Opportunity vs Procrastination

Procrastination is definitely a struggle I am familiar with.  Do I have any friends out there?  I know what I need to do but often it just does not seem to get done.  Some areas of life seem more prone than others to this.  One area of my life that has seemed to be an issue is professional development.


Many of you may or may not know, that I am an accountant.  Many years of school and many hours working resulted in a level of certification.  In order to keep the professional side of my life happy, it is mandated that I do a certain number of hours of development each year.  Makes perfect sense...  We need the people handling certain areas of our lives to remain current.  I like to learn.  This really should not be an issue right???


Well, since I left the full-time workforce 11 years ago, this has been a struggle.  I started up my own little bookkeeping practice to keep my fingers in it and to keep my mind from going moldy but I have always made sure that my clients see another accountant to have their taxes done.  I know that because of my situation, I am not the best person to be advising others in this area.


One of the bonuses to being an employee is that companies are motivated to have their people remain current too.  They provide in house training and are willing to send you out to seminars and courses to keep you current.  These opportunities are often quite expensive and my current boss (me) seems o have a very limited budget to pay for these opportunities.  I am required to have 40 hours of development with at least 20 hours of verifiable learning each year.  I have had to get creative looking for opportunities that are both low cost (or better yet free), that are interesting and relevant to what I am doing while still meeting that verifiable criteria.


In the past, I have found myself in a scramble in December (the worst time of year to have to add anything at all to your schedule or budget), trying to cram in the required number of hours.  In the fight against procrastination, I have set deadlines for myself using my personal goals as part of the IHC.  Each year as I learn what is not working or realistic, I have tweaked those goals.  This year the goal was to be 60% done by the end of June and completely done by the end of November.  The idea was to push hard at the beginning of the year, allow the summer to be taken off and then finish it up in the fall.


Well, that is not what happened this year.  A couple weeks ago I stumbled across an online business summit where there were webcasts by business leaders over the period of 10 days.  I have read some of the books by these leaders or had at least heard of them.  Then the most awesome part!!!  These webcasts were going to be free!!!  But there was a catch.  They would be released at a specific time and would only be available for 24 hours.  This was an opportunity that needed to either be jumped on or paid for.  I chose to jump on it.


Procrastination did not win this round!  I have finished all of my professional development requirements for the 2017 year! 


Does this mean that I am done learning for the year?  Nope!  I love to learn but it does free me up to do it at my own leisure and not with any stress attached.  I also took pages and pages of notes, so I have lots of ideas to review and implement going forward.