In January I learned that Twitter has removed the cap on the number of accounts you can add to lists (it used to be 500) and the number of lists you can have (it used to be 20). This probably happened ages ago, so I’d been missing out on making the most of Twitter, since the limits were one of the major reasons why I never bothered with lists.

Now that you can add up to 5000 accounts to your lists and create up to 1000 lists, I’ll be using Hootsuite a lot more often to keep a tab on everything that’s going on.

You can read more about how to use Twitter effectively in my January post on the topic: Everything (!) you’ve always wanted to know about Twitter.

January is also tax-return time and again I was reminded that I really must get better at recording everything as I go along rather than pushing admin to one side to wait until I’m unbusy. Because I NEVER feel like doing the paperwork until I absolutely have to. And letting everything pile up makes the task of sorting it out far more time-consuming because I have to remember what was what and where it is.

The same goes for my monthly invoicing tasks. It’s much harder to get my invoices out and double-check that all amounts are correct if I’ve failed to jot down some of the jobs in the Excel sheet I’ve created for that purpose in the first place.

I haven’t really bothered with any business resolutions in 2016 as I’m still working on all the ones I’ve made in the past couple of years. But January has taught me that I must become more determined to stop what I’m doing for a few minutes and prioritise the admin I love to hate. Every detail of every job must be noted as it comes in, and every receipt recorded, printed and filed when it arrives.

Given that I’m in the habit of ignoring “non-urgent” emails if I’m working on a deadline or just feel like doing something else (spending time with family, walking the dogs in the sunshine, writing a blog post…), I aim to apply a similar principle to emails. Because the further they slip down the inbox list, the less likely I am to reply to some of them ever. And that’s unfortunately meant I’ve probably missed out on some job or networking opportunities.

At the beginning of the year, I created several folders to categorise emails into types to make them easier to find and act upon. And I now try (emphasis is on the try bit here) to respond asap or at the very least by the end of the day.

I really hope these measures will prevent any more stressful “where the h*ll is that” moments, especially as I need to keep an eye on my blood pressure. I’ll keep you posted.

If you enjoyed this post, then you might like to read next month’s instalment: What I learned in February 2016.

Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay

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