I am having one of those weeks. There are lots of balls juggling in the air and I must not drop any.
There will be lots of you also feeling the same. Many people juggling work commitments, family issues, and then add studying for exams to the mix.
When life gets like this, we need to react. How can we stay calm and win? My only approach is to plan. I am a natural planner. Transfer the tabs from my brain into something visual. Make a list. Create a mind map. Prioritise what is the most important. Then start working through that list. I have an awfully long list, BUT if I take one task at a time, it will get shorter.
We must also be kind to ourselves. Make sure you do not fix the list. Make it flexible as things are changing all the time. Auditors have a detailed plan at the beginning of the audit process. They set materiality early on and design audit procedures, BUT if events change, and more information comes to light that changes the conclusions reached, they go back to the plan and adapt it. They do not carry on with the original conclusions. This would lead to a poor-quality audit and possibly the wrong opinion made on whether the financial statements are true and fair.
I now have one of my children back at home self-isolating due to a classmate testing positive with COVID-19. This has impacted on my plan. It will slow me down slightly, but I will put one foot in front of the other and react so that I still win.
How do you deal with having too many tabs open?