Guest Post: Author: Jimmy Cowan www.myspeedreading.com

A Virtual Assistant (VA) charges for their work either by the hour or project basis. The rate charged will depend on the work that you’re undertaking and the complexity of the project. Every VA wants to earn the best value for their time that they are dedicating for their service. So it’s important to charge the best value for your work.

Every VA wants to find success in their work. Time management is a big part of being successful. Our rates, schedule and productivity are all more effective when we manage our time well.

Do you have a plan?

For a VA, time is money. Every minute wasted is a loss of money. A VA must plan their day efficiently. The first thing to do when you begin your day is to plan your schedule so you can complete the work that you desire to finish in that day.

Also, make a plan for that month to achieve the targets or goals you have set for yourself. Ensure that you finish your work in that stipulated time. Planning is very important to be successful. It is rightly said that if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.

Can you multi-task?

Multi-tasking is doing more than one thing at a time. Not everyone agrees with multi-tasking. Some say that multitasking reduces the quality of the work, or will cause you to lose focus. In fact, multi-tasking is a skill that you will acquire with experience. As you gain experience, you will tend to be able to juggle multiple tasks more effectively.

Can experience make you more efficient?

In your initial days, you might take a couple of hours to complete work. As you get more experience, you will complete work faster. For instance, if you’re a proofreader, and you used to take an hour to proofread a 10-page article. Over time, now you could proofread the same 10-page article in half an hour. So now, you can complete double the work in an hour. Efficiency and expertise come with practice.

So, what’s the importance of reading?

A VA has to read a large amount of information in a day. Things like reading client emails, documents, contracts, blogs, business news, and books to improve their skills.

Most VAs book their time for client work and don’t always think about how to improve simple tasks like reading.

Speed reading is a skill that a VA can acquire through practice and training. Being able to read and comprehend things in a more efficient way impacts your whole business.

Here are three quick tips for to become more efficient at reading:

1. Skimming – Just scan through the documents to pick up information that is important. Skimming is a technique of speed reading. From a sentence or a paragraph, just read the important words or sentences and skip the irrelevant information. This saves a lot of time from reading long documents or emails. Of course this should not be used for proofreading, but practicing skimming is an effective technique for daily reading.
2. Pointer method – While reading, just keep your finger below the word or line you’re reading and just continue sweeping the finger along the lines or sentences that you’re reading. This method helps in focusing on what you’re reading and you will read at a much faster rate.
3. Eye Exercises – When you read, you engage your brain, eyes, ears, mouth and more. Our eyes have a tendency to go back and forth while reading. Doing a few eye exercises can help you train your eyes to take in more information by expanding your vision field.

Practice these techniques and you can invest your time more wisely while reading. And you can get more done quickly, which will increase your earnings.

And most importantly, don’t forget to take frequent breaks!

When your stress increases, you efficiency and quality of work get impacted. A 5 to 10-minute break every hour will revive your brain and you will feel fresh. A short break will not impact work but will boost your productivity.

For more great tips on how to read more efficiently, visit www.myspeedreading.com.