Alright accounting fans! We are back for part 2 of balancing your hustles! Let’s look at the second tip:
Tip #2: Schedule relentlessly!
Let’s talk about scheduling. Scheduling is arguably one of the least favorite things for me to do. But I still do it anyway. It’s like taking medicine – you don’t really wanna do it but sometimes you just gotta.
With that being said, how do you schedule?
Here’s what I like to do for myself:
1. Start off with the MUST-do’s on my list.
As mentioned in this article – I make sure to get my MUST-do’s done during the week. This means blocking out time to sort out the things that I, come hell or high water, MUST DO. So with that, I first list out the things I MUST do:
- University work (lecturing, class prep, marking)
- Accounting work (filing tax returns, reconciling client accounts)
- Blogging work (what I’m doing right now! Publish 3 times a week!)
Then I set about blocking out time for each item. I do my best to block out a set amount of time for each thing to do. Then that gives me a baseline I can work with.
2. Organise meetings around the MUST-do’s
During the week I will often get messages from clients or potential clients asking to meet up and talk about their accounts/taxes. These are things I often squeeze in between my MUST-do’s. Part of the reason why I like meeting online is because it saves me travelling time to and from the meeting place.
I usually set aside an hour for my meetings, but in practice I do my best to keep them under an hour (unless I have a particularly chatty client, in which case I still try my best to keep it under an hour!).
3. Set aside time for self-improvement
This is important and it is something I need to remind myself to do everyday. Self-improvement here relates to reading business development books, watching training videos on growing your brand, attending networking events and yes, EXERCISING.
But if you are anything like me – you will find this to be the hardest thing to keep to schedule for – simply because you’re pretty drained from doing all the MUST-do’s throughout the week.
So, how do we make sure we have enough energy and focus for self-improvement (which is IMPORTANT) without burning out?
4. Leave some blank spaces in the schedule.
You’re not a machine. And even if you were a machine, you’d still need a rest from operating at full capacity every now and then. Stopping just for sleep isn’t going to cut it and will affect your mental health in the long run.
Personally, I like to leave most of my spaces on Friday empty (and the better part of the weekend). Simply because I charge at my work from Monday to Thursday and by Friday my brain is pretty fried (Fried-day – get it?).
I’ve experimented with scheduling full days on Friday and often what happens is that I will only get 20% of what I set out to do during the day. So not only am I unproductive, I still end up feeling yuck about myself for not being productive as well – which really isn’t very healthy, this leads us to our last point:
5. Don’t beat yourself up over it
Started work a bit late? Missed on a few things this week? Got distracted by cat memes online?
Don’t beat yourself up over it.
By the end of the day we’re all only human. There is no point in feeling bad about not achieving 100% productivity during the week. Heck – even on a good week I can only do anywhere between 70% to 80% of my schedule.
The reason this happens is because life is unpredictable. You may fall sick, your child might scrape their knee, you may wipe out on your skateboard and scrape the skin off your palms (which is what happened to me yesterday) and you may find that other things suddenly take priority during the week.
So really, don’t beat yourself up over it.
Stay tuned next week for part 3!!