As an Executive Assistant, how do you start taking proactive action in your daily work? Once you’re used to being reactionary, changing your perspective and looking towards the future can be difficult. To help you change your habits and take charge, Base is here to help!

We all know that the most effective EAs are proactive, not reactive—but with so many incoming tasks, emails, and obstacles, it’s difficult to get past the fire-fighting stage. As an EA, putting out fires is part of the job, but it’s important to learn efficient ways to handle these scenarios while leaving space for proactivity.

Pre-work is imperative when planning and executing successful meetings. As an Executive Assistant, it’s your job to ensure that meeting attendees are thinking ahead about the topics that will be discussed, formulating ideas and solutions, and familiarizing themselves with the other participants. Successful pre-work will ensure participants feel invested in the meeting, engaged in the topics at hand, and connected to the other attendees.

As an executive assistant, it’s important to make working from a mobile device as easy as possible for the executive you support. One way to simplify scheduled phone calls is to use “click-to-call” numbers in Google Calendar holds.

It’s likely that you spend most of your day sitting at a desk, staring at a computer screen. Regardless of your desk set-up, eye strain and stress can leave you feeling exhausted and overworked. The real key to decompressing after an 8+ hour workday is finding what works best for you while sticking to three simple rules – saying no to screens, stimulating your senses, and finding activities you enjoy.

AtYourGate is an in-airport delivery service—think Uber Eats for the airport. Download the app and order your executive’s favorite airport meal to be delivered to their gate as they are boarding.

Managing travel for another person can be challenging. We all have our own preferences for how things are booked, how we are informed, and how involved we want to be in the decision making process. As no executive is the same, finding out how yours prefers to approach travel will be important when planning her trips.

Gmail and Outlook users can take collaboration one step further by integrating their email with Slack.

Distractions bombard the average person in the workplace every day. At times, the very tools that we use to help us connect with our teams can become a distraction. While it is not possible to eliminate all distractions, there are steps that can be taken to deal with them and reclaim your day.

As an executive assistant, part of your job is to work out the details so that your executive can focus on the bigger picture. An essential part of this is meeting preparation, including creating effective meeting agendas.

Enable the “Send & Archive” button in Gmail to save yourself extra clicks and the time it takes to re-read emails you have already handled.

How can EAs help make meetings be a better use of everyone’s time? Here are 5 tips to help set up your team for great meetings.