Busyness has become something of a badge of honour, yet it is the very thing that scatters our focus and slashes our effectiveness.

Donna McGeorge is a Melbourne-based writer and keynote speaker who specialises in productivity and helping professionals achieve more in less time. Her latest book, Red Brick Thinking, offers a manifesto for smarter, simpler and more powerful decision making about what you do, why you do it and how you can lighten the load.

McGeorge says that overwhelm and busyness are pervasive and that accounting and finance professionals are among the hardest hit.

“The work is deadline-driven, compliance-heavy and increasingly client-facing, while the culture rewards busyness over effectiveness,” she says. “Every year, new requirements and systems get added, without anything being removed. The result is finance teams running on permanent surge capacity, with no margin left for the strategic work that differentiates them.”

Here, she shares five tips to help CAs eliminate time-wasting activities and create more space in their week.

1. Identify low-value tasks and audit your time for hidden waste

For CAs who aren’t already using timesheets, McGeorge recommends tracking where your time goes for two weeks, including the shadow work – those things that don’t always make it onto Gantt charts or timesheets. Then, apply two filters to every task: how much brainpower does it require and does it actually move anything forward?

“Most people are genuinely shocked by the result,” says McGeorge. “For accountants, the biggest culprits are reports nobody acts on, meetings attended out of habit rather than necessity and email chains that substitute for a five-minute decision.”

2. Eliminate unnecessary meetings and set strict agendas

Set all meetings to 25 minutes by default and require a purpose or outcome for all participants, says McGeorge.

“Purpose trumps agenda, so in the notes for every meeting, finish this sentence: ‘By the end of this meeting it would be great if …’.”

Protect at least one morning per week as a no-meeting focus block for your team.

“Review every recurring meeting quarterly and ask whether it still needs to exist at its current frequency,” McGeorge suggests. “Most teams find they can eliminate 30% of their meetings without anyone missing them.”

3. Push back on low-priority requests and learn to say no

McGeorge says that when asked to take on a new task, the best response is: ‘I can take this on, but what should come off my plate to make room?’.

“This shifts the conversation from refusal to prioritisation,” she says. “If timing is the issue, be specific, such as saying, ‘I can’t give this the attention it deserves before end of quarter so can we revisit in two months?’.”

A clear, respectful ‘no’ delivered early is far less damaging to relationships than a reluctant ‘yes’ that leads to late or half-hearted work.

4. Leverage automation and batch tasks

Think about the tasks your team performs repeatedly, to a consistent standard, and using predictable inputs. For example, reconciliations, exception reporting, approval routing and template-based reporting are all strong candidates for automation.

Batching similar tasks – such as processing all invoices in one session or returning calls during a designated window – can reduce cognitive switching costs, which quietly consume productive capacity. 

For any repetitive task, McGeorge recommends considering whether a well-designed system could complete it to the same standard, freeing a skilled person to focus on work that truly requires their expertise.

5. Protect time for deep thinking, analysis and problem solving

Schedule dedicated time for deep analytical work before your calendar fills up – ideally in the first two hours of the day when cognitive alertness is highest, says McGeorge.

“Treat this time as non-negotiable, like a client meeting, and signal your unavailability clearly to your team,” she says. If you can’t find 90 uninterrupted minutes in your calendar, she adds, that’s likely why strategic work keeps getting pushed aside.

McGeorge says the most important shift is to stop measuring contribution by output volume and start measuring it by outcome quality.

“The professionals who will be most valuable are not those who do the most but those who do the right things, clearly and consistently, with enough margin to think well.”

Read more

Red Brick Thinking: Make Space. Find Focus. Move Forward, by Donna McGeorge is available at the CA Library and good book stores.

You can also read Five tips to be more productive on the Acuity website.