Category: Professional Principles

Some of you (okay, probably most of you) have noticed that I am a late riser. I’m just sleeping in every day, right? Often I don’t get to work until 10:00 or even 11:00.

After talking to me for a minute or two and hearing about my hobbies, some people may conclude that I’m out late every night, painting the town red, so to speak.But that’s not the case. Nowadays, I’m not the party closer. I could be, but I get bored. Moreover, my focus has been to be another kind of closer.

Well perhaps I’m just kind of old, washed up, and lazy.

That could be the case. I’m certainly too lazy to crop that image, but it would’ve gotten rid of the nice white border and taken time. But I honestly don’t think anyone thinks that.

I probably just struggle to focus, or when I work, I’m halfway working and halfway sleeping, Facebooking, or doing other overly-social or distracted tasks. Well, working from home, this is how I can do client calls. It’s pretty neat.

Not really.

My dad thinks I need more of a routine and to be more disciplined. Maybe he’s right. I’ll go ahead and go through my routine.

First of all, I don’t usually skip out on sleep too often. My job has way too much thinking and reading to do off of only a little sleep. I usually sleep 6 to 7 hours every night.
Since I’m often up until 1:00, this means I don’t wake up until 8:00. In the morning, I wake up, iron a shirt, cook an egg, and have coffee. When I have time, I often check my email. Usually I’ll get back to clients and tell them that I’ll get back to them in the night.

Sometimes I get up much earlier and go to networking events that go anywhere from 7:30 to 10:00.

Then I go to work. I usually work until 5:00 or 6:00, or lately I’ve had a couple of 8:00 pm nights. After work, I frequently go to networking events or similar events. I’ve been building a lot of varied and high-value connections recently.

After that, I go home and run. Sometimes I lift weights. Usually wound 9:00, I have dinner, which is very often just a protein shake. It’s quick, easy, and doesn’t really have much junk in it. Or I have Chinese. Or Noodles.

Then I work. My nights are divided, pretty equally, between doing client work and administrative work. Sometimes I break routine and hang out with people, at which point I work once they end their night.

I usually work until 1:00 am or 2:00 am.

There it is, Dad. That’s my ‘laxed routine that needs some discipline.

Reasoning
Sounds weird to some, I’m sure. I simply believe in doing things naturally. In the mornings, I don’t have the focus to work on taxes. I am extroverted, so I get energy from talking to other people. Writing emails is okay, but actually going to networking events is great.

Working at work is, well, time consuming. It’s challenging, too, but I really do enjoy it! The people are great, even if half of them have mustaches like they’re from the 80’s.

I pretty much make fun of them all the time, and it’s likely they’ll read this.

After work, I either exercise or go to a networking event. Both things give me a ton of energy… energy that lets me keep going until 1:00 doing client work!

In short, the reasoning for working super late at nights is that I always have energy and focus. This is when I should work, according to my crazy energy cycles. On the weekends, I go out with this kind of crazy energy.

I do work a bit, it’s true, and while my routine sounds kind of boring, I have fun! I’m guessing the people at my work know what I mean – can’t bring me down.

I thought of a solution!

What’s the problem? Well that’s s pretty basic problem: I have a ton of work to do for my business, but I only have the evening in which to do it.

That does not define the problem well, so I’ll elaborate. I’ve usually been working from home in the post tax season times. When it is the evening, it’s been nice outside, so I’ve had a distinct problem of focus. Not so much focus, as when I’m working, I can concentrate fine. The problem is that there’s always so much to do besides working.

Partially, it’s a discipline problem. I tend to go to happy hours and social events for a bit. That’s okay now and then, not 4 days each week! Okay, that’s easily solved. Just to hell with meeting new friends.

But there’s the other issue: Once home, there’s so much that I could do! Work on a landscapers project, clean something, outside or inside (not that my house is particularly messy, but there’s always something to do!

What about going to the gym? Or my big distraction, going for a run.

Working outside doesn’t much cut it anymore, mostly because the bugs are pestery right now.

Well my solution is simple and takes care of everything.

I will work downtown at my job longer. Now, I’ll physically be at my job, but I’ll be working on work for my business. I’ll iterate why this is possible and why it is a solution.

Most importantly, only do non-work business work at your place of employment if you are 100% sure they are okay with it. For instance, at my job, they hired me because I had my own business. In my interview, I noted how I am more innovative than typical CPAs. The CFO replied, “I know!” and proceeded to tell me why. Because he did research on me. He also loved that my interests in tax were so broad and that I generally like knowing everything and solving such a wide variety of problems.

