Of course, the longer I put off paying this pledge, the more guilty I feel, and the more I owe at once. I think I just need to decide on an amount that I think I can afford this year, and tell myself its an unavoidable expense. Maybe an unavoidable expense that I don't need to pay until... say... July?

By the way, busy season is not a good time for budgeting. I end up being owed thousands in reimbursements at the end of each month, and it's tougher to keep track of with all of the traveling. I think I will post budget updates again in March, when I'm not traveling anymore. I am out of town again next week, back for a week, and then gone for the rest of February. It'll be March in no time!

I've been spending time thinking deep thoughts recently instead of blogging - do I want to commit to making it at my firm? Do I want to switch firms and try to get a bump in salary in a year? Do I want to do a PhD?? That last one is a tough question, and probably deserves a whole post of its own.

Anyway, busy season is keeping me focused on just working - which is actually much more interesting and fun when there is so much to do! I'm glad I'm not a senior yet though, because they are already slammed and stressed out... ah, a bright future ahead of me, right?

Accounting Resume Advice 

Jobs in accounting are increasing faster than average in the current job market, and many aspiring accountants are ready to fill those positions. To stand out above the throngs of other candidates for the job, one should be sure to present the best possible image of themselves to their prospective employer. An excellent resume is the way to get the interview and get ahead of the crowd. Here are some tips for impressing hiring managers who read your resume.

Maintain An Eye For Detail

Errors in punctuation, grammar, or spelling will make any resume look worse. On accounting resumes, even the smallest errors could undermine the rest of the presentation--hiring managers don't want inattentive accountants on staff when they're crunching numbers that represent big money to the company. Read, re-read, and have a friend review it as well to ensure that your resume is not ruined by something so easily prevented.

What Accounting Employers Want To Hear

Always remember what hiring managers want to see on your accounting resume. Keep in mind skills, accomplishments, and certifications in your accounting areas of expertise. The employer will want to be able to clearly see that qualifications for the job are well-met by the employee, and that they will be worth interviewing. Remember to use the language of the accounting profession; the proper lingo can go a long way in creating an image of somebody who meets the qualifications and fits in at the job.

Accounting-Related Skills

List all of your computer and technical skills that are used in the accounting profession. These can include computer programs you have mastered, special skills you have taken courses in, and unique specialties gained through experience in a previous job. You can look at accounting resume examples for ideas on what to write about.  Be colorful in describing value you imparted in past job accomplishments--make them interesting to further set you apart in terms of your value as an accountant.

Lifestyle & Character

Employers will prefer somebody who is lively and passionate, not just a boring number-cruncher, so it can be valuable to mention one's hobbies and activities outside of work. Mention any volunteering experiences as well. This helps to paint a picture of somebody who is well-rounded and active, who is more likely to show initiative and be a joy to manage and work with. Take the time to emphasize your social skills, leadership abilities, and more to show just how valuable you can be to the team. However, be wary of divulging info that gives away race, age, or religion--a prospective employer might respond by trashing your resume to avoid being accused of discrimination in hiring.

Testimonials

Testimonials from past employers can go a long way in impressing hiring managers. The praise of a former boss or prominent member of the community could improve your status significantly in the eyes of a prospective accounting employer. Listing references on a resume has become less common, which makes the tactic of including a written testament initially even more effective by comparison.

Social Networking Info

These days, online social networking is ubiquitous and practically everyone is online--including accountants and their employers. With this in mind, profiles and online utterances should be kept in line with what you would want current and future employers to hear. You should strive to keep a professional image on sites like Facebook and Twitter to avoid sabotaging your accounting career. If you've kept everything clean and are comfortable, you may wish to include LinkedIn or even other social networking site handles on your resume so prospective employers can further check you out. If you list your email address, make sure it is a professional one that reflects well on you as a potential employee.

Okay, so public accounting may not lend itself well to dramatic story lines... I've tried to think up a comic where an accountant could be the superhero, and it just isn't happening. Nope, all anyone ever wants from us is to answer their tax questions, and it turns out that us auditors don't typically even know the answers to those questions. (We all do audit AND tax at my firm, but I still don't know a whole lot about individual taxes.)

Our busy-season interns began work this week. I feel like I have plenty to do, but end up billing so little, because I have been running around the office, meeting with different people, making sure the interns know how to use the software and the scanner whenever I give them a task... nothing takes as long as I think it will!

I'm trying to make an effort to redistribute some work to the interns and the first-years, because I want to practice assigning other people work before it's a required part of my job. I've already made a few mistakes where the first year staff did the work completely differently than how I wanted it, but it was perfectly understandable that they'd think that's what I wanted! I have a manager who gives me assignments without taking the time to fully understand what he's assigning me, and it drives me up the wall some days. I don't want to be managing like that when I'm a 5th or 6th year, so hopefully if I practice more now, I'll be an expert by then!

