Busy season is a great time to take stock of your career. For all the hours you put in, wouldn’t it be nice to know what you’re accomplishing? And I don’t mean completing one more checklist or schedule. Busyness and business are not the same. Take five minutes to consider the difference. It may be the best five minutes of your week.
You may say, “I’m too busy.” My response is, if your career isn’t worth five minutes, it’s not because you’re too busy. Successful people make time for things that matter.
I think of business as producing something that creates value. I think of busyness as doing stuff; lots of it, quickly. Some of it matters; much of it doesn’t. More often than not, stuff in the ‘busyness’ category is not of lasting value.
No doubt, some of the busyness of busy season is inherent to the business of public accounting. But not all of it. To be sure, some of what you do needs to be done, by someone. What value does it bring to you to go through it one more time? What new skills will you learn, or how will you be better prepared for your next job, because of what you’ll do this busy season?
Take a quick test. Let your answers be your guide.
1) How much of what you do during busy season is meaningful, or adds value (to you, your clients, the firm?)
2) How much of it is busy work? [It doesn’t matter because no one is going to see it or use it].
3) Even if it is, ‘important’ busy work, are you the best person to do it?”
4) What percentage of time do you spend doing things that are neither challenging nor meaningful?
5) How many new skills that relate to your future will you learn this busy season?
6) Overall, how engaged are you during busy season?
7) On Sunday night, are you looking forward to another week of work, or dreading it?
8) Is your work getting the best of what you have to offer?
As an executive recruiter, I live in the world of work. I’ve interviewed thousands of candidates and helped hundreds of them achieve successful careers. All of them worked hard and all were busy. Yet they also made time for priorities outside of work. They were busy, but not too busy for things that mattered. They enjoyed success in their careers and in their personal lives [See: What does success look like for me?]
In contrast to the people who’ve enjoyed success, I’ve also interviewed hundreds of other professionals who end up in a different place. They also worked hard and were also busy. Yet, their busyness didn’t produce the same degree of success in their careers (or in their personal lives). They weren’t promoted as often, earned less money year over year and were generally less satisfied, especially on Sunday nights.
If you’ve skimmed over everything else; don’t miss this; Hard work and being busy doesn’t guarantee success. In the middle of busy season, that’s something you may wish to let sink in. [See: When hard work isn’t enough.]
In fact being busy, especially if you’re busy doing the wrong things, can be counter-productive to your success.
Consider the following:
- Busyness creates the illusion of productivity. Did you complete the most important work? What was the quality of that work?
- Unproductive busyness robs you of valuable time that should be spent on priorities of greater value. The tyranny of the urgent may misdirect your priorities away from work that truly was more important.
- Extended periods of ‘crazy busy’ are often signs of deeper structural problems (chronic staff shortages, poor planning, poor training, poor teamwork, etc.).
So what’s the difference between people who work hard and achieve success and those who also work hard, but come up short? I’ve spent years evaluating and studying successful people. I’ve always been interested in how people get to the top of their game. Beyond the intrigue of learning why what they do works, I’m also driven to find them for pragmatic reasons: these are the people my clients want to hire.
After interviewing thousands of candidates over 25 years and studying their career progressions, I’ve gained some invaluable insights. I’ll share them in subsequent posts.
Good luck through the rest of this busy season. I’m happy to share some ideas during a short conversation on what’s worked well for others. You don’t have to step in the same holes, or have your career suffer because of your blind spots.
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