My job is definitely results-driven. Once after the prior week during tax season was only 12 hours, the Controller walked into my office and went through the things she knew I was supposed to be finishing. After addressing everything, she said, “Well okay, you’re getting your work done,” and left.

Anyways, I just wanted to say that it is very important to have the support of your employer before you do other work in the office for which they pay. I may have had a seasonal role not turn permanent because of that….

How this is a solution

I’ll be doing work in the office, which means I won’t get tempted to go elsewhere in the long, seven mile commute. I won’t get tempted because I won’t be leaving!

Then, because I won’t be near the outside, I won’t get tempted to do anything else. I’ll just work, and it will be great!

I’m sittingon top of thousands of dollars of nearly-competed work, and all l have to do is finish it and bill.

So you see, my solution to getting distracted is simply to not have the distractions!

I told you it was simple!

The next hope, of course, is to not spend every day working, but instead have days where I am completely off! 

Next on the list will be weekend international solo travel!

Any small business owner who works with other people knows there’s a problem syncing everything. This week, I figured out what works for me:

Ok, so my Outlook calendar syncs with my main Google.
I have another Google solely for my W-2 job. It shows the time I’ll be at that job so I can print it and hang it outside my office. It also shows the events from my main Google calendar as “Busy” events, just so they know when I’ll be late.

Yes, there’s a sign by the calendar noting that “times are approximate”.

The W-2 calendar is also copied to my Outlook (which yes, is then copied to my W-2 calendar, so I am working there and have a ‘busy’ event simultaneously).

Seems pretty complicated, right? It gets better.

Add to the mix an employee. Now she had a Google calendar before she started, then I gave her an Outlook account, The Outlook account is copied to her Google account I created just for my firm. I set it up so when I send an invite, it is automatically added to her firm Google calendar. She can then sync to that with her phone.

Her Outlook calendar is pretty much useless, since it’s on my computer that is always with me, as of right now.

Wouldn’t it get better if I contracted with an administrative assistant? Well, she has a firm email address. When she makes appointments, she can send a request to me and to my client.
Pretty cool.

Naturally, she can see my Google calendar. Her invites are automatically added to my calendar.

My intern is incredibly perfect for my firm and where it seems to be headed, and my admin is super delightful and polite, which I normally am too, but when I get busy, my emails are mostly just barking times and locations. She makes it sound so polished!

I’ve very happy where I’m at. Things are taking off. I’m excited!
(this post is spawned by the fact that I just finished setting up the last piece of my web of syncs)

Many of you know that I have my own company.
That company also has its own website.
Some (I doubt anyone who reads here) may have notice that the website has been in limbo for the last few days.

So this website is newly mobile, so I thought I could just do the same updates on my bigger site and VOILA, it would be mobile responsive.

And that’s basically what happened. Okay, I’m a liar. Here’s the story.

I installed the same WP widget. That didn’t cut it. It turns out my theme was out of date. Way out of date. (like two whole versions).
Well my business site was setup really well and really complex-like. Adding that to the fact that my IT guy got a job with Thrvient, when my site had issues, I was totally lost.

The combination of all my WP settings and a theme that I and my new IT guy knew nothing about were not good. I wasted about 5 hours spinning my wheels, maybe more than that. I was up until 3:30 last night. My IT guy spent about 3 hours looking. I’ll pay him for his time, but he didn’t accomplish anything.

I started by updating everything. That helped a little. The site would not load for people not signed in to my WP account.

Problem 1 fixed.

Upon reading some posts in the Headway Theme message board, I noticed that they all began with “All widgets were deactivated”. I wasn’t able to save my changes in the theme editor. Once I deactivated my widgets, things saved.

Problem 2 fixed.

Then, the Easing Slider didn’t work. This was a Custom Code block in my theme. I decided to look at the custom code. It was once line of php.
After that, I skimmed the widget documentation. By skim, I mean what I was looking for was easily isolated away from words: A lone string of php. It had a similar syntax but different words. Copied that and pasted into the Custom Code.

Problem 3 fixed.

Next I wanted everything to be mobile responsive. I decided early on that since my Theme had options for mobile responsiveness, I probably should’t use a widget, so I disabled it (Jetpack). I then made the theme grid responsive then each section.

Problem 4 fixed.

The only thing on my “to do” list, besides add meta info, is updating my images to say “TM” on everything.

That and to blog.

Good news – I interviewed an intern today who I will hire – yay!

Other news – I got 3 emails of people who are looking for accountants. Today. Yay!

2015 is going to push me! I’m pretty pumped!