As with many of you I have serious reading and toilet reading.
The later is generally things like the latest edition of PQ magazine or lighter reading such as marketing and practice management books.
I saw a one liner in an article last night that made me think (this is paraphrased rather than the actual quote).
"Juggling tasks add's 40% to the time those combined tasks would have taken had they been performed sequentially".
Now, I like to think that I'm pretty organised but I often find myself attempting to do several things simultaneously which makes me believe that sentence has legs.
One to think about.
How can you change your practice (as much as possible) to handle only the task at hand as apparently, if you can then apparently there's 40% more productive time up for grabs.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
This makes perfect sense - though I suspect the original said "up to 40%" because the amount you can save is going to vary from one task to another.
Whenever starting anything for a given client, there's an element of 'preamble' - things you need to do at the start, be they small things (such as just opening their folder on the computer, etc) or longer things (reading through any notes for messy ones), and so on. And at the end, you may need to file any new paperwork you have. If these things take (say) n minutes, that's n minutes each time you work for for that client - so if you do a little something for them each working day of the week that's 5n minutes. If you split the work during the day, that's n for each session. And so on.
Whereas doing all of that client's weekly work in one go, it's just n minutes for the week.
The problem is doing that is incompatible with a "Do it now" mindset.
It's the same in other areas; when I'm programming, for example, each session I need to look through my code and any notes to see what I've done previously, to get a feel for where I'm at, and what needs to be done next. That takes time - especially if working on something 'difficult'. For precisely this reason, I don't like squeezing small programming sessions between or around other work - I try to restrict any serious programming I do for days when I can spend the entire day on it. Ditto writing documentation.
(Which, sadly, is why I'm so behind with programming tasks!)
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
I'm the worlds worst for juggling tasks Shaun, and I'm sure costs me a lot in productive time. It's something I'm working on though, 40% is a lot of time lol.
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John
Any advice given is for general guidance and professional advice should be sought applicable to your circumstances.
I havent got time to read this never mind talk about it!!!!!!!!!
Although - I had a rubbish day last Monday as I was CONSTANTLY swapping jobs, and I mean almost every 5 minutes. But I had an ace day yesterday as I just concentrated on one client for several hours. Ace cos I just got through piles of stuff, but some of it was also due to him being my favourite client and Im not just doing his books so its a more interesting one anyway.
Toilet reading - oh dear. Isnt that time for painting nails? (OK I admit Ive only done that once!)
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Isnt that time for painting nails? (OK I admit Ive only done that once!)
