Become More Effective at Accounting
In Accounting and Bookkeeping, we constantly check and double-check our figures to make sure that our books balance. Do we employ the same kind of analysis to our time that we do to financial figures? Thousands of years ago, Socrates said, “The Unexamined Life is not worth Leading”. It is easy to get in a grind and perform our daily tasks without ever questioning why we do it that way in the first place.Zig Ziegelar tells a story of a woman that was cooking a ham. She cut the end off of the ham and put it into her roaster pan. Her husband asked her why she did it that way. She said it was because it was how her mother had done it. The husband was curious, and called his mother-in-law to find out why she cut the end off the ham before cooking it. She said that she had done it because HER mother had also done it that way. Well, the husband was really wondering now, so he called his wife’s grandmother to solve the mystery once and for all. When asked, she said that she cut the end off the ham because her roaster was too small to cook an entire ham in it. How many things do we do the way we do them without really asking ourselves why?
Analyze How You Spend Your Time
Turn your hours on the job into quality time by putting yourself on a rigorous, week-long self-audit. Here’s how:
- Create a time log. Set up a notebook with five pages divided into the hours you work each day. Carry it with you all week.
- Take a minute every hour to chart your activities.
- Examine your notes after work every day, and ask yourself these questions:
- Which tasks got done smoothly today? Why?
- Which tasks hit snags? Why?
- What part of the day was the most productive? Why?
- What part was the least productive? Why?
- What time-use patterns do I see in my work?
- Use your answers to brainstorm ways to work more efficiently.
At the end of the week, you’ll have five days’ worth of ideas for correcting bad habits, working more efficiently, and improving the quality of your work.This Web site has many other suggestions for running your Accounting and Bookkeeping business more effectively.Click HERE to Learn to Be More Effective at Accounting