Some thoughts about managing other people

There is a certain art to this process. I am lucky enough to work with a manager who is good at knowing better than I will exactly how long work should take me, and he anticipates where I'll run into problems. I need to learn (for starters) how to answer the following questions:

• How much to show someone, and how much to let them figure out on their own? Am I explaining something obvious, or missing out on some key information?
• How long will this assignment take them? If I'm having an intern do the cash section for me, is it going to take them four hours, or is it going to take them two days?
• How long will it take me to review this work? I need to be able to factor that into my own schedule for the day.

The places where the less experienced manager frustrates me are the following (I'm noting these to try to figure out how to avoid them myself - the bits in italics are my thoughts on what I can learn from this):

•  Assigning me work that he doesn't know how to do - not because he's bad at his job, but just because with all the different state tax forms, forms pop up now and then that neither of us have seen before. The issue in these cases is not that I can't figure it out the same way he would - the issue is when he has done some of the research, say, calling the state revenue department, but since I wasn't on that call, I'm not really understanding the 2nd-hand instructions from the revenue department.
• Perhaps a solution to this situation is to make sure whoever is working on an unknown issue has all of the information I have? Be sure to forward all emails related to the situation to the staff member who will be researching it, and tell them to feel free to call the state again if they need to talk to someone there.
• Pointing out errors in my work that are not my errors. Now, this is probably more of an issue on my side, but in accounting, it's very important to pay attention to details. So when someone points out you've made a mistake, and it turns out it's their mistake, I find it difficult to just smile and nod and not point it out to them.
• I think the only answer to this as a manager is to be prepared for other staff being defensive as well - it doesn't mean I shouldn't point out true errors to them - it's important for them to get in the habit of using spellcheck, to continue the example - but if I feel it's important enough to point it out to them, then I should also be okay with it being important enough for them to be defensive about, if it's not their error.
• Telling us that we should use his advice on all of our jobs, when it's well-known that every partner's team does things differently. It's always best to check with your manager on that specific job how things should be organized.
• At the very least, I don't want to have the ego to insist that my way will be useful on every job. When giving advice to newbies on best-practices - make sure I understand myself what different methods are in use in our firm, and whether my way is contradicting any firm policies.

My main takeaway from working with this manager is - don't be afraid to tell people you don't know. This guy is inexperienced, and it shows, but he tries to bluff his way through, and act confident, but it just makes him seem like a jerk. The sad part is that as regular people, I would much prefer to hang out with the inexperienced manager rather than the experienced one. In a work setting though, I vastly prefer having the experienced manager, and our interactions have much less tension involved. Being friends with the staff members who work under you doesn't make you a better boss to them.

Any thoughts out there on the growing pains of learning how to manage other people? Ever had someone who was your supervisor/boss who just drove you crazy with their management style? Please share your advice/thoughts/stories of horrible/awesome bosses below!

The artist of Dinosaur Comics attributes a lot of his success to this factor. For those unfamiliar with the comic (I'm a big fan), the concept is that the comic uses the same exact visual layout, but different dialogue in each strip. The author posts a strip every weekday, and has more than 4 years of comics, which all manage to maintain originality and hilarity. However, it's a comic than many people find weird and different, and not at all what they're interested in.

Twenty five years ago, Dino Comics would probably have been a 'zine photocopied and distributed in local used book stores. The comic likely would not have been popular enough with mainstream readers to ever get syndicated in a newspaper. Thanks to the internet, those of us who do like this type of comic can easily access it, the author has access to as many fans as possible, and no one who dislikes it is forced to read it (by having it show up in their daily newspaper.)

As an avid consumer of words, I love the access the web gives me to other people who like to put their thoughts down in writing on their blogs. It assuages some of my yearning for a world where we would still write handwritten letters to each other - really putting some thought in before writing. E-mails are a great way to stay connected, but they are more like a quick phone call than a letter.

So, what has the web allowed you to do that would be unimaginable without the far-reaching tendrils of the internet? What would you like to use the web for more in the upcoming year?

I'd like to use the web more to connect with people this year. I was better at developing lasting relationships with people online when I was 14 and the internet was a place where I could share my (awful) poetry and art and be inspired by other people who were interested in those same things. I guess I was ahead of my time then, haha. But I would like to get involved in more communities of things that interest me, and learn from them. All I need is a little time to practice my hobbies in, once I've learned more about them online...

Did you get everything you hoped for under your tree this Christmas? My sister and I had similar ideas - I made and dried homemade pasta as gifts, and my sister made chocolate truffles for all of us! We used almost the exact same type of containers to present our gifts in too!

