#38 April 28th, 2022
Blake Carroll, CPA
PwC People Team - Manager | Helping Aspiring CPAs Navigate the CPA Exam with Confidence
Thought for the newsletter: Remember that it’s better to have the goal to study three or four hours a week for the CPA and actually do that amount than it is to have the goal to study two hours every single day and give up and quit on Tuesday because you missed Monday. If you’re not hitting your goals it’s okay to make them smaller. Progress over perfection.
This article gives advice on how to be a better leader in the workplace. It’s very interesting and may be counter intuitive that the common theme is doing less not more. Less meetings, less multitasking and more focus, less responsibilities and more delegation. Less open door time and more focused time. Less micromanaging and more trusting. Less commitments in your calendar and more time blocked off for your main priorities.?It’s about empowering your people to do what they do best so you can then focus on what you do best. As a leader what you should do best is helping your team achieve their goals and removing road blocks for them. If you are too caught up in multitasking and other small distractions you cannot do your job effectively.?
This article discusses some of the ancillary benefits that a high quality and healthy lifestyle can have in other areas of your life beyond your physical health. Often people may hire a physical trainer to help them come up with the right exercise plan or to help keep them accountable. You can do that for your career, business, or relationships as well as your physical health. Having work out friends or a community shows you the value of being with like-minded people who have similar goals. Pushing through a difficult work out is practice for doing what needs to be done even if it is uncomfortable, and it helps you prove to yourself that you can do difficult things. All of these ideas and principles are useful in every area of life, not just fitness. It’s very interesting to see how good health habits are so transferable to other areas of your well-being too.
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If you spend on only what is essential in most areas then you will be able to afford luxuries in the few areas that really do matter to you. Maybe you’re not into brands at all so that money you save on clothes can be put toward nicer vacations. What is considered a luxury or essential really varies on a person to person basis. This article challenges the reader to only spend on luxuries that are truly important to them and that they can truly afford, especially when you factor in the opportunity cost of what invested money can earn. It’s not saying be cheap or never treat yourself, it’s just saying to be very mindful about where you spend.
It’s a common experience where you prioritize something and become very successful at it, but then that breeds complacency and laziness and you start to let things slip. You start to take it for granted. Then the next thing you know you’re losing the thing you worked so hard to gain. It’s a tough cycle. This can be true of many of our relationships, marriages, or success at work. Ironically, success can breed complacency. This article challenges us to re-examine if we are still putting forth the effort into the things that were once our most important priorities. It’s really easy to start to coast and think you’re still prioritizing something when really your time and effort and investments are now in other things. Time is finite and whenever we prioritize or make a decision for one thing we are naturally making a decision against something else. We have to consciously choose where to allocate our finite time and resources, and reevaluate that periodically.
I think the vast majority of us would agree that the people in our lives are far more important than the amount of money we have, but it is good to still read more about this idea to make sure that it is reinforced and being lived out day-to-day. I liked the line that your bank account will not physically be sitting with you on your vacation. We can save money, invest money,?or spend money, and frequently we will get much more of a sense of joy from spending on others rather than just ourselves. Money makes a bad master, but it can be a great tool for deepening connections and relationships with others.?