Top 10 Time Management Strategies for Bookkeepers to Boost Productivity

This week's video is really about time management, and it's something I've been working on. I think a lot of people work on, but this one in particular, I just came back from visiting my daughter and it really rang true, especially someone that has young children in their house. If you're a bookkeeper working that way, it can be a lot. It can be a lot. It's a handful. So I'm gonna give you some tips I think will help you improve your time management skills. And it's really essential if you want to enhance your productivity and really maintain a balanced workload. So we wanna avoid overwhelm. So here's some strategies that I think will help. So strategy number 1, I think you should try to prioritize your tasks effectively. And I'm as guilty as it is anybody else. You know, you put this, you have this list of mess in your desk of things to do and they're not in any order. And then you're thinking, well, why do I spend the time to really prioritize? But— Prioritizing, sometimes it can be just as simple as a lined pad, and you write down the things you want to accomplish. But when you do that, you actually can put them in an order where maybe you can tackle a bunch of little ones, which will feel really— it will feel like you're really satisfied that you've got a lot of things off your plate. It will minimize your list, and I think it's really important to do that. Now you can, you can actually prioritize based on urgency and importance. That should be the first step. But then utilize any techniques like, there's one called the Eisenhower Matrix, and I'll give you a little bit more details about that in the article that can help you distinguish between what needs immediate attention and what can be scheduled for later. I think that that's important, and I'll give you a link on that 'cause it's fascinating and it's really an effective tool for prioritizing and setting up your list of your to-do list basically. I think it's important to, and I, this was really truly eye-opening. So we use Memtime at our office And Memtime just basically runs in the background and tracks what you're doing. So using a time tracking tool, and there's many of them out there, you could just do, simply use QuickBooks. With your ProAdvisor, you get a free subscription of QuickBooks Time, but then you have to kind of take time to log in and log out. There's also Toggl, there's Harvest, there's a lot of different brands, but just see how long it takes you to do various tasks. I can tell you that I was at my daughter's, I had this plan to do this, this, this, and this in one day. And at the end of the day, you kind of feel defeated because in our mind we think we we can finish things up, like doing these videos, even doing the video. I think, oh, I can get, I can bang these out in 20 minutes, you know, from soup to nuts, from recording to editing to putting it together on the, on YouTube and having the links ready for, for Tiara to put them in my blog. It never takes 10 or 15 minutes. It's much more than that per video. So know that, that you probably are gonna underestimate your time. Usually for me it's half. I usually think it's half the time that it actually takes. So knowing how long things take, it's kind of like calorie counting, knowing how much calories are in things. It's the same thing. That insight can help you identify any efficiencies in your areas where you can find time to be saved, and maybe make a more true list to what you can accomplish in a day. So you don't feel defeated at the end of the day that you didn't finish up in time. The next one is setting personal boundaries. I am terrible at this, and you really think, if you think about it, setting those boundaries is so important, because People can invade your time. For us, staff members can invade our time. They can steal, I just need you for a quick question. And if you do that multiple times during the day, you've then become very distracted multiple times, which then it's hard to come back to where you were. So for sure, establish clear boundaries regarding your work hours, even with your kids. One of our staff members, I think this is a genius, she got a little sign on her door, I'm in a meeting. And that way they know not to come in. They're older, but not that old, but old enough to read and know that they're not supposed to interrupt their mom during their working hours. I think that's really smart. Limit notifications. This one was huge for me and I was really bad at, uh, emails would come through that little notification bar and every time, even when I was in a meeting with a client, I didn't stay focused and present because I was constantly reading the things going by. I turned all of that off and I put it at scheduled times, 8:00 AM, 3:00 PM. That's it. Uh, they don't need to emailing, isn't texting. I don't have to answer every single message that comes through. in 20 minutes, 30 minutes, uh, 45 minutes. We don't need to do that. And it really helps you maintain focus and, um, keeps that background noise and distractions out of the way. Number 4, create a standard operating procedure. So SOPs, right? What we affectionately call SOPs. And I think it's important to do this. I wish I had done this earlier with our business, because now we're doing it, and we're starting to get them in order. We use Financial Sense at our firm. We create the SOPs, we had the staff create the SOPs, and then we had to go back in and redo them to make sure they were streamlined. But they're really important to have for repetitive tasks so you don't forget anything. It kind of takes some of that burden off your shoulders and it can streamline the processes and reduce the time spent figuring out how to execute them each time. And that standardization can lead to increased efficiency. So totally necessary. Important. Again, it's like putting things in order. It takes time. Time well spent. Number 5. No, I'm sorry, number 