Online Virtual Assistant

As a Virtual Assistant, my job is to save you time but what else would help you save a few minutes? At OnlineVA we found this article and thought you may find it useful:

“If you learn all of these, you could save yourself 60 minutes a day.”

ALT+F4? ALT+F+X? CTRL+W? CTRL+F4? What are we talking about here? Maybe it will make more sense if I said: Close Program, Exit Program, Close Window, Close File. These are all different ways to get your computer to do similar things using only your keyboard, not your mouse.

I don’t know if you remember computers back in the 80′s when computers were not as friendly as they are today. Back then if you wanted to do something, like make a word bold, you had to know the proper keystrokes because the mouse wasn’t in vogue yet (unless you were a Mac user). To make a word bold, you had to use the control key (CTRL on your keyboard) and hit the letter “B” at the same time (hence, CTRL+B).

Well guess what?!? Those keystrokes still work (most of them that is). I’m not saying you should ditch your mouse but if you want to speed up the way in which you use programs like Word, Excel, Powerpoint or virtually any Windows-based program, you should learn a few shortcut keys.

Get comfortable with the most important key: the ALT key. The ALT key is typically reserved for application level functions – like closing an entire program, switching between applications, etc. The best use of the ALT key is to hit it once and look to the menu bar of your application. Notice that the first menu item (e.g. File) is highlighted.

Now navigate the menu with your arrow keys you may see that each menu item has one letter underlined. If you type that letter on your keyboard you can activate that specific menu and see its contents. For example, hit “H” for the Help menu. Once again you should notice that each menu item has an underlined letter that you can hit to perform the action. For example, hit the letter “A” to see the “About” window for the program. You can hit the ALT key and then type any letter to quickly navigate around your program. HINT: Don’t hold down the ALT key to navigate around menus.

Now that you know the basic concepts of the ALT key and underlined letters, you’ll start to notice that most actions in a program can be performed with the keyboard, which is much faster than a mouse. But wait, there’s more. Here are the shortcut keys I use most:

ALT+TAB – switch between programs
ALT+F4 – close the current program and all related windows

CTRL+TAB – switch between windows within the active program
CTRL+F4 – close only the active window

CTRL+C – copy the selected item (this works on files, text, images, anything!)
CTRL+X – cut the selected item
CTRL+V – paste the copied or cut item

CTRL+S – save your active document (do this often!)
CTRL+Z – undo your last action
CTRL+Y – repeat your last action or redo your last undo
F4 – repeat your last action (this is the best tool in Excel when applying formats)

CTRL+ Arrow Keys – move from section to section, especially helpful in Excel
CTRL+SHIFT+ Arrow Keys – select a section, also helpful in Excel

There are lots of other shortcut keys you can learn on your own or by doing a quick search on the web. If you learn just the first one, ALT+TAB, you’ll save yourself time and effort. If you learn all of these, you could save yourself 60 minutes a day.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rich_Walker

So, you need to free up some time? Well obviously the best way of doing that is to hire a Virtual Assistant. That’s what we’re here for, to do all those jobs you never get time to do yourself. In the meantime, I have found this great article on ‘the 2-minute rule’, this is a handy little tip to save you a bit of time and help stop your to-do list growing.

Want one of the best kept secrets in the time management world? It’s called the 2 minute rule.

What we tend to do is pile things that we need to do “later”. So you might get a reminder postcard in the mail from your dentist telling you to make an appointment. So, we “pile” the paper to do later.

What starts as one paper quickly turns into a large pile of things to do either on your desk or in your inbox.

Instead start doing the 2 minute rule. The 2 minute rule states that if you get an action item that can be completed in under 2 minutes, then you will do it RIGHT AWAY instead of putting it in your inbox or on your desk or adding it to your pile of stuff to do.

What to do if you already have a pile? Dedicate some time to going through the pile. As you do, then you will stop and DO every action item that you come to that takes less than 2 minutes to complete. Any action item that takes longer than 2 minutes should be put into your tickler file, and anything that needs to be filed goes into your filing cabinet.

Then, when you have worked through your piles and backlog, commit to doing the 2 minute rule all the time, and you can prevent those piles from ever happening.

Of course, an added benefit is that using this technique will save you HUNDREDS of hours of wasted time. It is truly amazing how much time you can save by doing the under 2 minute activities right away and not waiting for “later”.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Laura_Aridgides