It being the 4th quarter of 2025, I’ve been doing my usual review of the last quarter and making plans for the 4th quarter. This quarter’s plan is to return to the basics of business.
- Reduce unnecessary or redundant tasks in order to improve productivity.
- Reduce expenses to improve profitability.
- Increase income.
Yes indeed, those are the basics. Not exactly S.M.A.R.T though. That is an acronym for making tasks:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time bound
However, these high level goals serve as a set of principles for me this quarter to try to move in a positive direction.
So far I’ve changed the way I’m doing time entry to only record time on billable tasks. This helps realize both goals 1 and 3 by reducing busywork of creating time entry records for things I simply wasn’t looking back at, as well as allows me to try to focus on spending more time on doing billable tasks (what you track is a priority)
Next, I’ve reduced monthly spending on my Internet service bill by $25. Although a small win, that will mean for the next year I’ll realize a savings of $300. That’s better than a sharp stick in the eye (by a long shot!)
I’ve also started looking at the tasks I’m performing and looking for things I can either delegate (possibly by hiring a part time assistant), automate, or stop doing. Email is something I’ve identified I’d like to do something about. I receive dozens of emails throughout the day, many of which are cold contact sales or ads or things I don’t normally read. I spend a good chunk of time (say 30 – 60 minutes depending on volume) each day either reading or managing the emails. I’ll bet I can reduce that down to 15 minutes or so.
Each week I will continue to work on moving the 3 needles for my business and make progress towards my goals.
In terms of Access, I’d also like to continue finding ways to be more productive and continuing to learn how to use new technologies like AI for assistance and automation. One workflow I’ve been starting to use involves using a PowerShell script to consolidate the exported text objects from my Access database in order to upload to CoPilot for full ability to analyze, recommend solutions, and find areas which I’ll need to change based on customer requirements. The workflow is still developing. I’ve also started to script the SQL database schema and library code into the process.
Hope your 4th quarter is going well!