From the Desk of Janet Barclay

Some time ago, I wrote about how On-the-Job Weight Gain can be a problem for those of us who work from home and forget to or have trouble getting away from our desks on a regular basis. In an attempt to curtail the problem, I’ve recently begun walking in the morning. Although I love working alone, I prefer to engage in outside activities with a partner, so I arranged to walk with a colleague who lives not far from me who already has a walking routine. I drive to her place for about 6:00 AM and we walk approximately 4 kilometres. This allows me to get home, showered, and fed, in time to start working before 8:00. I’m used to starting work earlier than that, as soon as I roll out of bed, but what I’ve found is that I’m actually MORE productive on the days that I’ve been out walking. I’m not sure if it’s a result of the activity or because I feel I need to work harder to make up the time, but it works - and that’s what really matters.

So if you think, like I did, that you "don’t have time for exercise" - try this! You might be in for a pleasant surprise!

If you’ve been following Sharon Williams’ Podcasting and Blog Hopping VA Tour, don’t forget that she’ll be making her last stop tomorrow! Don’t miss any of the clues for your chance to win one of the prizes!

Tomorrow is also the last day to register for the 2nd Annual Online International Virtual Assistants Convention which will run from Thursday, May 17th to Saturday, May 19th. If you can’t afford the time or the money to attend the whole convention, you’ll be happy to know that you can register for one, three, or five seminars of your choice, and that there is no cost to participate in the online networking sessions, or to attend the exhibitor booths.

I’ve signed up for five seminars, and as a member of the Alliance for Virtual Business, I will also receive recordings of two others. I’ve chosen the following:

• How to Respond to RFPs, presented by Janice Byer, owner of Docu-Type Administrative and Web Design Services and co-founder and Executive Director of the Canadian Virtual Assistant Connection (CVAC)
• Subcontracting Made Simple, presented by Cheryl Callighan, founder and director of the University of Virtual Assistants and owner of EOffice-Virtual Assistants
• Grow Your Business, Not Your Waistline, presented by Gillian Hood-Gabrielson, the owner of Healthier Outcomes
• Imagination, Inventiveness and the New Fangled Idea, presented by Becki Noles, Visionary of VATraining.com and Virtual Accuracy
• How to Explode the Size of Your VA Business without Breaking a Sweat, presented by international speaker and author Michael Russer
• How You Can Provide Podcasting Services for Your Clients, presented by Penny Haynes of 1stPodcastPublishing.com
• Writing Winning Sales Copy, presented by Laurie Dart, owner of Writing Wisely

The event is not only for Virtual Assistants but for all small business owners worldwide, so be sure to check it out!

I’ve been challenged by Marcia Francois, a regular contributor to OrganizedArticles.com, to show you my daily planner. I’m afraid my planner isn’t as appealing as Marcia’s, as for the last three years or so I’ve been using my Outlook calendar synchronized with my HP iPAQ H1940 Pocket PC. I now find I need to be able to see my upcoming schedule in a way that isn’t easily displayed electronically, so I’ve recently supplemented that with a two-month wipe-off calendar as shown here. I use different colours to denote paid work (red for outside appointments, blue for virtual projects), black for other outside appointments such as networking events, and green for other work performed from my home office, including teleclasses. I can see where more colours could be useful but I don’t want it to get too complicated!

Before I went "electronic" I was a big fan of Day-Timer products, and I have to admit that I’m a little jealous when I see someone with a really nice planner. Although I appreciate the benefits of having access to my calendar going back or forward several years and being able to search on keywords, it’s just not as pleasing as writing with pen and paper.

Now I’m going to tag Alex Fayle and Cristina Favreau (since they were such good sports the last time) as well as Kathie Thomas. Of course, anyone is welcome to play along! If you do, please leave a comment so we can check out your blog and see your planner!

Today marks the end of the 6th annual National Organizing Week, and the 4th time I have been involved. This year, Professional Organizers in Canada (POC) partnered with Habitat for Humanity to provide free-of-charge organizing services to their ReStores at locations across Canada.

I had the pleasure of working at the Hamilton location with Ella May Russell of Time & Spaces and several Habitat for Humanity volunteers. Now that most of my work is virtual, it was great to have a chance to get out and work with someone else for a few hours. I was only able to participate for the morning, but my place was taken over in the afternoon by Elaine Jermy of Organized Evolution. Elaine and I have worked together on previous NOWeek events. Other POC members volunteered their time  at various locations across the country.

It’s amazing to see how much work can be accomplished when we work together! This is how the plumbing section looked before we started:

This is how it looked only three hours later:

Special thanks to Wendy Hollick, Chair of the Halton-Peel Chapter, for all her time and effort coordinating this event in our area, where 15 volunteers donated 90 hours of their time.

Like many bloggers and other small business owners, I’ve set up Google Alerts to let me know when my personal name or business name is mentioned. I’m always pleased to learn that someone has posted one of my articles or referred to one of my blog entries, but this week I had a really nice surprise. Mrs. Miles of British Columbia came across my Personal Document Retention Guidelines in the March issue of House and Home Magazine, and posted them in her blog, The Life of Mrs. Miles. If you missed the magazine article, be sure to check it out!