Time management during tax season

Susan Danker

*This blog is part of the April 2023 Thought Leader newsletter

You’re almost there, modern accounting firms!

Tax Day is within reach—you just have to buckle down for the final stretch. You may be running on caffeine and protein bars at this stage in the game, so let me help you make the most of the time left in the last days before the deadline.

As a marketing manager, I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on a few timesaving tips for boosting your online presence. So, consider these tidbits of tedium-tacklers to help sustain your social stamina:

Have some fun

Our mobile phones have basically become extensions of our bodies. It takes about five seconds to snap a picture. Encourage your team to have some fun amid the tax rush and capture moments around the office to post to your social media pages. Then create a fun reel with trending audio to engage your social audience. Don’t know how? That’s all right; I promise you someone in your office has mastered it and can put one together for you in a jiff.

Post it right away, or schedule it to send with Facebook’s Meta Business Suite during evening hours when more followers are online. If you’ve implemented suggestions I’ve made in previous articles for using a scheduling platform, you can load your pics or reel to it and simultaneously blast that baby out to your profiles.

Then dust off your hands, pat yourself on the back for being a beast at efficiency and settle back in for some quality time with those tax returns.

Multitask in the home stretch

Now, for the meat and potatoes of my “Success Secrets from Susan” installment:

I’m a die-hard multitasker. (Think Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty typing at breakneck speed.) I’m answering emails, scheduling social posts, finding a resource for a client, throwing a load of laundry in the wash, fixing a snack, responding to a Teams message and putting the final touches on the latest resource I’m developing—all while attending a Zoom meeting with my coworkers.

(Yep, I said it. I’m guilty and don’t you dare act like you aren’t.)

Build up your boundaries

I am my own worst enemy when it comes to inefficiency. But I’m working on becoming a better me—and I’ve decided my word for 2023 is “boundaries.”

Boundaries. Hmmm… Of the many things I have going, where should I start?

Here are a few small baby steps I’ve taken to create boundaries and promote productivity in my workday. Lean in for this next part because this is the good stuff:

I’m. Working. Less. No lie:

I do not check my email first when I sit down to start my day. There is nothing so pressing in my inbox that it can’t wait until I address the priorities on my to-do list. This was where I found myself losing time. I would start a task, get an email notification, check it, find the information I needed to respond to the email, and send the reply. Just when I was ready to go back to my original mission, I checked another email and down the spiral I went while my task at hand sat minimized in my tool bar. Which leads me to step two…
Start and finish a task without interruption. Easy to say, but much harder to carry out. If it’s crunch time and I must focus, off go the noises and notifications. I mean OFF. Close the tabs. Quit the applications. Mute the speakers. Turn off the distractions. Once the task is completed, I’ll check back in. If my priorities need to be readdressed at that point, I do so.

I’ve kept you from your work long enough, so I’ll conclude my commentary. If you catch yourself chasing squirrels and going down rabbit holes only to find you’ve started many things and accomplished none, try my top two tricks.

If they don’t help you become a better steward of your time, I have one remaining remedy—sleep less.