5 Helpful Steps on How to Manage Your Calendar With A Virtual Assistant
Imagine being the boss of your own time, deciding what goes where on your calendar to make sure you get things done without feeling overwhelmed. That’s what calendar management is all about and where a virtual assistant comes in to help you. Your virtual assistant will be the gatekeeper of your schedules, making sure everything fits smoothly and helps you reach your goal.
So, how does it work? Well, your virtual assistant will take care of all the different tasks and appointments that you shouldn’t be doing in the first place, allowing you to focus on what you do best. Your virtual assistant will figure out the best way to fit them together without any pieces getting lost or forgotten.
By delegating your calendar to your virtual assistant, they will then help you stay on track, save time, and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. And for you as an entrepreneur, that’s like having a secret weapon for success.
Here are the 5 steps on how to manage your calendar with a virtual assistant:
1. Give Clarity & Context
You can’t just have your virtual assistant manage your calendar without them knowing your priorities and what needs to get done. So, for this, make sure that your virtual assistant knows your routine and your priorities for them to manage your schedules well, such as ensuring that your meetings are blocked off, analyzing if those meetings are something you really need to attend, or making sure that your tasks or deadlines are accounted for by blocking off time to focus.
If you also have existing process of managing your calendar, make sure to walk then through that process so your virtual assistant will be aware and knows what to adjust.
For example for meetings, I have different types of meetings I set for myself.
Mountain Meeting: These are meetings that cannot be moved and meetings that are usually with other business owners or founders. It could be financial meetings that I’m supposed to be having at a particular date and time with other people, and it cannot be moved. That’s why it’s called the Mountain meeting. So, try to start identifying what these Mountain meetings are and let your virtual knows about it.
Boulder Meeting: These meetings are a little harder to move, which means they must be kept there as much as possible, but they can be moved if necessary. These could be meetings where it’s one-on-one with someone, or it’s a recurring meeting for them. So, as for your virtual assistant, when other people try to book a call with you, your virtual assistant will be able to analyze and move things around, especially when the person who wants to schedule a call with you is a prospective client with no other availability scheduled at the moment.
Rocks Meetings: These are meetings that are easier to move. These are the more flexible meetings. These could be one-on-ones with possible connections, or they could just be with friends. These are easier-to-move-around kinds of meetings, but they’re there, they’re solid. As for your virtual assistant, there’s something that’s probably supposed to be happening with those kinds of meetings that can’t just be canceled immediately, but your virtual assistant is also aware that sometimes it has to happen.
Pebbles Meetings: These meetings are usually light. They’re usually pretty easy to move. You can think of a pebble meeting as something that’s there and nice to have. As a virtual assistant, when you see these types of meetings, you can easily determine and manage your schedule effectively.
You can also have your virtual assistant start identifying the types of meetings you have and create a list of all the recurring or usual meetings. Then, ask them to rank which ones are the Mountains, the Boulders, the Rocks, and the Pebbles.
2. Flexibility
There are a lot of things in life that will throw everything your way. There will be things in life that will pop up where you will have to move things in their calendar. For example, if I get speaking gigs, my assistant knows to move things around those dates to make sure that I can get to that speaking gig, whether it’s canceling invites or emailing people to ask them for another availability because I’m no longer available during that time. Make sure to let your virtual assistant be aware of situations that require immediate changes so that your virtual assistant will have proper expectations on what to do next.
3. Creating Calendar Templates
If you have existing calendar templates in your systems, make sure to share them with your virtual assistant so they can use them moving forward as they start to manage your calendar. Your virtual assistant can also update the templates as needed, especially if there are changes to the process, and create more templates as they go through your calendar day by day. For this, make sure to also inform your virtual assistant where to store them if you have an existing database for documentation. If not, you can let them research as well.
4. Proper Communication Channel
If you’re working with a virtual assistant, you need to make sure you have a communication channel in place. This is for whenever you ask your virtual assistant to schedule or reschedule meetings or appointments. This usually happens when something urgent comes up, or your previous meetings took so long that you have another meeting next that needs to be moved. This way, you have an easy and direct communication method to converse with your assistant back and forth and take care of things as needed. This tool can be WhatsApp, Slack, Google Chat, or any other tools suitable for you and your assistant.
5. Auditing Your Calendar Weekly
This means that you and your virtual assistant should sync call at least once at the beginning of the week; ideally, this would be every Monday. This is for you to be able to check if there’s anything you want to change or inform your virtual assistant about which meetings should be added, or if you’re traveling in the next weeks, so your virtual assistant can block the schedule ahead and adjust your priorities accordingly. This way, the communication is clearer, and your virtual assistant has a space where they can ask questions immediately, compared to the regular back and forth through chat.
If you want to learn more about hiring a virtual assistant and what other tasks can they do for you, feel free to visit my YouTube Channel at youtube.com/@leanlailacaba.
If you’re thinking of hiring a virtual assistant, you may start by filling out our readiness assessment at 2xyou.com/scorecard.