6, schedule breaks and downtime. And this one was hard for me because, ooh, why would I schedule downtime? Why wouldn't I just eat my lunch at my desk? Why won't I just do this? And we've actually, at our firm, Sarah and I have implemented the rule, like, if you're gonna go take a walk, take a walk. We've got one person in our office, she's phenomenal at it. I am not, and I'd like to be more. Kind of hard to take a walk in Florida. I would come back looking like a drained rat with humidity, but I could walk around my house 5 minutes, 10 minutes. Just take some steps. If you're not looking at your email, it's a great time to look at your email, but you're moving, you're walking, take it on your phone, take a walk. Do something if you feel like you're not gonna be productive. But really, if you're gonna take a walk outside as opposed to around your living room, don't take the phone to look at the emails. Walk and enjoy nature. Mm-hmm. It's important to take breaks away from the computer for your eyes. These short breaks, even if it sounds like you're losing productive time, help refresh your mind and help you maintain concentration during the day. So really critical. You get more done. So trust me on this one, you will get more done if you take the breaks. This one's a good one. Plan your day in advance. So this is number 7, and I think that this is one of the ones that I think is probably the best time saver because you take a look at what your schedule dictates, any meetings that you have, try to keep your meetings. I've been bad about this and we've got our, our assistant really pushing to make sure that this does not happen, that we don't get 5 or 6 meetings in a day. Sometimes Sarah and I do them and they get back to back to back to back and they run over and literally we don't even have time for a bio break and that's not good for your body. It's not going to be on the screen that long. You begin to hate Zoom because it's like, I have no time. So plan your day in advance. Work around your meetings. Plan your breaks. Make sure that you've got a productive start of the day. That's when we are the most productive, and then continue on. This practice will help you with setting goals for your day. You're gonna get it set up the night before. You're all preset. And then this one, and this is one I would like my daughter to listen to. Limit your multitasking. I know everybody thinks they're the most phenomenal multitasker in the world. They can do 5 things at the same time. I have a dear friend, very my closest friend, and I'm always on him too about like, you can't multitask. Yeah, you're, you know, you're in your 40s. You can multitask. That runs out. That's an expiration date, and there's been studies on it that you actually are not working to your premium level when you're trying to do 5 things at once. It's like spinning plates, right? You have to be really good at it. A lot of practice. It's just not a good way to live and do your work. So focus on one task at a time, and that can enhance your efficiency and reduce your hours. That's the key. So you're trying to do multiple things at the same time. What happens is you end up doing it, taking longer to do each, each thing. So it actually takes more time when you do that. So multitasking can lead to decreased productivity, and it can also lead to increased stress. And we want to avoid our stress. Stay organized. I'm— I know this for a fact, and I'm a very organized person. Keep your financial documents in order. And this is where I kind of fall flat. I am not good about making the little folders. Maybe I need to have Tiara help me with that. I've got files all over the place. If you can stay organized with your financial records, documents, and well-organized, organized records is gonna help you when you need to retrieve them. You'll know exactly where they are. So have a systematic approach to filing. Again, that dear friend that I have— I mean, I'm always so super impressed when he pulls up his files that he has in there, like such order because he's got a little OCD with that. But that's also a place that it's gonna save you time in the long run. You're not hunting for things. And Google's the toughest one. It's hard to find documents even though they've upgraded that recently. I, I still struggle. So definitely have that in place. Continuous learning and adaptation is also critical. Keep our, our brain fresh. This is number 10, my top 10 list here. Here you go. Stay updated with latest bookkeeping practices. In this world, especially in this world where technology is zipping by us, you want to have a way to stay on top of bookkeeping practices and technologies. We're actually going to Appy Camp soon, and we're gonna stay on top of what's newest, latest, and greatest, especially with AI. How that's being implemented in a lot of the things we do. Sometimes it's really great. I've seen it in Practice Ignition, or Ignition, actually called Ignition. Ignition program is probably one of the best ones I've seen for how they've done their, their work on helping enhance their product with, with AI. And then I've seen some, it's like, this does nothing for me. This is not helping at all. It didn't really enhance the product. I have QuickBooks, for example, they've got all this money invested in AI and it's not really showing me anything yet. I know it will come in the future, but sometimes they hype it up. It's not really there. So really stay in touch with that and find new ways to manage your time with technology. And staying on top of regular training and professional development is really key to improving as a bookkeeper and an accountant. If you implement these strategies, you can significantly improve your time management skills, which will lead to more enhanced productivity, reduce your stress. We don't need to have stress in our life and, um, help with our daily operations. I hope this is helpful. If it is, give me a thumbs up and we'll see you all next week. Bye now.