My poor neglected blog. I was away for a week and while I fully intended to try and get a post or two up while on vacation it totally didn’t happen! We got in later each day than I had expected and there just wasn’t time for much at all, let alone blogging about virtual legal assistance! Disneyland was great though and we got in a couple of trips to the beach, although the weather wasn’t so hot!

I learned a couple of lessons about attempting to work while on vacation with three small kids and two other adults. It doesn’t work so well. I definitely was able to check my email 1-2 times per day and respond to urgent messages. I also was able to complete a couple of projects and tasks for clients. I felt guilty about missing so much work time and would have liked to have made more time for my business, but also felt guilty about holding up the rest of my group when I was trying to get things done. So first lesson is that vacations of one week should probably include as little work as possible!

I also learned I should communicate a little better with my clients. I let them all know I’d be away, but didn’t send out last-day reminders which I think would be an improvement they would appreciate. Not that I’m planning another vacation for this summer (other than a long weekend to BlogHer in July!), still it’s important to plan a little better.

I’m very happy to be home though and once I’m caught up on a couple of things I might even have more time to blog and twitter again! In the meantime, here are a couple more vacation pics that I thought I’d share.

Mostly this is just a note to let you know that I’ll be taking a quick vacation at the end of this month, just for a week! It should be a wonderful time, we’re travelling as a family to California! It’s the first time on a plane for two of my boys, and the first plane trip my oldest will remember. He went to Mexico when he was 13 mos old, but of course doesn’t recall anything!

This will also be a first for me - the first time I test working while being so far from my home base. I think it should go well, I’ll have internet access at the hotel and plan to be in early most nights so the kids can keep to their general sleep routine. This should give me a couple of solid hours of worktime at night, and I can definitely squeeze in a bit of time in the morning to check on email etc. I don’t really spend more billable time than that yet, so mostly I’m reducing (or oh my goodness eliminating) my networking/socializing/blogging time. Yes, that’s right, I’ll barely be seen on Twitter those days! Normally I could easily twitter from my phone, but unfortunately Canadian cell phone rate plans don’t carry over to the US, so while I will of course have my phone with me I won’t be using it for fun activities like Twitter!

While considering my options for work/vacation, I was reading blog posts and saw this one about answering emails on vacation over at BlogHer. I actually am happy to keep up with my work while on my vacation, I would definitely find it a little stressful to think about being completely unconnected while away! The ability to work anywhere was something I was excited about when first starting my virtual legal assistant business up after all!

I also read this post about going on vacation in a wired world. It has some great tips and I’m trying to follow many of them! For example, I’ve already let my clients know that I’ll be away, shared what I could handle and suggested that I won’t be able to do “extra” work that week above what has been agreed. I wanted to give them plenty of warning so that I could do any work needed ahead of time.

I’ll be taking a couple of other mini-vacations this summer, but only for 3 to 4 days at a time, hopefully this longer first time goes well and doesn’t leave me anxious about the other short trips!

Do you think the recession is good or bad for work life balance? Obviously some think that the recession will make some lawyers work harder in hopes of avoiding being laid off.  Wow, what a set back that could be for finding true work life balance!

My take is that the recession can be great for giving you some extra time in your day, if that’s what you want. If you know your employer needs to cut costs it might be better to offer to work part-time and lose some of your pay, rather than end up completely unemployed if your employer starts laying people off. Already some companies are speaking with their employees about taking pay-cuts to avoid layoffs (Fed-Ex did it), so why not go that one step further and say here is a way to save money, and we’ll work as hard as we can while we are here, but we want more time off as a benefit of the pay cuts. Maybe you want shorter days, a shorter work week, or even just one extra day off per month. Time is a gift and may be worth the financial cost.

Yes, I definitely think this is a great time for firms to truly embrace part-time and flexible schedules. I left my paralegal position because I wanted and needed more flexibility in my life. For me being an entrepreneur was the right answer, but I had many colleagues who would have given up money for a part-time position. Unfortunately, in every law practice I’ve worked at it was very difficult to work part-time or flex-time. Many claimed to have flexible work arrangements available, but they weren’t easy to access and sometimes meant as little as working 30 minutes less every day so you could go home “earlier”. Let’s hope that one benefit of a recession is a little more appreciation for the people who want it all - careers and time to enjoy their life!

Oh and if you are concerned about work life balance maybe you should check out this conference in Chicago - the Get a Life Conference for attorneys - looks pretty cool!

Becoming a virtual paralegal is the best thing I have ever done, career-wise anyway! So I was very excited when I was interviewed for an article in Legal Assistant Today about the rising trend to being a freelance or virtual paralegal and I just wanted to share, hopefully there will be a link available at Legal Assistant Today at some point in the future, but for now you can read the text of the article by Tammy R. Pettinato here!

Of course, since the article came out I’ve already had a couple of contacts from people who want to become a virtual legal assistant or virtual paralegal. I know there are a ton of people out there, just like I once was, who love what they do but want more flexibility in their scheduling, or who want to get away from the cubicle world and work with their trusty laptops in a coffee-shop, a tropical paradise or (like me!) just want to work in their comfy home offices. While I don’t mind answering the occasional email about becoming a virtual legal assistant, I generally just refer people to the places I got all of my starting info. Check out the VAnetworking Forum or the Virtual Assistant Forums. Both of these places have tons of really helpful information and both are free, so they make the best starting points.