I gave my mother a book on setting up her new vegetable garden, which will used largely by me as I'm supposed to be in charge of the vegetables. The book says we should plant in "early spring." Does anyone know what counts as early spring? In Georgia, the weather can be lovely and spring-like as early as February. Usually by the time busy season is over in April, the weather is getting almost uncomfortably warm already. Hopefully I can steal a few Sundays to get some planting in.

Tomorrow is my last day of holiday/PTO until April. (We don't get any holidays and are not allowed to take PTO during busy season - except for illnesses and sick children, etc.) I'm dreading it a bit, but I think it'll be fun once busy season begins and I start getting into the swing of things.

Have you been planning out your New Year's resolutions yet, or are you waiting for the holiday daze to wear off first?

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/carodeanroaddesigns/

I've had a huge fight in the past with fellow college students who got upset with me for not driving them home when they were drunk (they had to walk the mile back to their dorm.) I know of other people who happily shepherd their group of drunk friends to wherever they need to go, but I just can't be bothered to hang out with people who can't figure out how to get themselves home.

Responsiblity for other people

Mostly, it seems this is a problem around drunk people, but at what point do you think you are responsible for taking care of your drunk friends, and at what point do they need to start thinking responsibly before they get drunk? The worst-case scenario I've heard of is a group of friends I made when I studied abroad. The previous semester, they had been friends with another American exchange student. They went to a party one night with her, but when it was time to leave, she refused to go with them. They talked and tried to convince her, but short of picking her up and shoving her in their car, they didn't think there was much else they could do. So they left her at the party and she ended up getting raped that night. I don't think that she blamed her friends, but they carried around a lot of guilt for that night. For not going back to the party after an hour, and seeing if she would leave then for example.

How far does your responsibility for drunk humans extend? How well do you need to know someone before you find yourself their appointed guardian for making sure that they get home in one piece?

Initial thoughts on the debt pay-off plan so far

Paying over $1,000/month towards my student loans really cramps my lifestyle. I hate the fact that by this time next year, I won't be in any better position to buy a home, because I'm not putting any cash aside right now for a future down payment. I will be debt-free though - two and a half years after graduation. I only took out student loans for my final year of college, but it's going to take me 2 years of working, even with a good salary, limiting my travel, eating out, and clothes shopping, in order to pay back the money I spent in one year as a student.

I'm glad that I did take out these loans though, because it's a fairly small amount of loan to pay off, but has really given me a taste for how easy it is to get in debt, and how difficult it could be to get out of it.

Getting into debt is scarily easy

Monthly pay outs make debt seem so much larger than the original borrowing ever was.

Last year, I set myself up with a credit card that had an introductory 0% APR for 12 months. We buy plane tickets and book hotel rooms on our own credit cards at work, and it can take a few weeks to get reimbursed. Since I wasn't sure I'd always have enough cash on hand in my own account to pay this off at the end of each month (if I hadn't received reimbursement yet), I opened the 0% APR card so that I wouldn't need to pay any interest if I had to let a balance sit for awhile.

So, in April last year, let's say I had a balance of $2,000 of reimbursable expenses on the credit card. I received a reimbursement check for $2,000. But I decided to keep the cash from the check, and pay off the credit card a little bit each month, so that I would have more cash in the bank in case of an emergency.

The 0% rate expired on November 1^st, so I had 6 months of payments. Even with a small debt of $2,000, that's still over $300/month! I realized how much of a pain it was to pay that $333 each month. I realized that without sitting down and figuring out my monthly payments, I didn't really have a great idea of how much delaying repayment would take out of my paycheck each month. It took more discipline to make the monthly payments, and to avoid using the extra cash in my bank account, than it would have to just repay the money with the reimbursement check to begin with.

Luckily, if you need help with debt management, there are plenty of companies and organizations out there that will help you develop a realistic debt management plan that works for you.

Debt in the future

At some point, I would like to be able to buy a house. Preferably sooner, rather than later. Right now, I'm not sure if I'll still be living in the same place in five years, so I should probably wait to buy until then. I'm hoping that will be my only debt acquired in the next 30-or-so years. And hopefully, the debt management practices I've learned from these smaller debts will help me making paying off the mortgage a priority!

Photo by Shazwan

The students that *do* learn in this format are the ones who are motivated to learn, and would be able to learn it on their own from a book without the lectures anyway. One argument presented in the segment is that this model was fine when only an elite few would attend college and could take it or leave it. Now, many people go to college, and as a nation we *need* those people to come out well-educated - we can't put up with a system that only educates a few of the people who pass through it.

You can listen to the segment here (Link at the bottom of the page)

Or: Read an article summarizing the discussion here

My own opinion on that point is that today the government is paying for many of these people to go to college, and if we're going to invest money in them, we should make sure they come out educated.

The segment covers some interactive techniques that supposedly work better. The main issue is that the classes can't cover as much material in a semester. Even if students really come out knowing more than if they just learned 10% of the full curriculum, this is an issue for majors with rigid accreditation requirements, like Engineering.

