The accounting profession can be stressful, more so when the peak season approaches. However, the multitude of work does not have to be a negative thing. With some preparedness, you can actually thrive and edge closer to that long-awaited promotion. Here are 6 top tips to help you achieve this: 1. Get Ready Early Communicate with your clients early on to ensure they provide you with all the necessary documentation you will require. This goes for your internal colleagues as well. Having everything ready and in one place will save you the hustle of requesting for them on short notice. It also gives you the continuity to work on projects from start to finish, which is more efficient. Similarly, give your loved ones a heads-up about your impending schedule. You will be surprised at how well your loved ones can offer their support and allow you to focus on what you need to do. 2. Mind Your Health As an accountant, you probably spend long hours behind your desk. Long periods of inactivity increase your risk of diabetes and heart disease. It also pre-disposes you to weight gain, which can lead to obesity if left unchecked. Poor posture can also place strain on your back and neck. Simply put, Sitting for long hours spells doom for your health. And in bad health, your productivity and general quality of life take a hit. Replacing your desk with a standing desk can work perfectly for you. This allows you to stand, stretch and change postures periodically. Because most standing desks are adjustable, they allow you to manipulate a length most comfortable for yourself. A standing desk can also offer you the following benefits: • A lower risk of weight gain and obesity. • Lowered blood sugar levels and lowered risk of heart disease. • Substantial improvement of back and neck pain. • An improvement in general well-being as a result of reduced stress and fatigue. 3. Implement Your Time Management Skills If ever there was a time to put your time management skills in action, this is it. Consider the following: Avoid checking for new emails every few minutes
. This might seem like harmless tasks, but the minutes add up over the day, and the week. If this is an absolute necessity, set specific times when you can check and respond to urgent emails. Adopt the Pomodoro technique (or a similar one), to help you break up your day into shorter periods of highly productive activity. In the long run, this may help you work with better focus and achieve more. The sense of achievement after each task is complete is enough to make you feel less stressed or overwhelmed. Merge your personal calendar with your work calendar. During the peak seasons, your work-life balance might get blurry. You work nights and weekends at times. Merging both calendars helps you see everything, and everywhere you need to be at one glance, which is easier than scheduling two individual calendars. 4. Recharge Your Batteries Burn-out makes for a very unproductive accountant. You are less focused, much slower and less efficient. In as much as you are up to your knees in work, spending each waking minute crunching numbers at your desk will work against you in the long run. To avoid this, schedule some time to re-energize by doing something you love, and that takes your mind entirely off work. Go to the gym, take a power nap, a relaxed meal or even a long walk. There are no rules here. Any activity that relaxes your mind momentarily will, in turn, increase your productivity. 5. Carry Lunch To Work One of the main contributors to feelings of being overwhelmed is the idea of not having enough time to accomplish what you need to be done. Therefore simple changes that can save you a couple of minutes here and there are worth looking into. An easy time-saver is carrying a snack or meal for your lunch. It saves you a few minutes walking or driving to an eatery. You are also likely to eat faster than you would at a restaurant or café. And you can throw in a low concentration activity while you eat like going through emails or organizing paperwork for your next task. These little things will save you some time to get something extra done and can give you a sense of control over your hours. 6. Have a Reward Waiting Have something at the finish line that will motivate and make the rigorous of the busy season well worth it. It is important to make this all about you. Therefore, plan for something you will love. This can be taking time off work for a vacation or just to stay home and enjoy extra hours of sleep. It might even be taking a class you have been excited about or using your gym membership — anything that gets you excited and motivated; plan for that. There you have it. Plan, implement and look forward to a reward at the other side of the high season.