You’re a driven finance professional. You’re continually aiming higher, balancing challenging projects, and focusing diligently on your work. However, have your professional aspirations been taking up all of your free time lately? Are you compromising your well-being, your personal life, and even your sanity in order to achieve success?

This is a situation that many mid-level accountants and finance professionals find themselves in, thinking that advancing their careers must come at the expense of everything else. However, what if there was an alternative? What if you could speed up your career while regaining your time and lowering your stress levels? We’ll look at eight tactics in this blog post to help you do just that. Here’s some food for thought!

8 Ways To Reclaim Your Time Without Sacrificing Your Career Growth

Okay, so are you ready to break free from the never-ending drive and begin leading a more balanced and satisfying life, while still achieving your professional objectives? Wonderful! There is another way forward, and here are the steps to follow:

Redefine What “Productive” Looks Like

To many finance professionals, being productive conventionally means being at their desk and tackling as many tasks as possible. Being able to redefine “productive” means parking this mindset; it means understanding that working long hours does not mean bringing more value to the team. Less is often more! Today, challenge the idea that being busy does not translate to being effective. The ability to redefine “productive” also means that you’ll be able to detect which tasks are high and low impact to the team and then focus on the highest-impact tasks. 

Use Strategic Boundaries to Reclaim Time

The concept of boundaries can be useful, differentiating between your time, energy, and availability. This approach may imply setting specific “time blocks” to focus on sensitive tasks; while doing this, ensure to clearly communicate your schedule with your team. This one step will ensure that you prevent the constant interruption that often arises from responding to emails during work hours, which often extends your work hours as you try to catch-up from time spent in meetings. Being strategic with boundaries doesn’t mean saying “no” to everything, instead it means saying “yes” to the things that truly matter to you. 

Master the Power of Prioritisation

Your work as finance professionals and accountants often involves never-ending deadlines and long-term projects, and this makes the power of prioritisation an essential skill. Being able to effectively prioritise your time means you channel your time and energy to the tasks that yield the greatest return.  Being able to differentiate between what’s simply urgent and what’s actually important is essential to ensure we’re focused on the right thing at all times.

Understanding the 80/20 (Pareto Principle) also comes into play – 20% of your time results in 80% of the output, Good enough is often “good enough”.

Let Go of the Need to Be Indispensable

You may think that the more tasks you do, the more you are valued or indispensable. This is a myth! The harsh reality is that this mindset can contribute to burnout and/or resentment, and is definitely something to be avoided. When you do away with the desire to always be the one handling all the tasks, you will be able to effectively delegate tasks to your team. This, in turn, helps to develop others, allowing you more time to focus on tasks that truly matter to you. 

Embrace Technology as Your Ally

If you still use technology only for basic tasks as a finance professional or accountant, then it’s time to reconsider. For such a data-heavy field, embracing technology as an ally will help you reclaim your time without sacrificing your career growth. Technology such as automation tools and collaboration tools will help you reduce the amount of time you spend on repetitive and low-value tasks. Instead of being caught up in tedious and mundane tasks, you can become a better problem-solver using technology, and this sets you up as a forward-thinking professional, which can only be good for your career goals. 

Know When to Say No—or “Not Right Now”

You may be scared to be seen as uncooperative as a finance professional who works in a field where professional demands are often high. The dangers of always saying yes are a divided focus, an overflowing plate, and ultimately, burnout. Start by understanding that saying no is not about being mean, but it is about making a conscious choice to align one’s capacity with the right priorities. When you say “not right now” or outrightly decline a demand, you are carefully aligning your time to tasks that are relevant to your key performance indicators. This very step also shows good time management and self-awareness.

Align Your Time With Your Career Goals

Part of the core steps in defining your career goals is the ability to filter through your tasks to ensure that what you’re investing much of your time in is what brings you closer to your career goals. Instead of just doing tasks, you should ask yourself, “Is this leading me closer to achieving my career goals?” Being proactive and intentional with how much time you spend on high-impact tasks boosts your chances of achieving your career goals. 

Model Healthy Habits to Influence Culture

Although this is on a more personal level, when you model healthy habits, such as building on your foundation to improve capacity, focus, and resilience, you are not simply taking care of yourself; you are, by extension, ensuring sustained productivity and mental clarity. For a finance professional, this will be evident in your work via maintaining focus when tackling intense workloads. A healthy habit promotes a virtuous routine; you will be more efficient, focused, and resilient and achieve more with less time. All of these sum up to a better work life and progress in pursuing your career goals. Why not pop out for a lunchtime walk today?

Reclaiming your time as a finance professional doesn’t mean stepping back from your career; it means stepping into a more balanced and intentional way of working. By prioritising what truly matters, setting boundaries, and empowering others, you can create a workflow that supports both your well-being and your professional growth. Remember, the key to long-term success is not doing more but doing what matters most. It’s time to take back your time without compromising on your career.

That is why, to help you facilitate the process of gaining worklife balance, we strongly recommend you enrol for our Work Life Balance Essential Skills Course today!