Take care!

I’ve never tried to embed a video on my blog before (I need to do this more often!!) but I was so inspired when I saw this video called The Lost Generation over on Susan Cartier Liebel’s great blog Build A Solo Practice, LLC.  Thank goodness she posted the link on Twitter - I haven’t gotten to my reader in a few days so I don’t know when I would have seen this! You really have to watch this video - the WHOLE thing!! It’s under two minutes and well worth your time!

So what generation are you all from anyway? Does it affect your behaviour, your morals, your desires? Personally I’m at the tail end of Gen X, born in 1975.  I don’t really know how this has affected my life specifically - I tend to think simply of how my family, my upbringing and specific cultural factors have influenced my life and work ethic. I know I’m much like other women of my age - I want a family and a career, I want an equal partnership with my husband and I happily embrace new technology as quickly as I can. Ok, that one seems common here in my blogging and Twittering world but I’m ahead of the curve technologically speaking in my immediate circle of family and friends. Half of them don’t even know what a blog is - shocking as that is to me!!!

I know that all these factors, combined with things like the cost of childcare here in Canada have lead to me choosing the entrepreneurial path. Owning a virtual assistant company and offering my legal assistance services on basically a “freelance” basis allows me to achieve (most days) that elusive balance so many women of my era are seeking. So according to this definition of Generation X, I guess am pretty typical of my generation!

I know, it’s not Christmas for a few days yet. But I’m not really planning on blogging much, or even - gasp - Tweeting that much, over the next few days. I am doing work for my clients and some research for a project, but otherwise this week is about family. I’ll be enjoying my children, getting together with friends, and doing even more baking in preparation for dinner on the big day (next on the agenda is homemade pie!!)

In fact today, I actually kept my laptop off for several hours (I hate to have it off during the day, lol) and put together a gingerbread house and gingerbread Santa sleigh with my older boys. It was a wonderful afternoon and I hope you all are able to enjoy your family and friends as 2008 draws to a close.

So Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy Holidays!

p.s. I will have posts up next week - be sure to check in!!

Do you know what you can’t outsource? RELAXATION!!!

This weekend I took the weekend off - off of work, off of parenting, off of housework and it was GREAT!! I went to the mountains with a girlfriend and we relaxed, ate yummy food and went to the spa! I don’t think I even realized how much I need the time to wind down and just have some fun.

The picture above is of a gorgeous mountain in Banff, Alberta.  I am so lucky to live close enough to take a weekend trip to Banff! It was windy and cool, but that didn’t slow us down!

So how about you, do you take the time you need to relax occasionally? Or do you constantly work, and parent and manage and prioritize just trying to get everything done that needs doing? We all have so many things going on in our lives, but even one day of complete relaxation can give you a renewed energy level and sense of focus.  I suspect this week I will be able to get more done and enjoy it more, all because I took a break when I needed one.

And remember, if you need help running your business so you can take a break - a virtual assistant can be your partner in success!

This week’s time tip is very simple, but truly powerful.  It involves two parts:

1. Every Sunday morning spend 15 minutes reviewing your calendar for the next 2 weeks.  Make sure you have no conflicts and that you know how much free time you have.
2. Now that you’ve reviewed your schedule make sure you add something to it - time for yourself!  Even if it’s just one 15 minute block during each day, it’s very important to get that little break each day.

Hope you have a great week everyone!

I’ve decided to add a new feature to my blog!

Every Tuesday I will publish a tip on time-saving. It might be about a new technology, maybe just a reminder of effective ways to utilize time, maybe I will suggest a way to multi-task.  If you have suggestions of great time-saving tips I’d love to hear them, the best way to get them to me is to dm me on Twitter @halosecretarial but you can always comment or email if you prefer.

This week’s Tuesday Time Tip is:

Keep track of your time for 2 days and see exactly where you are spending it.  Did you lose an hour to email, or get sidetracked by a colleague?  Do you spend a lot of time in meetings or on phone calls?  After you monitor your time for 2 days you need to sit down and make 3 lists.

1. Things you have to do
2. Things you can delegate
3. Things that you can eliminate

Now all you have to do is follow through (that’s the hard part - sorry!!)  And if you’re looking for someone to delegate to, remember the friendly VA who blogged this tip!!

Not that it matters much to me - the life of this work at home mama actuallys means I can work more on the weekends, when DH is home to help out!  I actually enjoy that though, I find it to work well around my family’s schedule. For some people, weekends are much more private and laid-back and they don’t want their work to interfere with weekend activities.

We do like to make Friday evenings a nice family time though, we let loose and stay up a little later than we do during the week.  This Friday we are even going to take the kids to a waterpark for the late afternoon and early evening since my husband has the day off of work after working away for the past week. The kids sure missed him and we’ll all enjoy having some quality time together tonight!

So I’m curious, how do you all spend your weekends?  Do you mix work and pleasure, work a ton, or keep your work confined solely to the traditional work week?  Is it a time to get together with family and friends or are you busy chauffering your kids to activities like soccer or gymnastics?  Do you unwind with some wine on Friday night or head out on the town?!!  Questions, questions!!!

Next week I’m going to start a theme/link post on Fridays.  The theme for the first week will be organization (all about getting organized so you CAN keep your weekends free if you want to) so stay tuned and have a wonderful weekend whatever you are doing!