Archives for January 2020

In fact, if you work with me you will not only get back your own time, with the cost of my time completely covered… but you should also make some additional money.

If that sounds implausible, keep reading and I will explain! And I can guarantee your response will either be, ‘Yes I knew that, but thanks for the reminder’ or, ‘Oh. That makes total sense!’ followed by, ‘Actually, that’s really obvious.’

It’s a bit like in research, when you see the Insight you’ve been working so hard for.

You’ve done the ethnography, the groups, the depths, the co-creation sessions, the analysis sessions, the debrief, the follow-up insight generation sessions – and wherever in the process it arises, you’ve reached the holy grail of Insight.

In my own experience back in my Clientside researcher days (3+ years ago), this process has always followed the same pattern. The ‘Aha’ moment, closely followed by, ‘Well, yeah… of course. THAT was hiding in plain sight.’ It’s not obvious until you see it, and then it’s so obvious that you see it everywhere!

So, if you don’t already use a Virtual Assistant and you’d like to, but the cost gets in the way… let me take you very quickly on that journey from, ‘Aha’ to, ‘Well, of course!’

If you can generate a bit more work than you’re able to handle on your own, and if you cost out the jobs based on your own internal hourly rate (which is more than mine at £30 / hour) …

Then you can hire me to pick up elements of the job, and not only will I effectively pay for myself – but you can pocket the difference.

That’s it. Or, you can make your quotes that bit more competitive and still make the same margin, and hopefully land more work (which I can help you with. It’s a virtuous cycle!)

Of course, there are other benefits too. You get to keep your head in the high-value stuff. Pitching and proposal-writing, analysis, presentation-writing. Thinking.

And it’s usually these benefits I focus on in my messaging, because they’re far bigger than the cost savings (honestly, I only brought the cost savings up to get your attention!)

The much bigger point is this.

If doing the deep work feels hard when you’re also spinning the plates of project management, and if that makes you feel fragmented and unfocussed, or just exhausted… a Virtual Assistant or Project Manager could be a game-changer for you.

I’m a research-specialist VA and Project Manager. I’ve also worked in research for years, I speak your language, and I know how to make your life so much easier!

If you want to know more about which parts of the job I can help you with, have a look here, or email tanya.squires@tsresearchassistant.com

I had two full weeks off work over Christmas. An entire fortnight, completely switched off. I went from Christmas prep and cooking straight into lazy PJ days… got bored and took on a project to update my 10-year-old son’s room… realised that I was squandering precious holiday time in IKEA… and finally found the perfect balance (which involves pubs and walks, if you’re wondering!)

For the most part I didn’t think about work, attempt any work, plan any work, ‘just check’ anything, or try to get ahead on anything. And it was glorious!

The reason this is notable, I suppose, is there was a time I’d have slept with one eye open, a little bit of my brain still whirring away in the background thinking about work. I have been known for workaholic tendencies (I may be understating that one slightly). But I have an emerging understanding that taking proper breaks matters.

This post isn’t really an argument for taking time off at Christmas per se. If you’re newly self-employed, two solid weeks off may not be a luxury you can afford for a couple more years (three years in, it’s fairly new for me). You may not be able to get the time off. Or you may LOVE getting ahead on work on those in-between-Christmas-and-New-Year days, saving your holidays for spring.

But with my Christmas fortnight off fresh in my mind, I do want to make an argument for taking a break when you can. Whether that’s holidays, giving yourself a proper lunchbreak and stepping out into the sunshine, or switching fully OFF over the weekend.

Do I always practise what I preach? Erm…. A better question is, do you best teach the things you really need to learn yourself? Absolutely!

So, here are five reasons taking a break matters.

1. Everything functions better when you’re well-rested. Yes, this is an obvious point – but most of us need reminding of it. When you’re tired, you slow down and lose focus. Work takes longer, so you end up getting to bed later and you’re even more tired the next day. The more this continues, the more you lose perspective – and your solution is to simply work harder, but you get diminishing returns (I know all of this because I’ve been there). But if you can take the time to rest properly you’ll get through your work in less time, produce better work more easily, and feel a whole lot better. That’s a pretty powerful combination.
2. You sometimes need to step away from a problem to solve it. It’s often when you’re NOT thinking about something that your ideas and creative solutions arise. Most of my best ideas occur in the shower, or sometimes when washing up or walking – but it’s the not thinking about it that’s key. When you don’t fixate so firmly on the problem you’re trying to solve, your brain has a bit more space to try out different angles – and it feels like the solution is handed to you on a plate. I used to think this was peculiar to me, but I have seen this mentioned so many times that I am now completely convinced it’s a thing.
3. You get to reassess your priorities. Yes, you may love your work. Yes, you need to earn a living. But your life is multifaceted: A tapestry of not just your work, but also your family, friends, pets, interests, anything you create outside of work, any good you do in the world. You can be passionate about your work and still thoroughly enjoy switching off each day – but it’s so easy to become swallowed up by work to the detriment of everything else.
4. Doing things you love reminds you how good they make you feel. Whether it’s long walks or runs or yoga sessions, baking cakes, watching films with your kids, going out with friends – sometimes you end up so busy that the things you enjoy doing get squeezed out at the expense of things you have to do. There’s a good argument that you should ‘pay yourself first’ and that doesn’t just apply to money. Ideally you should schedule in the things that fill up your cup first, and fit in the rest around it. That can be really hard to do in practice, but doing these things when you have time to serves as a tangible reminder of how good they make you feel. And that’s a great motivator to pay yourself first in future.
5. You can come back to your work with renewed enthusiasm. If by the end of December you feel tired and jaded, with a bit of luck, you’ll feel inspired to get back into your work chair in January. I find January a really good time for taking stock, getting clarity on what you want out of the year ahead, planning, getting your marketing done – before you get sucked back into the daily grind.

All of these benefits apply after a long break, but equally, they can kick in after a short one. And we have the ability to build breaks into our days, take evenings off, and make full use of the weekend. In many ways, I think regular shorter breaks could be more powerful than any fortnight off could be.  It’s certainly something I want to experiment with more.

If you’re an independent researcher and you would love to have more time, so that you can build in more breaks and reap these benefits… as a research-specialist project manager and virtual assistant, I can definitely help you with that.