450: Protect Your Priorities During Busy Seasons A Podcast For Accountants And High-Stress Professionals
450: Protect Your Priorities During Busy Seasons A Podcast For Accountants And High-Stress Professionals
When you look at your calendar, do you ever wonder, when am I going to have time for my life? Then you look ahead, and the next weeks are already full as well. There are meetings, client deadlines, projects, appointments, family responsibilities, things you promised to do, and of course things you need to get done. And somewhere in all of that, you hope you’ll find time to exercise, spend time with friends and family, enjoy a hobby, or do something just for yourself. But when the week gets busy, those are often the first things to get put off. You tell yourself you’ll get back to them when things slow down. Maybe next week, next month, or after tax season, and before you know it, the things that make your life enjoyable have been pushed aside again. If you’re an accountant, CPA, bookkeeper, tax preparer, or high-stress professional, this may sound familiar to you. Let’s dive in…
Whether you’re an accountant, CPA, bookkeeper, tax preparer, business owner, or other high-stress professional, this episode will give you practical ideas you can use to think more clearly, respond more intentionally, and get more out of life.
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When you look at your calendar, do you ever wonder, when am I going to have time for my life? Then you look ahead, and the next weeks are already full as well. There are meetings, client deadlines, projects, appointments, family responsibilities, things you promised to do, and of course things you need to get done. And somewhere in all of that, you hope you’ll find time to exercise, spend time with friends and family, enjoy a hobby, or do something just for yourself. But when the week gets busy, those are often the first things to get put off. You tell yourself you’ll get back to them when things slow down. Maybe next week, next month, or after tax season, and before you know it, the things that make your life enjoyable have been pushed aside again. If you’re an accountant, CPA, bookkeeper, tax preparer, or high-stress professional, this may sound familiar to you. Let’s dive in…
Welcome Back…Today, we're talking about how to protect what matters to you when your schedule gets full. Because if you don't make intentional decisions about where you spend your time, your work and other people's priorities will often make those decisions for you. And that can leave you with a calendar full of responsibilities but very little room for the life you actually want to live.
Let's talk about how to change that and why the things that matter get pushed aside. Think about a typical busy week. You start with good intentions. You plan to exercise a few times. You want to spend more time with your family. Maybe you've been meaning to reconnect with a friend or work on something you've been putting off. But then Monday arrives. An unexpected client issue comes up. A meeting takes longer than expected. Someone needs your help. A deadline changes. You adjust. You move things around. You tell yourself you'll make up the time later. Then Tuesday comes, and something else happens. By Wednesday, your original plans are mostly gone. And by Friday, you're telling yourself you'll try again next week. This pattern can be especially common for accountants and high-stress professionals whose work has busy seasons. You know there are certain times of the year when the demands increase. You may even expect your schedule to become more difficult. But instead of planning for those demands while protecting what matters, you may fall into the habit of giving work whatever time is available. And then, when there's no time left, you assume your personal priorities will have to wait. I want you to consider something. What if the problem isn't that you don't have enough time for the things that matter? What if part of the problem is that you haven't made a clear decision about where those things belong in your life? I'm not suggesting that you can fit everything into every week. You can't. There will be weeks when work takes more time. There will be unexpected responsibilities and situations you can't control. But there's a difference between recognizing that some weeks will be difficult and automatically giving up everything that's important to you whenever work gets busy. You don't have to do everything, but you do need to decide what you don't want to keep giving up.
Here are four ways to start deciding what you don’t want to give up in your life. Step 1: Decide what matters before your schedule fills up. This is where you’ll stop waiting until you have extra time to think about what matters to you. Because if you wait until your schedule is full, there may not be much room left. Instead, I want you to think about what you want your life to include, even during demanding times. Not what you think you should be doing. Not what other people say is important. What actually matters to you? Maybe it's taking care of your health. Maybe it's spending time with your spouse or children. Maybe it's maintaining friendships, reading, traveling, playing golf, cooking, or working on a hobby. Maybe it's having a little quiet time each morning before the demands of the day begin. There's no right answer. The important thing is that you identify something that makes your life feel meaningful or enjoyable. And I want you to choose one thing to focus on. Not ten things. Not a complete life makeover. Just one personal priority that you don't want to keep putting off. For example, maybe you used to exercise regularly, but work has taken over your schedule. You miss how you felt when you were taking care of yourself. You don't need to decide that you're going to exercise every day for an hour. You might decide that you want to take a 20-minute walk three times a week. That's a starting point. Or maybe you want to have dinner with your family without doing work on your phone at the same time. That could become your priority. The goal is to get clear about what you want to protect before the demands of the week start making decisions for you. Here's a question to consider. If the next three months are going to be demanding, what is one thing you want to make sure is still part of your life when those three months are over? Think about that. Because what you choose matters.
