who sets your priorities? you.
by ed mendlowitz
the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 practice doctor
question: i do not seem to be able to get everything done that needs to be done and still have time for extras, which i like to do, like marketing and doing new things for clients. any tips?
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answer: this is a recurring theme, and an issue we all have. it seems that we all have the same amount of time but some use it more wisely than others.
i think that three things we need to do better are
- become stingy about how we spend our time,
- learn to say no and
- not do anything that doesn’t fit in with, or drags us away from, our long-range goals.
one of the things i keep thinking about is something benjamin franklin wrote: “do not squander time, because that is the stuff life is made of.” this is what you are doing when you do things that are not what you should be doing, or deal with people that you shouldn’t – those who do not appreciate your efforts. i also believe, with few exceptions, that clients who don’t pay you on time, or who don’t pay what you bill them or what they agree to, are thieves who are stealing part of your life. that makes them an enemy – why do you subject yourself to this?
be stingy with your time. spend it where you need to do and where no one else can.
a great skill is to be able to leverage your strengths and delegate to others. learn this well and you will accomplish more than you would believe and won’t waste time, i.e. part of your life, chasing your tail.
say no. if you don’t want to do something, or shouldn’t or oughtn’t, just say “no!” it is much easier and much less unpleasant to get out of something by saying no than doing it and not being happy and feel you are wasting part of your life.
i had a college professor in auditing who always said no when someone gave a wrong answer. she didn’t say it nicely, and didn’t worry about hurting feelings, or worry about letting people down. she simply said “no!” and went looking for someone with the right answer. she was a good teacher and i am sure i learned auditing well from her, well enough to pass the auditing part of the cpa exam, but the only thing i specifically remember learning from her is to say “no!” that was a great lesson since it has saved me immense wasted time doing things i ought not have done.
have your sights on goals. become goal-oriented. if not, you won’t know where you are going and then won’t know you got there if you somehow stumbled on the right path.
goals set the big-picture direction for your life. yogi berra said something that can soothe the failure to reach goals by saying “if you don’t set goals, then you won’t regret not reaching them.” i like a quote by edward young above a window in the library of congress: “too low they aim, who aim beneath the stars.” and a third quote is by michelangelo: “the greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” set goals and have them drive your bulldozer.
in terms of marketing and “new thing” time, why not set aside one hour a week for each of these? somehow if you make up your mind to do this, you will and it will amount to a week a year for each of these.
here are easy ways to do each of these:
- have one lunch a week with a client or someone who can refer business such as a client’s attorney, or someone you are on a charity board with, or who you recently met. it is fun and will result in additional business. forty lunches a year and not get anything out of it – not possible.
- in terms of new things, why not take a webinar on a new area once a month? that’s 12 to 24 hours.
- why not go to the library a half hour a month and browse through a bunch of magazines? that’s 6 to 10 hours.
- and take a couple of cpe courses a year – not even extra time since you need to take cpe anyway.
- and maybe study to get a new credential such as pfs, cff or one of the other aicpa designations.
anything you want to do, can be done. just do it!