Congratulations on another successful year. You're no doubt relaxing and spending time with loved ones. One thing you're certainly not doing is frantically cramming CPD hours like a teenager revising for their A-levels on the bus.
If you're currently hovering over a half-watched webinar with your fifth coffee of the morning, wondering how you let this happen again, then we should note that this newsletter isn't verifiable CPD. However, it might offer you some solace even if it's just knowing that you're not the only person who does this, over and over and over again.
But let's have a look at breaking that chain, and becoming someone who spends the festive period without biting your fingernails every two minutes.
⏳ Time is untameable
You can't manage time. Time will never care about your deadlines, your inbox, or your CPD requirements it's going to march on regardless, with or without your say so.
What you can manage is how you use your time. It's a measly and annoying distinction, but you're clearly struggling, so we're going to draw this out as much as possible! But imagine a world where you've planned ahead you've actually done more in less time, you're at a workable level of stress at any given time of day, and you feel confident and self-assured. Imagine!
We don't need to get into what happens when you fail to manage how you use your time. So, we won't!
📈 Why accountants are bad at this
A finance professional is never finished. There's always some new task hidden in the ones you're already working on, and you're only ever one email away from a daylong timesuck that obliterates your carefully laid plans.
On top of that, there's rarely a task where you can just wing it. Most of what you do needs to be double- and triple-checked or else you might not be allowed to be an accountant anymore.
So, CPD ends up taking a backseat while your body slowly but surely crystallises under the intense pressure.
📋 Priorities, please!
We've all become victims of someone else's stress. You can become the rope in a game of tug-of-war, getting yanked about by your colleagues' extremely urgent concerns. But, when that's happening, you need to step back and think smart. Or rather, SMART.
You can use SMART goals to work out how to plan your day. It actually helps! We promise! Let's recap:
- Specific know exactly what you're trying to achieve. "Complete 20 CPD hours" is better than "do some training".
- Measurable if you can't track it, you can't manage it. "Have I done 10 hours by June?" is a solid check-in
- Achievable if you set a goal that requires 12 extra hours a week, it's not a goal, it's a fantasy
- Relevant if it doesn't align with your actual job or development path, bin it.
- Time-bound "by the end of the year" doesn't mean "sometime in December while eating funsize Mars bar after funsize Mars bar
So, let's say your worklist includes:
- Update reporting template
- Do CPD
- Clear inbox
- Prepare budget review
- Write strategy doc
- Fix Karen's Excel macro
Run them through the SMART test. Which are vague? Which are urgent? Which actually help you move towards your goals?
Better yet, tie each item to a bigger picture. Are you aiming for that promotion? If that task doesn't get you that foot up the ladder, you can move it down a notch. Or delegate it to Karen. She owes you one after that macro incident anyway. Plus, her job's easy!
📬 Mailure failure
So, how many "just checking in" or "can we circle back" emails have knocked you off course this week? Email's obviously great, we all love sending an email! But a Jira notification pinging to let you know that you just got assigned to the task you were just asked over Slack to complete is less helpful.
Consider an hour of not checking. How many hours have you been left waiting for someone to do a five-minute task for you? Let the people wait!
🤝 Let's not meet
Archaeologists recently uncovered a stone tablet etched in an ancient script. After years of blood, sweat and tears, a team of palaeographers translated it: "this meeting could have been an email".
That's true, by the way we're not lying! It's really been a problem for that long. (Before anyone emails us, we are lying, it just seemed a funny thing to pretend not to be lying about).
💍 Don't keep - delegate
You don't have to do everything yourself. You're not Frodo, and this is not Mount Doom. And, in fact, Frodo sort of delegated to Samwise for a bit anyway.
Good delegation should empower your team, as well as clearing up your workload. Maybe Karen would benefit from this task. Try and work out a way that it seems like you're doing her a favour. Also, when you do delegate, explain the context. Nobody wants to collate a report without knowing why it matters. Give people purpose people go mad for purpose.
🧠 Final thoughts
You've left your CPD to the last minute. Again. You know, your professional body probably knows and, as we made clear in our last Briefcase, AccountingCPD certainly knows.
But it's totally fine to be buying a four-hour module while Jools burbles away in the background. Bob Geldof might be multiple sheets to the wind by the time you reach the third module, but you'll get there before the clock strikes 12.
But time management isn't just for aggressively type A personalities some of the laziest people you know are secretly quite good at prioritising. It frees up their time to do nothing.
So, as you toast the New Year, while simultaneously toasting the last of your mandatory CPD, consider resolving to start earlier this time. If not for you, then maybe for someone close to you who spent the festive period picking up the pieces. Or maybe for Jools Holland? He'd like you to relax more, too.