Learning about how people learn makes me really want to be a professor, but then hearing about how difficult it was for any professors to implement these techniques in their classroom was disheartening.

Do you think that people who aren't interested in learning aren't going to get it no matter what? Or do you think alternative teaching techniques can result in better-educated students graduating from our universities. What about applying these techniques at the high school level?

The other part that makes training week difficult to keep up with is having multiple social events related to the training (since we have people from our out of town offices in town for training.) Then you end up being out even later, and leaving more work to be done on the other days.

I guess my point is - this is going to be a busy Saturday for me. Guess it's busy season again already!

Six Motivators for Productivity

Whether you work for a large corporation, a mom and pop company or even at home in your pajamas, your success depends on your production. Getting the job done is vital, if you are the world’s greatest author (with all unfinished books) who knows?  Regularly slacking off and not completing assigned tasks from your boss will quickly earn you a trip to the unemployment line. Of course, staying motivated and on task is often a difficult thing, especially in an era where the distractions seem to multiple almost daily. I am admittedly a procrastinator, but even I have found some little tools and techniques to trick me into buckling down and breezing through my workload.  Here are some of my ideas.

Schedule your Time

Working for someone else, your supervisor will set your working hours, and likely tell you what to do. However, if you work from home, the work/home lines blur, whether you are telecommuting or a freelancer. Balance is vital, so you must set “working hours” just as if you were going to an office, and respect them. Set yourself up a quiet space to work, and let family and friends know you are working. Try not to tend to home matters during your scheduled time, and even more importantly, STOP when your allotted production hours are up! This may seem counter-intuitive, but you must make time for yourself and your family to be at your best. Keep in mind Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Do you really want to waste days on a project you could finish and submit in just hours?

Little Bites

Staring at a mountain of work can be daunting, and it can be difficult to realize where to start. In this situation, I always remember something an old supervisor used to say: You cannot eat an elephant in a day. You can take small regular bites out of that beast, though.

Having lots of work is an awesome thing, and completing it timely is what ensures continued work orders. I now make a master list of all of the projects I am currently working on, and their deadlines. Once I have that, I figure how much of each project needs done per day, and I make a loose schedule. If I have extra time when my daily goal is completed, I continue until my allotted time is up --and often surprise myself by getting two or three day’s work finished.  (Now I know I can also pick up some additional work.)

Set a Productive Mood

Much like candlelight and flowers sets a mood for romance, setting the mood for productivity encourages it. My desk is near the window so that I can see outside-which is vital to my well-being. Music is another thing I need to be at my best. I cannot be cold, or I am totally undone. You get the idea, right?  Set your environment up in whatever way is most comfortable and least distracting for you and you will get the most done.

Regular Breaks

Get up and walk away from your work regularly. Short, five-minute breaks to do a few stretches, grab a cup of coffee, or walk on your treadmill can do wonders for your productivity. Instead of banging your head on your desk, get up and clear it on a regular basis and you will find that your focus is much better. Just keep your breaks short and get back at it quickly. I usually will work steady for two hours, with just five minute breaks, and then take a half hour to walk the dogs, make a sandwich, or check out Facebook before getting back to it.

Time Yourself and Kill Distractions

The internet is a wonderful platform, but it is also a major time sucker. Games, celebrity gossip, news, Twitter, Facebook, and all the shopping sites are great for down time—but horrible when you are trying to work. Do yourself a favor and stay away from them altogether during the time you should be working. In fact, if you can work without getting online, so much the better.

One great way to be productive is to set a timer for 20 or 25 minutes and work feverishly through that time. When the alarm goes off, you take a break. Do this for just one full day, and I guarantee you will get more done than you have in ages.

A great little, free tool I have found is Strict Pomodoro, which is a Google Chrome extension.  Not only does it time your work and break sessions, you also set up sites to disable while you are working. Is Facebook a problem? Not anymore!

Check it off and Reward Yourself

Checking off my daily tasks gives me a sense of accomplishment, so I love using a task list to track things. I have even downloaded a task list app for my Smartphone that synchronizes with Google, so I have my list even on the go. I prioritize my list, with the top three to five most important things on top, and I mark those that are in drop dead time--- in other words, get ‘em done, now! When I complete all of the important tasks, plus any urgent ones, I reward myself with something… it can be as simple as watching a favorite comedy show on TV, grabbing a Klondike bar out of the freezer, or taking a nice long bubble bath. Even better, when I have a full week of good days, the husband and I go out for a nice romantic meal.

Those are my little tips, now how about you? How do you motivate yourself to be productive? What tools do you use to encourage you to get down to the nitty gritty?

Denise Gabbard is a writer and blogger. She writes about a wide range of topics—writing, social media, travel, even personal finance and topics like import car insurance.