Time – Quite the beast to master and tame.

With tax season once again upon us, the pressure of making every minute count and be productive is never higher. With this in mind, I will be brief and to the point.
Here are two of the most important strategies to implement EVERY day.

Prioritize

Every morning, ask yourself these few questions for each task on your to-do list:

• What things should I do today vs a later date?
  • Will me doing it today vs tomorrow really make a difference for my firm?
  • If not today, when?
• What things can I delegate?
  • Will me doing it vs someone else on my team doing it really make a difference to my firm?
  • What serious harm can come from delegating?
  • Will me doing this particular task myself really impact my firm’s success vs if I delegated it?
• Is there anything on my list that I could simply never do with minimal impact? (I suspect there is)

In essence, are you treating your practice like your absolute best client or do you cater to everyone else before catering to your own business?

Delegate

Ask yourself these questions before taking on any task:

• Given my education, knowledge, and years of experience, am I really the best person to be doing this task at hand or can I delegate?
• Can someone else do this with similar results?
• If this delegated task is not done exactly like you would do it, who will actually know or care?
• If you were a shareholder of your business, would you agree with the tasks you’re doing? Or would you be disappointed in choice of tasks performed?

Remember, your team will never develop the tremendous skills you’ve developed until you delegate to them and allow them to try, practice, fail, learn, and become better at them. Also remember that odds are excellent that if you wait until they are good and ready to take on whatever task you wish to delegate, this time may never come. Seldom was I ever confident that the person to whom I would delegate a new task was ready for it. It seems they never were. But I learned that rarely were the mistakes made due to inexperience irreparable and this process almost always resulted in this allowing my team to grow and become better at servicing my clients and getting things done that I never had time to do.

Conclusion

If you can master the art of prioritizing and delegating, your productivity will reach levels even you never knew possible.