Time-saving tips for pressured PAs

We’ve come across a variety of timesaving technology tips, apps and devices which we thought we’d package together into one cut-out-and-keep page

Prepare “ready responses”
Answering the phone and dealing with email enquiries can take up a lot of time, especially when you’re dealing with the same thing more than once. Create a template in Microsoft Word into which you can insert the person’s name, or build a “frequently asked questions” PDF that is relevant to your business. Et voila – you don’t have to write the same thing over again.

Name urgent computer files with numbers
Want to find a report easily? Put a number (high to low according to importance) at the front of the filename and it will always appear at the top of a list when you search for it.

Use tabbed browsing
The best advance in modern technology is definitely tabbed browsing. List your favourite and most-used websites, create tabs for them and they will be ready every time you turn on your computer – and more accessible than bookmarked pages.

Cheat sheets
If you deal with long documents, spend 30 seconds detailing what’s in them in a Word, or additional page at the top. It will save you and others having to search for things in them. This also works for paper files.

Turn off social media and email
Your computer is very skilled at keeping you occupied (or distracted) doing things that are either on the fringes of what you should be doing or nowhere near it. Turn off social media and check it every 20 minutes instead, but only if it’s part of your job – save the personal checks for your breaks and lunch. These sites don’t need to take up so much of your time, but they certainly will if you let them.