue Project folder. The number of unread messages in each file shows up beside the folder icon.
You can set up the program to automatically add color coded flags for correspondence from specific people. For example, any email that comes in from my boss automatically has a red flag by it. That way, I can scan through my inbox and it catches my eye right away if he’s sent something. You can set up different colors for different people.

These are just a few ways to really customize your program in order to maintain control over your email.

The basic philosophy behind being your own E.A. is to organize and standardize. Again, don’t let it pile up and the process will be much smoother.

3. Establish a proactive tracking system
Executive Assistants are great at making sure things don’t fall through the cracks. There’s nothing worse than having a client call you to ask the status of a request that you’ve let go by the wayside. As your own E.A, you will need to create a system for following up on client requests and other time sensitive tasks. These days, the best practice is to use some kind of electronic calendar system (such as Outlook). During your dedicated daily E.A. time slot (see number 1), do the following:

Review your pending task list.
Rank each by priority level.
Make note of the next action for each and create a firm deadline.
Review progress of established next actions and make note of what has been completed.
Gather your next action tasks for the day and rank them by priority.

Daily review will ensure you are keeping on top of the various projects you work on at any given time. It will also make sure your day is spent working on the tasks you should be working on, not just the tasks that caught your eye first.

For more helpful tips and tricks on being your own Executive Assistant, visit The Executive Assistant’s Tool Box.

How to Be Your Own Executive Assistant in 3 Easy Steps

This is a guest post from Chrissy of The Executive Assistant’s Toolbox. Every Monday is Productivity & Organization Day at Zen Habits.

How to be your own E.A. in 3 easy steps

Establish files for ALL incoming email. There are a number of ways to do this. Some people sort everything into 2 folders: FYI only - no reply and Reply needed. Once everything is put into the appropriate folder, you can then go through them and reply as needed, then re-file into another group of folders. You may want to label these folders by project or client. Here’s an example of some I use: Travel Arrangements, Client Projects, Board Activities. Each folder also has sub-folders, further breaking down each category. This also makes searching for past e-mails much easier.
Flag emails that require follow up actions - set a date and time for a reminder to pop up.
You can set up most programs to automatically file correspondence from specific people into a particular folder. For example, if you are working on the Blue Project with Joe Smith, you can ask the program to file all incoming correspondence from Joe Smith automatically into the Blue Project folder. The number of unread messages in each file shows up beside the folder icon.
You can set up the program to automatically add color coded flags for correspondence from specific people. For example, any email that comes in from my boss automatically has a red flag by it. That way, I can scan through my inbox and it catches my eye right away if he’s sent something. You can set up different colors for different people.

These are just a few ways to really customize your program in order to maintain control over your email.

The basic philosophy behind being your own E.A. is to organize and standardize. Again, don’t let it pile up and the process will be much smoother.

Review your pending task list.
Rank each by priority level.
Make note of the next action for each and create a firm deadline.
Review progress of established next actions and make note of what has been completed.
Gather your next action tasks for the day and rank them by priority.

Posted on 27 August 2007 in Productivity & Organization |
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Comments (13)

Rolf F. Katzenberger Says:

August 27th, 2007, 8:17 am

“You can set up most programs to automatically file correspondence from specific people into a particular folder. […] The number of unread messages in each file shows up beside the folder icon.”

This might be helpful if I intended to ignore those mails, by default. If that is not the case, I’d needlessly multiply the number of my inboxes to be scanned; even worse, it would pollute my project reference folders with an indiscriminate stream of incoming emails. Why would I want to complicate my inbox processing and disorganize my reliable system this way?

Garry Says:

August 27th, 2007, 8:33 am

I agree with Rolf, but further - I’ve never understood why people keep massive directory trees of emails in Outlook. It must be a nightmare to find anything at all, not to mention the fact that Outlook isn’t easy to backup and seems very prone to corrupting data.

What I do is first of all process all emails as they arrive (subject to checking at certain intervals as Leo recommends). Any that cannot be immediately dealt with, I paste the essential text into the to do list for the appropriate project. Or, if necessary I save the whole email as a text file into the folder for that project. This means I always have a completely clean email inbox

I think my system is more inline with the Zen philosophy, what do others think?

