Tick, tock

Last year was probably the busiest year of my life from a professional perspective. I have never had so much work on my desk, or so many potential clients wanting to speak with me. I have been working longer and longer hours, regularly at weekends and my time for unwinding and relaxing is becoming increasingly limited.

So I have decided to make a new year's resolution; not one with no chance of success like giving up alcohol or eating less or going to the gym regularly. But a realistic one; I am going to improve my work life balance.

Unfortunately, marching out of the office at 5pm every evening is not an option. Therefore I need to decide how to work smarter. How can I achieve the same results in less time? I started trying to do this a couple of years ago when the length of time I was spending commuting began to annoy me.

Even though I was only spending just under two hours a day commuting, it was still too much. I solved this by moving to BKL Tax, who are based in Finchley, near where I live. I duly reduced my daily commute by 90 minutes, and agreed with myself to split my new found time equally between the office and my bed. Both of which are greatly preferable to, and more productive than being stuck on the underground.

The usual suspects

Once I get to the office, the current bane of my life is emails. I am currently receiving about 100 a day, most of which are rubbish and the delete button on my keyboard is almost worn out. The problem with emails is that they are too easy to send. An email that took 10 minutes to draft can be sent to 10,000 people at the click of a button. So now, I am going to unsubscribe from all unsolicited emails and certain people are going to have their emails automatically deposited into spam. And no reading office emails between 9pm and 8am in the morning, unless there is a major transaction on.

Another major source of wasted time are referrals from the firm's website. Don't get me wrong, the website does throw up some great clients, but it also throws up a lot of time wasters. I am therefore going to become more ruthless with potential clients. No more extended telephone conversations or free meetings. I am going to try to learn how to say no.

While I hate to turn potential clients away, we all know that there are a lot of people out there who are merely fishing for free information.
I had one person a few weeks ago who was speaking to three different people in the office simultaneously, promising to sign up as a client but clearly with no intention of doing so.

Therefore I need a more stringent quality control on potential new clients. No more gestures of goodwill and no more unrealistic quotations. After all, I am only making a rod for my own back. In my experience, the earlier the subject of a letter of engagement is raised, the sooner a certain type of potential client loses interest.

I am also going to learn the art of delegation. Instead of taking the lead on everything and assuming that only I could possibly deal with it, I will look for reasons why someone else cannot deal with it. I have always believed in giving people a chance to show how good they are and how quickly they can learn. This is an opportunity to help both me and them simultaneously. Anyone with a vaguely unoccupied look on their face will now be the recipient of my overflow.

Finally, I need to work more efficiently. One of my friends swears by taking a break each lunch time to walk around the block. This may only take 15 minutes, however he does it no matter how busy he is. He says it clears his head and improves his concentration for the afternoon. So from now on, it's once around the Tescos (above which our offices are located) every lunchtime to improve my concentration levels.

Hopefully 2016 will be just as successful, but a little less hectic. 

Geraint Jones is a tax partner at BKL Tax

He writes the regular in-practice article on doing business for Private Client Adviser