Article published on CharteredAccountants.ie.
Sarah Daly explains how introducing some new time management methods into your day can help you manage your time more efficiently.
In business, time is definitely money. Yet, while learning to prioritise competing demands is a skill that I have tried to develop over the years, like many business owners and managers, I find that unless I consciously manage time, there is always a risk of spending too many hours working ‘in’ the business and not enough hours working ‘on’ it.
Talking to other accountants, I know that I’m not alone with this problem. In a busy office where clients phone in with urgent requests throughout the day, it is easy to fall into a pattern of running from one crisis to another. While some of these demands are genuinely urgent and have to be dealt with there and then, others are less urgent, and some – like spending too much time on email – can be a habit that, although neither urgent nor important, can take up a significant chunk of time.
The key to good time management is learning to understand how you and your team spend your time each day so that you can identify opportunities to improve efficiency. The idea of analysing tasks and learning how to allocate time appropriately is not new. In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, management guru Stephen Covey explains that by categorising tasks into those that are ‘important and urgent’, ‘important but not urgent’, ‘urgent but not important’, and ‘not urgent and not important’ can help you get ahead of the game.
Categorise
First thing is to decide what tasks go in which category. Where does your daily check-in with staff go on the list? How about returning client calls? Tasks that are both urgent and important should be done first (obviously) while those that are in the ‘not urgent and not important’ category may not need to be done at all. At least not by you.
Tools to help
Today, there are tools that can help analyse how you and your team allocate your time, from monitoring time spent on social media to analysing time spent on particular projects or clients. One that I particularly like is the MyHours time tracking solution which has helped me to identify my most valuable work and eliminate time-wasting activities.
Dedicated email time
Another technique I find useful is having two slots a day for email — one in the morning and one toward the end of the day — rather than allowing email to constantly interrupt me. For me, email is usually in the ‘important but not urgent’ category, but your emails might be important and urgent, so adjust your email time as needed.
Outsourcing
It is worth reminding yourself – and your clients – that time-consuming administrative tasks can often be outsourced to specialist service providers, freeing business owners and managers to spend more time working ‘on’ rather than ‘in’ the business.
What means the most to you?
Finally, at this time of the year, it is worth reflecting on whether the things that mean most to us – like spending time with family and friends or looking after our health and wellbeing – are sufficiently high priorities on our ‘to do’ list, falling into the ‘important and urgent category’. If not, now is the time to get them on to our list of priorities for the coming year.
If you are thinking about outsourcing your finance department and would like more information about GroForth’s services, please get in touch.
