Top 3 Things to Do to Stay Healthy While Working on Your Desk

Staying healthy can be difficult in the best circumstances and it can be especially challenging if you work on a desk job for six or more hours a day.

Studies have reported that sitting too much is the new smoking – hence, increasing the probability of diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

In today’s fast paced- technology driven culture, the internet has become more and more part of the daily routine, it becomes quite easy to forget time and not knowing that the hours have passed. So, whether you are an outdoor person or a couch potato, it is highly probable that a sedentary desk job will bind you to your chair for the majority of the eight hours of the day.

Thankfully, there are only 3 major things you need to do to stay healthy and still keep working on your desk.

Set a Schedule to Get Up and Move

The most important thing to do is to remember to take a good 5-10 minute break every hour. It can be 5 minutes every 30 minutes or 10 minutes every hour. This isn’t about working out – but it’s about creating increments of moderate activity throughout the day.

You can set up an alarm to remind you every 30 minutes to stand up and you can spread your activity to walking around the office, using the restroom, doing stretches, mini exercises for your eyes and neck, or wrist exercises if you do a lot of keyboard typing. Taking short breaks maintain focus and help you from feeling mentally and physically drained after work.

Eating Your Meals on Time

Your schedule can very much be hectic, so make sure that you have allocated lunch time on your calendar and block it off. It is not new that schedule dictates unhealthy eating habits – so make sure to schedule those meals and maintain a healthy diet. Lunch breaks can help boost concentration and energy levels.

Maintain Proper Posture

The right posture is probably the most important way in staying healthy with a desk job. Good posture is important to overall health in general and a poor posture is something that every office-based employee should consider throughout their day.

Working with a computer especially puts a strain on your neck and spine as you get drawn to the screen. Make sure to always keep your back straight and feet on the ground, and keep spine and neck lined up. Practice chin retractions, or making a double chin – it is the best exercise for your upper back and neck.

The moral here is to make sure you get up every hour, eat your meals on time and maintain proper posture. Unless you are overweight – you do not need to exercise 30 minutes a day to counter the negative effects of sitting. But it is still beneficial if you incorporate a 30 minute workout 3 or 4 times a week to maintain a healthy lifestyle and counteract the negative effects of prolong sitting.

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A Virtual Assistant Tip: Tools You Need to Know

If you have made the decision to pursue a career as a remote executive assistant, you may feel that your skill set is not enough to carry out daily tasks that will be set by your client / boss.

As a remote executive assistant, it is very important to keep yourself updated with the various tools available online to help up skill you and to keep you effective and productive.

There are many blogs out there that talks about different tools – and frankly there are hundreds of tools out there, that it’s important to understand what the ‘BEST’ tools are for you to be the most effective virtual assistant.

So, where do you start?

Firstly, you have to keep in mind what your role may entail and your daily tasks. Understanding your role and your job will help narrow down the list of tools.

Also, understanding your clients objectives would also be the best way to select which tools to learn. Besides – the single most important goal of every remote executive assistant is to help their boss achieve his/her strategic objectives.

To help you get started, here are some of top tools recommended by virtual assistants across the web. Each tool serves a different purpose, from communication to online marketing tools.

Enjoy 🙂

Communication Tools.

These are essential tools for communicating online.

Project Management Tools.

These are productivity systems that ensure everything is on track. It helps organisations to manage projects from start to finish, and allow employees at different levels to quickly understand and complete their work on time.

File Sharing Tools.

These are essential tools used mainly to share files and documents with teammates or clients.

Photo and Video Editing Tools.

Use to edit and create beautiful photos.

Productivity Tools.

Tools that can help you work effectively and manage your task and time wisely.

Training Tools.

These are interactive tools to help prepare and equip employees to better do their jobs.

Online Marketing Tools.

These are automated tools for online marketing campaign management.

In order to ensure an efficient day-to-day operation at the office, and to support the work of your clients and other team members, choosing from these list of tools will immensely improve the performance of your daily tasks.

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How To Offer That Little Bit Extra To Become An Extra-ordinary Virtual Assistant

The role of a virtual assistant is rapidly evolving as the Internet helps individuals connect easily on a global scale.

This evolution translates to more rapidly changing business practices moving away from ‘how’ they did business 10 or so more years ago, and as a result is creating new opportunities for remote executive assistants.

As many entrepreneurs and business owners work with virtual assistants to grow their businesses, VAs work as an active behind-the-scenes partner to the CEO and Senior Level Management, contributing on the administrative side, Day-to-Day Business Operations, right through to other critical support roles.

A few of the emerging Roles for Virtual Assistants include:

1. General Virtual assistant (performing a range of general support duties)

2. Audio / Video Editor

3. Content Writer

4. SEO / Web Marketer

5. Graphic / Web Designer

6. Web Developer

7. Social Media Manager

It’s important to acknowledge and appreciate that each of these tasks are different and separate unique roles designed to be performed by different people. Irrespective of the role or tasks within that role, every task should be approached with a consistent and extraordinary mindset if you are going to stand out from the crowd.

How Does One Pursue work excellence as a Virtual Assistant?

We often have a sense of bettering ourselves to become excellent at something, maybe even impress others with what we do or simply try to see how good we are at a given task. But, what does it really mean to be excellent?

Love What You Do

Loving your work and loving your role is one of the primary basis of being able to deliver excellent work 99% of the time. When you understand your role and you know that what you do matters to the success of the business, you will see that no task is ordinary.

Continue To Grow As A Person

As we contribute to the growth of the company, we also grow as a person and as a professional, which makes this job even more interesting and enjoyable. The world we are involved in is constantly changing – the internet is always updating, new things are always emerging and businesses are busy keeping up with these changes. These ordinary tasks become extraordinary as we continue to up-skill ourselves by learning new ways to become better and more efficient at these roles.

Be Technologically Savvy

Keeping up with the latest trends in technology is a critical factor for VAs as the internet is where you’ll spend most of your time.

Be a better VA and work to deliver an excellent outcome by learning and becoming more technologically savvy. This means you must continue to advance your Internet skills, which include file sharing and synchronization (Google docs and Dropbox), updating applications, using online calendars, email auto-responders and other internet services.

Understand Social Media and Other Media

Be social media savvy by using social media monitoring and benchmarking software. Understand how to use and get the most out of that software – For example using tools like Google Alerts to monitor new content ideas or keeping an eye out for trending ideas within a specific industry.

Be multi–media savvy by having basic photo, video and audio editing skills.

Most Importantly, Be Productivity Savvy

Be office productivity savvy which means become a master of Office tools used for word processing, spreadsheets and creating presentations.

Striving for excellence is an important part of professionalism in any job. Put quality into everything you do no matter how ordinary you think they are, and continue to up-skill yourself. This attitude will separate the achievers, who make rapid strides in their career from others.

 

 

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