If you’re here, I’m guessing you feel like you have too much to do right now (or at least sometimes). It’s the overwhelming feeling that you’ve got sooooo many to-do’s, yet not enough to-do’ing energy (or time) to get through them all. This might be more evident if you run your own business where you might be stuck doing tasks that clearly you aren’t great at.
Yet, what would it look like if instead of trying to do the tasks you aren’t great at faster (like they taught you at school) and by shifting into accepting them you could get more done?
What if you were able to multiply your time by focusing your productivity on just what you’re a genius at?
Modern-day productivity isn’t just about getting more done (although it can be), but it’s about creating more time to allow you to do what you love and more of what matters to you. Yet, for so many of us we find ourselves trapped into doing tasks and activities leave you drained of energy so much so that you cannot even do what you love!
I fell into this trap when I was first doing my podcast show. I’d line up the amazing guests, have them spill their secrets on the recording (which I loved doing the most). Only to find that I had to go through cleaning the audio file, adding the intro and outro, writing the show notes, creating the album art cover, uploading to iTunes, sharing the show on social media and email.
Now you can imagine how I would not be so excited to get another few more episodes done after understanding the post-production behind it. It wasn’t until I got fed up with spending countless hours doing the post-production did I come across this idea of the ‘genius zone’.
Your Genius Zone
The ‘Genius Zone’ comes from the book by Gary Keller called ‘The One Thing’, which talks about focusing on the one thing you’re great at (or a genius at). It doesn’t mean no one else is better than you at that one thing, but more that your one thing is better than a majority of the population.
Take the podcast example, I figured I could get someone else to run the entire show for me. Yet I found that my favourite part of the whole process was doing the interviews with influencers. Soon I kept getting told by my guests that I was a really great interviewer (not my words, theirs!).
So I figured what would it look like if I just focused on what I might be a ‘genius’ at (interviewing) rather than working on improving my weaknesses (what we’re taught at school to do). What if I just went in on creating a team who loved doing the other parts that I didn’t?
This was how I got into the whole Virtual Assistant (VA) world by realising how I could multiply my productivity, have more time for what I love to do and having someone else do the parts I’m not so great at.
How Do I Find My Genius Zone?
Like all great things in life to find your genius zone takes time, patience and curiosity. I like to think of the path to the genius zone as one of ever more refinement and ‘definement’ as shown below. Your journey is of always refining your skills to a certain level and defining where that max potential lies.
It is the journey to start from the outside and digging in deeper to discovering what you’re really great, excellent or a genius at…
Your genius zone is typically the few skills people would come up to you to ask for your help in (another clear indicator is usually when people are willing to pay for your skill) repeatedly.
Once you understand where your flow, your energy and your genius zone begins, everything you do in it is easy. The trick is to find out all those activities outside of it and creating the right processes and hiring the right people to get it done for you to be more productive, so you can ultimately enjoy your life to the fullest.
This is the key to multiplying your time. It’s all about figuring out what are the few tasks you’re the ‘genius’ at (compared to the majority) and accepting that you’re not so good at the others. So if you’re a creative genius then it may be that you just struggle to manage project timelines. Or if you’re a coding wizard you might not have the salesmanship skills to close more projects. The beautiful part about today’s world is that it’s now easier than ever before to find and connect with people who are fantastic at the tasks you struggle in…
Making Up For Your Non-Genius Activities
Now before you jump into spending all this time and resources on finding the right systems, processes and people, especially a VA. You need to ask yourself if you’re are even ready for another person to come into your team/life.
See VA’s bring many amazing options in terms of how to get more done and have more time for yourself at such a low cost compared to hiring someone locally in the USA, UK, Canada or even Australia. The potential is endless, yet it can only be effective if you, yourself, are well prepared and structured enough to provide the guidance they need to be successful.
It begins with a series of questions to ask yourself starting with:
- How would hiring a VA add more to my life/business?
- What would my VA be doing for me?
- What would I be spending my (new found) time on that they’d be saving me?
- Do I have the funds to hire a VA?
- How willing am I to let go of control?
These are some of the most important questions you need to consider when it comes to making a decision that involves another human in your life. There’s no point bringing in someone to simplify your life if you don’t know how they’ll do it. Ultimately, a VA will not be the one to tell you how they can make your life easier (unless you’re willing to pay more for highly trained VA’s or an outsourcing provider).
There are primarily three types of VA’s:
- Task – Where you need them to handle a particular task itself (could be audio processing, video editing or email handling)
- Project – Group of tasks that are linked together to accomplish a goal (e.g. designing an ebook, redesigning a website or social media branding)
- Role – Collective tasks that need to be consistently completed day-to-day (e.g general administration, customer support or social media scheduling)
Once you understand the type of VA you need the next step is to clarify the tasks the VA would be taking over for you. Are they going to be one-off tasks, projects with a specific deadline or tasks that need to be performed on a regular-basis?
It’d be too much for me to go into on this post, but I’ll share it on next week’s post on how to go about looking to hire the right VA for your business.