What to Do When Procrastination Affects Your Bookkeeper Business
Do you find yourself struggling to stay on task in your bookkeeper business? Let’s face it, when you’re working at home the temptation to do other things can be a huge daily struggle. Before you know it, those few minutes spent doing the dishes or watching that daytime soap opera have left you with no work time left in the day.
So what can you do to avoid procrastination in your bookkeeper business? Set daily goals for yourself and make sure you stick to them. I use a Day-Timer for this. I list the things that have to get done that day and don’t leave the office until they’re all done.
First, make sure you always diarize important deadline such as payroll or government remittances that absolutely must be done. Put these at the top of your daily list of tasks and do them before you do anything else. That will take some of the pressure off as well.
Then add to your daily list a breakdown of tasks that needs to be accomplished. These tasks will depend on the length of time it takes for each client. So, for example, for smaller clients, I’ll just enter “Smith’s Contracting – month end” because these clients will usually take me from two to four hours to do their entire set of books for the month. For larger clients for whom I do more bookkeeping work, I’ll break the task out specifically with notations like “Jones Corp. – check run”.
I love the feeling of accomplishing a lot during the day and being able to cross off each task as it’s completed. That, in itself, is a reward for me. Sometimes by the end of the day you can forget what you’ve done because you’ve been so busy. So it’s great to be able to look at your Day-Timer and see all those tasks you’ve crossed off.
My motivation to keep myself on track and fight off procrastination in my bookkeeper business is that I want to get paid. It’s that simple really, if I don’t do the work, I don’t get paid. The dishes can wait until later.
