As an enrolled agent, the tax season can be a stressful time of the year. With clients demanding services, and the need to be accurate and efficient with your services, the workload can be overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
With just a few tips and tricks, enrolled agents can manage their stress levels and get through even the busiest portions of the tax season with ease.
By instituting easy-to-implement strategies, enrolled agents can proactively manage their stress levels and enjoy a more productive busy season. In this blog, we’ll discuss stress management tips enrolled agents can employ when confronting and managing stress.
Small business stress management tips
Tax season can be a stressful time of year for enrolled agents. With clients demanding their services, the workload can be overwhelming. It’s important to have a plan in place to manage stress so that you can focus on the task at hand.
Whether it’s identifying stressors, prioritization techniques, or creating a calm working structure to rely upon, there are a number of steps you can take to manage your stress. From the experts at Surgent CPE, here are our five tips for managing stress heading into tax season.
1. Identify your stressors
Being able to identify your stressors is a superpower when managing stress. Once you have identified the sources of your stress, it is important to take steps to address them. Whether your stressors include taking on too many clients, working under unrealistic timelines, or struggling to establish boundaries with your work, it’s vital to be aware of your stressors. After all, if you can’t identify them, you can’t fix them.
Being mindful of your emotional state and taking care of yourself will help you manage stress in the long run. Even if you’re unable to control the stressors impacting you, practicing positive self-talk and challenging negative thoughts can help to reduce anxiety and stress levels. Ultimately, understanding the sources of your stress is the first step to managing it.
2. Create structure and build a reliable schedule
Creating a structure and building a reliable schedule can help alleviate stress, as it helps to keep you organized and on track. Having a plan for how to tackle the workload and sticking to it will be beneficial in reducing stress.
When workloads grow, allocating a specific amount of time each day to complete tasks will also enable you to stay focused and productive. This will ensure that stress levels are kept at bay so that you can focus on achieving your goals. Stress management should be taken seriously, as it is key in helping you reach your full potential – and devising a structure for your work will help your productivity and stress management.
3. Prioritize your time
Prioritizing your time is essential to managing stress during the tax season. Establishing a system to prioritize tasks based on their importance is one of the key tips for managing stress during the busy tax season.
With your priorities in focus, it is important to start by tackling the most important tasks first, as they provide the most value to your clients and will help you stay focused and organized. Once those prioritized tasks are complete, move on to the less important tasks throughout the day. This will help you manage your time more effectively, allowing you to complete all of your tasks in an organized and efficient manner.
4. Delegate and outsource tasks
Another stress management tip that can be useful during the tax season is to delegate and outsource tasks. Delegation with the right work allows you to free up your time and focus so you can make an impact on other important projects or priority work. Handing work to an associate can help you stay organized, reduce stress and make the entire process of the busy season more manageable. Additionally, it can also provide you with the opportunity to explore new ways of working and learn from different perspectives.
5. Unplug during your off time
Taking time off for yourself during the tax season is perhaps the most important stress management tip. Not only does it help you stay focused and refreshed, but it also provides an opportunity for you to spend time with your family and friends.
Reading a book or going for a walk are excellent activities that can help take your mind off of work. When you come back to work after taking a break, you’ll find that you have increased motivation and productivity. It is important to remember that taking a break from work is not an excuse to be lazy; rather, it should be used as an effective way to manage stress and make sure everything runs smoothly.
Surgent specific content about what makes us unique
Surgent provides numerous continuing professional education (CPE) courses to help reduce stress levels for accounting professionals – during tax season and throughout the year. The Accounting Leader’s Survival Guide course offers guidance for accounting managers on how to tackle the ever-changing workplace and the related stress before it affects them in a negative way. It seeks to arm accounting leaders with skills to effectively manage the ever-changing work environment and the associated stress.
In this course you will learn how to:
- Identify the types of organizational change
- Assess yourself to better understand your approach to change
- Identify emotional and transitional stages of change
- Identify individual change styles
- Describe how to employ techniques for keeping morale high
- Identify how change and chaos can cause stress and a lack of productivity
- Apply techniques for reducing stress
Conclusion
Tax season can be a stress-inducing experience for enrolled agents and CPAs, but you can manage your stress and make the most of it by following a few straightforward procedures.
It’s vital to acknowledge your stressors, make a plan and plan a dependable schedule, prioritize your time, delegate and outsource tasks, and make sure to take a break during your free time. With these easy steps, you can handle your stress and make it through the busy season with ease. To find out more about CPE courses from Surgent, explore our CPE course database.
Surgent is a leader in the area of continuing professional education (CPE) for accounting and financial professionals. We provide more than 1,500 CPE webinars every year, a comprehensive library of self-study courses, customized in-firm seminars and training, and accounting exam prep programs for multiple core credentials and certifications.