Do I need a part-time assistant?

Do you ever get really disorganized?

Right now, I’m there again. A few months of distraction – book release, blog tour, illness, and school holidays – and my office is overrun with scraps of paper. It’s frustrating too when I’m usually good at keeping on top of things, but a few too many things have slipped to the sidelines lately and it has to stop.

When I worked in Financial Planning the small business I worked for hired business consultants. At the time, I’m fairly sure I rolled my eyes at the expense, interruptions and new procedures they forced upon us. I’d wished they’d spent the money on the salary of another person to take some of the pressure off all of us.

But right now, I’d kill to have someone sweep into my office and reorganize me. Someone with a flair for comb binding machines, excel spreadsheets, and a flair for the Dymo label maker.

Sadly, the budget doesn’t stretch to a part-time assistant or even a casual assistant (and won’t for a very long while) so I really need to tackle the mess myself. I’ve been brainstorming and aside from cleaning up I also think I need to pare down my to-do list to what matter most.

  • recording sales numbers by book and by third party sites
  • accounting – invoices & income for tax return (this is obviously no 1 with the end of the financial year looming)
  • recording my writing progress – it’s motivating and helps me stay on track for deadlines
  • storing research materials – so I can hopefully find them again
  • copies of my stories – if my computer crashes there would be a lot of crying around here. I should have print as well as digital backups
  • reminder systems – I could probably be better organized for marketing and promotion

So, armed with this list I have a plan for the next week – sorting out the paper work of my writing life that’s getting in the way of my getting to my desk. Not really sure what kind of reminder system will work best though. What I’m doing clearly isn’t working so do you have any suggestions for a follow up system for important tasks? Let me know what works for you.

 


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2 thoughts on “Do I need a part-time assistant?”

  1. Make a list (small list to start off with every day) and then it can grow larger with every day that passes. But get everything on that to do list done. It’ll make you feel great once you realize that you can get something done and then the next day make the list a little longer than the day before. I’ve completely redone my office space and reorganized my house this year and it’s helped so much. Once you realize you can get one or two things done, it’ll energize you and you’ll want to do even more then next day. Good luck, Heather! You can so do this!

    • You might be onto something there. I probably do need just a daily to-do list pinned to my wall. Lets see … morning coffee, followed by second coffee if the first doesn’t kick in fast enough, then answering direct emails, then writing at least 2000 words before I can stop for the next coffee. You are brilliant, Suzie! LOL. I have the start of a plan.

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