I am determined to stick to my schedule today!

 Thursday

0830 – Spend time on the train reviewing my to-do list and it seems that  I have  quite a few tasks that require answers from other people. My plan is to deal with these first so that I can get the initial part of the task completed and work on other things while I’m waiting for responses. I also have a quick check over my emails and calendar for the day, I do have a few meetings today that I also need to attend.

0910 – So far so  good, I have a cup of tea and have had the time to set up my computer, open the post and even say hello to my colleagues.

0930 – As I’ve already checked my inbox and prioritised my tasks for today I make a start with my plan by sending out a few queries over email. It is fairly quiet this morning so it seems a good time to finish the slide deck for HR.

1145 – I think after the hectic last few days my colleagues may be giving me a bit of a break! I’ve  managed to finish the slide deck without any interruptions. Excellent! Spend time reading through some of the emails I’ve filed over the last week, including LinkedIn updates and other networking emails. I do think it is worth taking a little bit of time when you can to review this sort of information and keeping up to date with your peers. I also have some answers following the requests I sent out earlier this morning, some of the replies are easy for me to deal with, for example adding meetings to my directors diaries.  

1230 – Heading into a meeting knowing I’m probably going to come out with some actions.

1315 – Finish the meeting with a few action points that I will add to my to-do list, thankfully they are not urgent so I can complete them next week. I play netball on a Thursday lunchtime so have to leave the office today. This is a good thing!

1415 – While I was out at lunch the network has crashed, this is so rare in my office we are all not quite sure what to do! I spend most of my time using outlook so it is frustrating when this happens. I scan my to-do list and find that I have some data entry work I can be getting on with. It isn’t an urgent piece of work but it has been lurking around the bottom of my task list so it will be good to tick it off as complete and it will also give me something to do while the system is down.

1530 – The office is back up and running and I have quite a few external emails to deal with. The routine isn’t quite going to plan today but at least I feel like I’m getting through quite a bit of work, and I haven’t had too many interruptions today.

1555 – One of my Directors has a meeting at 4pm and seems to have gone AWOL. Both of his guests have arrived, I put them in the meeting room with refreshments so that they are slightly distracted while I track down the Director. This takes 15 minutes of me running from one floor to the next until I manage to find him. Walking back to my desk one of my directors asks me to scan some documents for him. It isn’t urgent but sometimes I just like to get these little jobs over as quickly as possible, so I scan the document and hand the papers back to him.

1630 – Another meeting to attend. During the meeting I’m asked if I can help with the administration on a large company wide project. It is a really exciting job but when opportunities crop up like this it can be a massive juggling act having to still complete the day to day executive assistant tasks.  

1700 – Check through my emails and also my directors emails to make sure I’ve not missed any work I can take off their hands.

1715 – Fridays are normally a great day for me to get lots done as it tends to be quiet in my office.  I spend some time updating the list so that the tasks are in order and I can work through them quite quickly tomorrow.

1745 – On the train home and am able to reflect on the day. Again I’ve not been able to totally stick to  the routine but having some sort of structure has been beneficial today.