work life balance
Vacation and the Virtual Legal Assistant
Working from home allows me a lot of flexibility in the summer – I work in the mornings and often take the mid-late afternoon off to hit a park with the kids, go on a bike ride or just veg in the swing in the backyard. But working for myself has meant I don’t take a lot of extended time off from working. Last summer I took a week to travel to BC with my husband and kids, but I took my laptop along and spent time on the drive and every day doing some work. I didn’t mind and with a little one who still needed a bit of a nap, it was pretty manageable. This summer though we were extremely fortunate and won a trip to Orlando (thanks again YummyMummyClub!) We were only gone for five business days, but I actually decided to leave the laptop at home and truly take my first full vacation since opening Halo Secretarial up close to three years ago.
I worked extra hours before and after the vacation to make sure I was keeping on top of several projects, and I gave all my current clients plenty of notice, but I still felt bad about taking the time off. It’s definitely one of the biggest struggles in owning a small business – managing your personal needs with your desire to give 110% to your clients. Now, more than a week after returning from Florida (which was awesome by the way) I read a blog post over at Lawyerist about Vacation and realized a benefit of my vacation I hadn’t even considered. While I enjoyed the time away from my computer, I missed my work. I missed the rush of urgent projects and the conversations with colleagues. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones with a career that I truly enjoy and vacation helps me to appreciate just how much I do love what I do. Thank goodness I don’t find myself wishing to be in a car accident to avoid my work (especially since I don’t have to drive to work, lol, not much chance of a car accident on the way upstairs to my office). My work life balance is still not perfect, and some days I wish for a couple of extra hours, but overall, being a virtual legal assistant has been a dream come true – I hope all of my readers, colleagues and clients are able to say the same!
Read MoreParenting at the Law Office
I read a great article thanks to a tweet by @lisasolomon today about a law office where parents can bring their babies to work with them – not just occasionally either!! Now that’s work-life balance for sure.
I’ve heard of some pretty wonderful sounding law offices ever since I started my virtual legal assistant business and had my eyes opened to alternative ways of doing things within the legal profession, but I think this is definitely near the top of the list in my opinion. It’s a small change, and yet it is HUGE for people who want that elusive “all” that we hope is out there somewhere. I think I especially liked that the initiative applies to lawyers and staff, as long as they don’t abuse the process!
I would have been shocked had any of the traditional firms I worked in ever offered a person to bring in their infant on a regular basis. Admittedly, since I’m from Canada many people were able to take a fair bit of time off after having a child without losing their job. Still, I actually think some people would have happily returned to work more quickly given the option to bring baby along. Our maternity is usually only partially paid and some people would love to keep a full paycheque without having to put a young child into full-time childcare. Actually, most of my places of employment frowned strongly on bringing children almost anytime, despite official initiatives like “bring your child to work day” or the like.
Fortunately for me, being self-employed allows me that elusive “all” that I had hoped for once I had my children. I can get my boys off the bus and then get right back to business while they enjoy an afterschool snack. I can fit document drafting around naptimes and usually still have time for a quick park break in the late afternoons. The occasional (okay, more than occasional!) late nights are well worth feeling like I usually have time for my clients and my children.
Laurie Mapp, Owner Halo Secretarial Services Contact us for more information on virtual legal assistance!
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Time Blocking Tip
I love summer, but I have to tell you how glad I am that the school vacation part of it is almost over! Besides, fall colors are so pretty, it’s a great season to look forward to. This summer, my multi-tasking abilities were definitely put to the test and my biggest tip for getting everything done: time blocking.
That’s because while I say I “multi-task”, there are times when too many things going on at once just means you do everything poorly. So I may multi-task when I get a sandwich for the 7 year old, while starting dishes and listening to a story from the 4 year old, I don’t think multi-tasking while actually doing client work is effective.
There are multiple ways to use time-blocking in your work, whether your are a virtual assistant, a lawyer or even a student. I like the suggestions over at Croll Organizing, because it is similar to how I manage my day. Meredith of Yellow Highlighter VA has a good method as well.
I personally spend time on my email first thing in the am, then I pick a project and spend dedicated time on it. Then I take a Twitter break, then another work project, etc. Of course I also block in time for fun with the kids – today we walked to the park!
I like to use the timer on my stove for measuring time blocks, the kids then know when the buzzer sounds that it is the end of work time for that block and they can have my attention. Doesn’t help much with the toddler yet – but at least the older two get it!
Laurie Mapp, Owner Halo Secretarial Services Contact me for more information on virtual legal assistance!
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Working from Home With Kids
I readily admit that one of the driving factors behind my having started my virtual legal assistant business is to be more available to my children. And especially in this first year of business, I’m growing slowly enough not to have needed much in the way of childcare, and yet I can still meet my clients’ needs. I love how the internet can help me do this!!
As I get busier and busier though, I am faced with the types of concerns that plague work from home parents everywhere. How do I manage things like phone calls when I have a toddler underfoot? I’m lucky in that my older two kids will be in school shortly and that gives me 2 days a week where it’s only the toddler at home with me. I’ve even, finally, begun the process of finding some childcare for him, but full-time care isn’t really in my plans right now and that means there are going to be times when I must either find a way to keep him busy while on the phone with a client or during an interview, or risk looking very unprofessional.
Thankfully the same beautiful internet that offers me so many opportunities and so much information doesn’t come up short with suggestions for how to work around this problem. There’s the list of 94 ways to keep kids busy over at Sparkplugging, 15 activities from the At Home Mom Blog, 10 independent play activities from About.com and a great general advice article on working from home with kids from Jonathan Lane at Canada.com.
Of course if I could ever just find that mute button that actually works on kids, that would be the ideal solution….in my dreams anyway!
Laurie Mapp, Owner Halo Secretarial Services Contact me for more information on virtual legal assistance!
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Some Friday Fun
Working from home as a virtual legal assistant is not all work – no play! In fact, one of the best things about working for myself from home is the ability to have flexibility in my day. Today I have had quite a varied day already and it’s not even 2pm yet! I’ve done some client work, reviewed next week’s schedule on my calendar, bought buspasses for my kindergarten/grade two kiddos and had the pleasure of a phone conversation with Vicki Voisin of The Paralegal Mentor.
Next up in my day is a very rare evening out with my best friend and then a weekend of about half work and half fun.
If you want a little bit of relaxation this Friday afternoon, here are a couple of fun links for you:
Want to see a fun little graph of how the Internet sees You? Try this link (my graph is below, and semi-accurate, lol)
Some truly hilarious quotes over at The “Blog” of Unnecessary Quotes (hat tip to @RandallMoeller)
And a couple of my favorite little jokes from a recent forwarded email. I never even READ forwarded joke emails normally, but this had me laughing hysterically (ok some of the funnier ones turn out not to be blog post appropriate, sorry, but still these are good!):
Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the “people you
may know” feature on facebook people that I do know, but i deliberately
choose not to be friends with?I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it’s on
shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my itunes.It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on
CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.
Have a great weekend!!
Laurie Mapp, Owner Halo Secretarial Services Contact us for more information on virtual legal assistance!
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Vacationing Virtual Legal Assistant Returns
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.
Laurie Mapp, Owner Halo Secretarial Services Contact us for more information on virtual legal assistance!
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