accounting manager brings order to her personal and professional life
“Personal and lifestyle habits influence professional habits and vice versa, so addressing the latter while ignoring the former is a painful way to grow.”
situation
When Erika Lind expressed a desire for personal development and career advancement, her manager, Sara Shelp, was happy to support her. Sara suggested that Erika take Marcey’s self-paced Work Well. Play More! Masterclass.
Erika is the self-proclaimed “boss of the accountants” at a large data storage and management corporation. And Sara is Vice President of Accounting and Business Operations.
Having worked one-on-one with Marcey for executive coaching, Sara had been applying the lessons learned to leading her team and sharing Marcey’s tips with them for years. So after walking Erika through setting goals around improving motivation and productivity, Sara knew the Work Well. Play More! Masterclass would provide Erika with the tools she needed to grow.
Two other factors make Marcey’s Masterclass a great fit for Erika. First, because it is available as a self-paced class, Erika can watch the videos and read the relevant parts of the book whenever it fits into her demanding schedule. Second, given that Erika has goals to improve in all three areas — productivity, decluttering, and health — the Masterclass covers all her bases.
opportunity
As an accountant for 25 years, Erika prides herself on staying on task and doing everything by the book. However, as the manager, the number and types of daily tasks she has to keep organized have vastly increased.
She has direct reports, who ask her accounting questions, tech questions, and need to schedule one-on-one meetings with her. On top of being a manager of people, Erika also has business management responsibilities. She works on special projects — the part of her job which she enjoys the most because she says those projects “fuel her.”
To stay on top of all of these moving parts, Erika needs to strategize, plan, and follow through. The productivity tips in the Masterclass are designed to bring order to just this type of workplace challenge. On a personal level, Erika also has goals to improve her health and make decluttering “less of a chore, more natural, and just easier.”
Says Erika, “increasing productivity and motivation go hand-in-hand. Everything Marcey covers helps me figure out how to better integrate my work life and my personal life, so I feel motivated whether I’m doing a work project or working on myself.”
It’s tempting for anyone with a demanding job, like Erika’s, to compartmentalize. When we’re stressed at work, we let our health go and the clutter piles up. Compartmentalizing is a coping mechanism we use when we’re feeling especially overwhelmed. What we don’t realize, as Sara points out, is that personal and lifestyle habits influence professional habits and vice versa, so addressing the latter while ignoring the former is a painful way to grow.
Besides improving motivation and productivity in general, Erika set the following specific goals for the Masterclass:
- Focus during each video class session (no task-switching!)
- Keep a list of the key takeaways that she believed would make the biggest impact for her
- Discuss what she has learned with Sara each month
- Update Sara (and herself) about what’s “sticking” and why (vs. looking at what isn’t “sticking” and why!)
result
Whenever she gets a request through email, she schedules time to deal with it on her calendar so she doesn’t forget. The organization means “I always know, at a glance, where I’m at on the three or four things I’m working on.”
Erika has also found the productivity tips about managing her Inbox to be a game-changer. Now that she schedules blocks of time to process email, she can focus on her work the rest of the day without being constantly pulled away by her notifications.
As a result of taking the self-paced Masterclass paired with Marcey’s book, Work Well. Play More! Productive, Clutter-Free, Healthy Living — One Step At a Time, Erika feels more in control of her life. She is more comfortable in her work habits, her health has improved, and she has a better system for decluttering.
Also, because participants receive lifetime access to the Masterclass, Erika knows she can revisit the modules again and again. This is great because the book includes sequential levels (Novice, Pro, Master). It’s designed for gradual and continual improvement in all three areas. This is not the kind of online course you sign up for and forget about two weeks later.
In addition to the videos and the book, Marcey offers other support that Erika says enhances the self-paced experience. First, Marcey’s Focus90™ sessions give you a chance to do focused work silently together with others via Zoom, so you feel less alone in doing the work. Erika describes Focus90™ as having a “screen full of accountability buddies.”
Also, Erika finds the “Ask My Anything” sessions to be a great resource. “You get some facetime with Marcey where she answers questions submitted ahead of time. I learned about Loom* during an AMA session and it came in handy when my team upgraded to Office 365.” Any concerns about not finishing the self-paced Masterclass fall by the wayside when you discover what support options work for you.
Erika is thrilled that Sara suggested Marcey’s Masterclass. The videos combined with the book and support are just what Erika needed to bring order to her personal and professional life.
Interested in learning more about the masterclass?