BTW I use Thunderbird instead of Outlook. I find it’s much easier to use and it saves emails as plain text files, not the obscure propietary format of Outlook. So I know I can always recover my data on any other computer if I need to.

Chrissy (the E.A.) Says:

August 27th, 2007, 10:00 am

Rolf - It’s a good point you make about the possibility of “ignoring” these emails. That’s sort of the point, I guess. In my opinion, this tip is intended to be used for projects that you are setting aside a specified period of time to work on, so correspondence can be “ignored” until that point, rather than distracting you and thowing you off track at undesignated and/or inappropriate times. Scanning that inbox would become a part of working on that project, being done during the specified time. Of course, none of these tips will work for everyone on everything….just ideas that might come in handy at some point!

Terry Says:

August 27th, 2007, 12:03 pm

Hi Chrissy, Awesome post. I have a question that is a bit off topic. How did you become an EA and are you self-employed as well? I find myself very passionate about this field especially in the area of professional organization and wonder if you could offer any tips to becoming an EA. If you cannot post here you can email. Thanks.

Chrissy (the E.A.) Says:

August 27th, 2007, 12:36 pm

Terry - Thanks for the question! Check out http://www.eatoolbox.com for more info but here is the quick answer:
There are many career paths that can lead you to becoming an E.A., but most commonly people are promoted from the position of Administrative Assistant. Being an E.A. is considered a “senior” level administrative position. It is definitely a position for the “professional organizer” personality! I am not self employed (which is something I am happy about for the moment). Most E.A.’s are employed by the same company as the executive they work for. Occasionally, an E.A. may be employed directly by the executive (which means they are probably more of a “personal” assistant doing personal tasks along with business ones). Hope this helps and good luck!

Jessica Says:

August 27th, 2007, 16:30 pm

In response to the email questions above - Gmail? It can filter emails into different labels for emails that might pertain to multiple categories.

mathew johnson Says:

August 27th, 2007, 18:49 pm

I use exploding tasklists - really helps me out:

http://mattishness.blogspot.com/2007/08/exploding-tasklists.html

Leo Says:

August 27th, 2007, 23:46 pm

Thanks, everyone, for the comments … I’d just like to thank Chrissy for this excellent post. She’s a super-organized person (she makes me look like a slacker), and she’s got some other excellent tips on her blog.

Kerry Says:

August 28th, 2007, 11:44 am

Leo,

I wish you all would stop recommending all these wonderful blogs. I promised myself I would stick to one or two blogs, yours and maybe a few others. But everyone you recommend is great. I just checked out Chrissy’s. This is it. STOPPPPP. This can be very addictive. Thanks again for such a wonderful site. Chrissy great post, and you are now on my list of blogs, but that is it!!

Matt Baker Says:

August 30th, 2007, 2:45 am

Or, you can outsource your assistant type work to a virtual company. I’m self employed and use a company called Red Butler. They charge a very low monthly fee, I think that I pay 37 bucks a month, and I can have them call or follow up with people, send reminders, set appointments and do whatever I want. Highly recommended for business or personal use.

Steve Says:

August 30th, 2007, 11:14 am

I have two extra folders; Defer and Delegate.

Incoming; I scan my inbox first and delete any unwanted mail (I also have some rules setup to do this automatically). Any mail I then want to follow up on I move to the Deferred folder. Once the deferred mail is dealt with it gets archived. All other mail I archive for 6 months. Anything over 6 months I delete!

Outgoing; When I write a mail I need to follow up on it I move it to the Delegate folder. All other sent mail is kept for 6 months. After that it is deleted.

On the rare occasion I need to find a mail I use the search function of my mail client.

This way I have a simple structure for my mail and rarely have more than a few mails in my inbox.

Karthik Says:

October 28th, 2007, 22:26 pm

Very very helpful for a person like me who works as a one man army. The focus and concentration required are multi fold. Thanks
Karthik
Bangalore, India.
http://www.karthikkaraikudy.blogspot.com/