Next, I want you to stop making your personal priorities optional. Once you know what matters, the next step is to give it a place in your schedule. And this is where many people struggle. They treat personal activities as something they'll do if they have time. Work gets scheduled. Meetings get scheduled. Client commitments get scheduled. But exercise, family time, hobbies, and personal activities are left open. They're the things we hope to fit in around everything else. The problem is that work can expand to fill the time you give it. There will almost always be another email, another task, another project, or another thing you could be doing. So if your personal priorities only happen when nothing else is going on, they may not happen very often. I want you to try something different. Take the personal priority you chose in Step 1 and put it on your calendar. If you want to exercise three times a week, decide when you're going to do it. If you want to spend more time with your family, identify a specific time you want to protect. If you want to reconnect with a friend, put a date on the calendar to reach out or make plans. Make it real. Now, this doesn't mean your schedule can never change. Of course it can. But when something unexpected comes up, I want you to pause before automatically removing the personal commitment. Ask yourself, "Is this work responsibility truly more important than the personal commitment I already made?" Sometimes the answer will be yes. Sometimes there will be a real deadline or an urgent situation that needs your attention. But other times, you'll realize that you're about to give up something important because it's easier to move your personal plans than to make a different decision about work. That distinction matters. You don't need to protect every personal commitment perfectly. You just need to stop treating your own priorities as if they are always the easiest things to cancel.
Lastly, create a realistic version for your busy weeks. Here's where I want to be practical. If you're an accountant heading into tax season, I'm not going to tell you to keep the exact same schedule you have during a quieter time of year. That may not be realistic. You might work longer hours. Your workload may increase. Your schedule may become less predictable. And if you create a plan that doesn't account for those realities, you're probably going to feel frustrated when you can't follow it. Instead, I want you to create two versions of your personal priority. Your regular version and your busy-week version. Let's use exercise as an example. Your regular plan might be going to the gym three times a week for an hour. But during tax season, that may be difficult. So what's the smaller version you could realistically maintain? Maybe it's a 20-minute walk. Maybe it's a short workout at home. Maybe it's getting outside for 10 minutes during your lunch break. The point isn't that the smaller version is better. The point is that it allows you to maintain a connection to something important, even when your circumstances change. Or let's say your priority is spending time with friends. During a busy season, you may not be able to make plans every weekend. But maybe you can schedule one dinner a month or make a short phone call during the week. You could also decide that you want to keep one evening free when possible rather than filling every evening with work. This is about flexibility, not giving up. I want you to remember that a smaller version of something important is often better than abandoning it completely. And there's another benefit. When you know what your busy-week version looks like, you don't have to start from scratch every time your schedule gets difficult. You've already decided what matters and what a realistic commitment looks like. You can adjust without feeling like you've failed.
I also want you to stop waiting for the perfect week. One of the biggest reasons people put off their personal priorities is that they're waiting for the right conditions. They want to exercise when they have more energy. They want to make plans when their schedule is less busy. They want to start a hobby when they have more free time. They want to take care of themselves when work isn't so demanding. But the perfect week may not arrive. There will always be something going on. There will always be responsibilities and unexpected events. If you wait until everything is settled before making room for your life, you may spend a lot of time waiting. Instead, I want you to practice asking yourself, "What's possible for me right now?" Not what's ideal. Not what you wish you could do. What's possible given the circumstances you have today? Maybe this week you can take one walk instead of three. Maybe you can spend 30 minutes doing something you enjoy instead of waiting for an entire free afternoon. Maybe you can have a meaningful conversation with someone you care about, even if you can't spend the whole evening together. And maybe there are weeks when your personal priority needs to look different because work really is demanding more from you. That's okay. The goal isn't to create a perfect schedule. It's to make intentional choices instead of letting your schedule make every decision for you. And when you miss something, don't turn it into a reason to give up. You don't need to wait until Monday, next month, or the end of tax season to begin again. You can make a different choice with the time you have next.
This week I’d like you to try this for yourself by putting these ideas into practice. I want you to take 15 minutes this week and answer three questions. First, what is one personal priority I don't want to keep putting off? Choose something that would make a meaningful difference in how you feel about your life. Second, what does a realistic version of that priority look like during a busy week? Don't create a plan based on your ideal schedule. Think about the actual demands on your time and what you can reasonably commit to. Third, when will I make room for it? Put it on your calendar. Choose a day and a time. Then, when something unexpected comes up, practice pausing before you automatically cancel it. Ask yourself whether you really need to give up that time or whether there's another way to handle the situation. And at the end of the week, take a moment to reflect. Did you make room for something that matters? What got in the way? What could you do differently next week? Remember, this isn't about getting everything right. It's about learning to make intentional choices about the life you're creating.
Your calendar is a tool that you can use. It isn't supposed to decide what matters most in your life. Your work is important. Your clients are important. Your responsibilities are important. But so are your health, your relationships, your interests, and the experiences that make life enjoyable. You don't have to choose between being successful in your career and having a life outside of work. And you don't have to wait until the busy season is over to start making room for the things that matter. You may need to adjust your expectations. You may need to create a smaller version of your usual routine. And you may need to make some different decisions about how you spend your time. But you can start. One priority. One intentional decision. One small commitment at a time. And if you're an accountant heading into another tax season, I want you to think about when April 15th arrives, what do you want to be able to say about the way you lived during those busy months? Not just how much work you completed. Not just how many deadlines you met. But how you took care of yourself. How you showed up for the people you care about. And whether you made room for any of the things that make your life meaningful. That's worth thinking about before the busy season begins. If you're looking for a way to pause, step back from the pressure, and decide what needs your attention next, I've created a free resource called the 10-Minute Pressure Reset. You can get instant access to it at www.FinancialAdventure.com. Remember, you can't always change the workload that's causing the pressure, but you can change how you lead yourself through it. And you don't have to put your life on hold while you're doing it.
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