Using a Company to Save Tax
The book contains lots of calculations demonstrating what the best tax situation would be. To be honest I ended up skimming over a lot of these as I found it difficult to follow them as I read along, however if I do find that I need to research some of this myself (rather than just asking our accountant) then it’s good to know that they are there to go back to and look at in more detail.
If nothing else, the book has made me aware of just how much I don’t know and how complicated tax issues are. Thank goodness for accountants who are there to understand these things for us! This is an area that I obviously don’t take to naturally and I did have to force myself to keep reading at times (luckily it’s a pretty short book at 110 pages) but I feel like a better person for finishing it. Yes, it’s not an easy read but it’s a highly valuable book for the information that it imparts.
Rating: 
Buy “Using a Company to Save Tax” from Amazon >
Coping with busy workloads
Part of my renewed motivation for learning new stuff is reading other blogs to see what others are up to and what I can learn from it. Here’s a blog post that I can certainly learn from: How do you handle busy workloads?. We’re busier than we’ve ever been at the moment and it can be a struggle (not to mention stressful) to keep on top of everything.
James is right that the temptation is to do a bit of this and a bit of that to try to keep everyone happy, but this can result in very little of anything getting done. James’s advice is to:
DO ONE THING AT A TIME, DO IT WELL, DO IT TO COMPLETION AND MOVE ON TO THE NEXT THING!
I couldn’t agree more. It’s something that I find it difficult to have the discipline to do but when I have managed it then I’ve had fantastic results. The trick is to turn everything else off (yes, Emily, even your email) and clear your desk so that you only have what you need for that one task/project in front of you – in other words no distractions. If it’s something that needs complete concentration then try putting the answer phone on as well, you can always catch up on any important messages when you’re done. You then work at that one thing solidly until it’s done. The magic is that once you are completely concentrating on that one thing you can get into your zone and achieve great results.
Tomorrow is the start of a new week and I know that there are going to be many things competing for my attention. I really must try to follow this advice. Great article James!
Continuing professional development … but what?
Following the web conference yesterday, I’m all fired up for working on my continuing professional development. But there’s so much that I could cover, what should I concentrate on? Should I concentrate on the business side of things and do some reading up on how to improve the business, or should I focus on my web design skills? My problem is that I want to do everything all at once. How do I get the right balance between the two main areas of what I do?
Here are a couple of options:
- I could make a list of everything I want to learn and prioritise it, concentrating on one thing at a time
- I could alternate between the two – read a book on web design, followed by a book on business, followed by web design etc.
One thing that I know is that I find it very difficult to stay focused on one thing for very long – not because of a lack of interest, but because there are always other things fighting for my attention. I might try the second approach and see if I can keep some kind of log of what I learn so that I don’t lose track because of too much chopping and changing. Do you think I can manage an hour of reading a day? I can but try. Hopefully I’ll start having a few things to review on here again.
How do I keep space for blogging?
I don’t even want to look at when my last blog post was. What I’m finding is that as soon as work reaches a certain level of busy-ness then I completely lose the inspiration to blog. It’s a space thing – space as in time to blog, but also mental space to think about what I want to write about. I then end up feeling guilty about not blogging which isn’t good for stress levels.
So, how can I keep on top of work (of course it’s great to be so busy, I’m not complaining!) but also leave myself the space for blogging?
Getting away from work occasionally helps. I went to a fab web conference in my part of the world yesterday and have come back feeling inspired to do all sorts of things. Need to keep hold of that inspiration and not let day-to-day stuff drain it!
How can I make sure that I don’t neglect my blog so much in future? Answers on a postcard please…
