Tag: time management

How to be more effective

There are only so many hours in the day and we all want to use them wisely. So how can you be more effective with your time?

These are my top tips for being more effective:

Write down your goals

Establish your goals – remember SMART when setting them – and make sure that they are in writing (for more on this, see my recent article One simple thing you must do to achieve your goals). Keep asking yourself, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” and focus on the tasks with the highest pay off leading to your goal. 

Do the right thing

A good manager does things right, but a good leader does the right things. Check that you are always doing the right things rather than just doing things right. Do more of what you do well and less of what you don’t do well. You can apply this to your business too by asking yourself, “What made my business successful in the past?” Those are the things you should  keep doing.

The art of delegating

To be effective at managing your time, you need to learn the art of delegation. But don’t just pass on a piece of work and assume the other person knows what you want. Make sure they understand and ask them to feed that information back to you in his or her own words.  Don’t finish the conversation until the appropriate next steps have been identified and specified.

Maximise the effectiveness of your prime time

Everyone has a prime time – the time of the day when you are at your most effective. So use it for your most important, creative work. Little stuff has a tendency to multiply and take over so make sure you don’t use this valuable time for clearing up unimportant things. Make your prime time a period of sustained, concentrated effort and stay with a task until it is finished.

Finish one task before you start a new one

Don’t keep taking on new things until you’ve finished off others. Remember the old Chinese proverb, A man who chases two rabbits catches neither. Focus on getting the right things done (see my first tip above) and don’t forget the Pareto principle (the 80/20 rule) – 20% of your efforts produce 80% of your results. Apply this throughout your business.

What can you eliminate?

Finally, decide what to eliminate, i.e. the things you should not be doing. This might be a service that isn’t profitable, or a segment of your clients that no longer fit with you. In other words, if 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers, concentrate on these and you could potentially drop the remaining 80% of customers.

Even applying 20% of the ideas above could have a massive impact on your efficiency. If you’re an accountant and want more help on using your time efficiently, join the AVN Know How Hub and take a look at the webinar by Emma Slack on Taking Back Control.

One simple thing you must do to achieve your goals

One of the challenges that we hear over and over again is that accountants are really struggling with time management at the moment.

There are dozens of strategies to help you manage your time, but one of the simplest is also one of the most effective.

What do you want to achieve?

It’s essential to have a clear picture of what you are trying to achieve. You must have goals and objectives – what are you trying to do and how are you going to do it?

And these must be in writing… written goals have been proven to contribute massively to business success.

Research shows that less than 3% of people have written goals. And even then, less than 1% review their written goals on a regular basis. But these are the most successful people. 

When you write down your goals, think of what you want to do in both your personal life and your business. After all, they’re linked together and your business goals are the things your business will achieve to enable you to reach your personal goals.

Write down as many as you can, even if they seem impossible, and then rank them. Which ones are most important to you? These are your highest priorities and should be your focus.

If you find it difficult to express your personal goals, ask yourself questions like:

  • “If I could guarantee that I would succeed at something I decided to do, what would I do?”
  • “If I won the lottery, what would I do?”

How will you get there?

Once you have set out your goals, next work out the steps you will need to take to achieve them. Include as much detail as possible so it’s absolutely clear at every stage what you have to do.

Of course, achieving your goals isn’t always a straightforward process. So ask yourself, “What are the obstacles in my way?” Write these down too. When you look at them closely, you’ll probably find that some of them are factual (so write down the steps to overcome these) and others are really mental obstacles, i.e. beliefs about your ability to achieve your goals. Past experiences often influence our perceptions of what we can and can’t do and fear of failure can be very powerful. Challenge your own assumptions about what’s possible.

Never lose sight of what you set out to do. A visible reminder – e.g. on the wall in your office – will help to keep you on track. And then make sure you do something every day to move towards your goals. Even if it’s a tiny step, when you consistently take action you will make progress.

With every task you’re faced with, ask yourself “Is this taking me towards my goal or further away?” It makes decisions so much easier when you think in this way.

When we work with AVN Members, one of the first things we do is to find out about their goals so that we can ensure that the actions they set are moving them towards that goal. This is part of our ‘Clarity’ Roadmap.

To find out more about how AVN helps accountants to achieve their goals, visit www.avn.co.uk.