Some Days Don’t Come With Checkmarks

There are days when I can sit down at my computer and just start knocking things out. I answer emails, categorize transactions, check in on client accounts, pull reports, send something I’ve been meaning to send, and cross one thing after another off my list. Those days feel fantastic. Every time I finish something, there’s another little hit of “DONE,” and that momentum makes it easier to move right into the next thing.

Then there are the days when I open QuickBooks and spend the next six hours working on one problem. Those days feel very different.

I’ve had several of them lately. One issue involves an account where something wasn’t set up correctly and what initially looked like a fairly contained problem is turning out to trace back years. I’m still working through that one because there is a LOT to sort through. It means going through line after line of transactions, tracing things backward, figuring out what happened and when, and trying to determine where everything first went sideways.

There are only so many hours I can stare at that much data before my eyes start crossing and my brain stops cooperating, so I have to walk away from it periodically. I’ll go make lunch for the kiddos, sit and read with them for a while, get outside for a bit to sit in the grass and ground myself, or find something else to do that doesn’t involve staring at a computer screen. Then I’ll come back and start digging again.

Sometimes I’ll take what is supposed to be a ten-minute break and check Facebook or YouTube. Except I don’t actually set a timer, and 45 minutes later I realize I’ve fallen into the abyss. I’m not going to pretend every minute of my day is secretly productive just because I can come up with a reason for it. Sometimes I screwed around on Facebook for 45 minutes instead of working. It happens.

But most of the time, I’m actually doing the work. The frustrating part is that I don’t necessarily have anything to show for it yet.

I’ve also dealt with the fun little “QBO decided to stop reporting this and now we’re behind and owe penalties to the state” problems. Sometimes those take an hour or two to sort out. Other times they take days because I’m not only trying to figure out what went wrong and when, but I’m also waiting for information. I need an answer from the client. Then I need something from the state. Then maybe I need to contact QBO support. I can get as far as I’m able to get, but eventually I hit a wall where the next step belongs to somebody else.

So the problem sits there unfinished. And that’s when it’s really easy to get to the end of the day, look at everything else I didn’t touch, and think, That’s ALL I got done today?

The weird thing is that I don’t feel that way when I spend a day knocking out a bunch of smaller things. If I’ve handled regular bookkeeping check-ins for several clients, categorized transactions, answered emails, pulled some reports, and finished a blog post, I can look back and see exactly where the day went. There’s evidence everywhere.

And I love those days. There’s a rush that comes with getting a bunch of quick things done in a row. It keeps my momentum going, and those things matter to my clients. When they send me something and I handle it, or I keep their books moving along without them having to think about it, I’m doing exactly what I tell people I do: getting shit done efficiently.

But I also really enjoy the days when I get elbow-deep in a complicated QuickBooks problem. I don’t get to exercise the analytical side of my brain nearly enough, and troubleshooting gives me a chance to use it. There is something incredibly satisfying about digging through a mess until I finally understand what’s happening.

It’s a puzzle. The hard part isn’t necessarily putting the final piece into place. The hard part is finding the damn piece in the first place. You look through everything in front of you and find one that seems promising. The color is right. The design looks like it continues the section you’re working on. You turn it around a few times and try to fit it in…but the shape is wrong. Okay. Not that one. Then you find another piece that’s exactly the right shape. It slides into the space perfectly, except the colors don’t match and the design makes absolutely no sense. Not that one either.

Eventually, you find the piece that’s the right shape, the right color, and the right design, and suddenly everything around it makes more sense. Sometimes finding that one piece even helps you see where several of the others belong.

Troubleshooting bookkeeping problems feels a lot like that. I can spend hours following something that looks like the answer only to discover that it isn’t. From the outside, I suppose you could say I spent those hours trying something that didn’t work. But now I know that isn’t the piece I’m looking for. That matters.

If I started the morning with ten possible causes and ended the day with three, I made progress. If I thought the problem went back six months and discovered it actually goes back three years, that’s not particularly good news, but I know more than I did that morning. If I’ve gotten as far as I possibly can and now need an answer from the client or the state before I can continue, the work isn’t finished, but it has moved forward.

The problem is that progress doesn’t give me the same little rush that finishing something does. There isn’t always a box to check. And maybe that’s why it can be so easy to look at a day spent doing one big thing and wonder whether we accomplished anything, even when we know better.

I don’t think that means the day spent solving one complicated problem is somehow more meaningful than the day spent knocking out fifteen smaller tasks. At least it isn’t to me. Both matter for completely different reasons.

The quick things keep everything moving. They keep small tasks from turning into the kinds of problems I was talking about last week. They give me momentum, and they’re often exactly what my clients need from me. The giant troubleshooting problem matters because fixing it might remove a headache that client has been dealing with for months or even years. To them, the day I finally figure it out might be the best thing that’s happened in a while. But neither one automatically makes the day more productive. I’m starting to think the difference is simply that one gives us much better evidence.

A list with fifteen checkmarks makes a very convincing argument that I accomplished something. One unchecked box that says “Fix 401(k) issue” doesn’t, even if I’ve spent seven hours working on it and now understand the problem considerably better than I did when I started.

The same thing happens outside of work. If we’ve got appointments, I already know I’m not going to accomplish the same amount of business work that day. It takes us anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes to get to most places, which means a one-hour appointment doesn’t take one hour out of the day. There’s travel time in both directions, getting everybody out the door, and everything else that goes along with hauling kids around the county.

That’s also why I very rarely go out for one thing. If we’re already leaving the house, I’m going to make the trip count. We might hit the chiropractor, the bank, the post office, Walmart, a park, and whatever else needs doing while we’re out. It can take up a pretty good chunk of the day, and I’m certainly not getting much bookkeeping done while driving all over tarnation. But doing all of that in one trip means I’m not interrupting four other days to do it.

On those mornings, I usually check my email while the kids are eating breakfast and respond to anything important. If there are a few quick bookkeeping tasks I can knock out, I’ll handle those too. Then I look at the calendar and figure out what heavier work can realistically fit around everything else. Maybe I can finish my weekly blog post. Maybe I can pull P&Ls and balance sheets. Maybe there isn’t room for much more than that.

That doesn’t bother me because I already know what kind of day I’m working with. What does occasionally bother me is reaching the end of a full day and not having much that’s finished to point to. And maybe that’s the distinction I’ve been missing. A productive day doesn’t always leave behind a pile of completed work.

Sometimes it leaves behind fifteen checkmarks. Sometimes it leaves behind one very relieved client. Sometimes it leaves behind a problem that still isn’t solved, but has three possible causes instead of ten. Sometimes it leaves behind a day spent driving all over tarnation so I don’t have to do any of it again for another week.

And yes, sometimes it leaves behind absolutely nothing because I intended to check Facebook for ten minutes and apparently entered a time warp. Those days happen too.

But maybe the better question at the end of most days isn’t, “How much did I finish?” Maybe…it’s “Did I move the things that mattered forward?” Because sometimes the most important work I do is putting the final puzzle piece into place and finally seeing the whole picture. Other times, it’s spending hours turning pieces over, trying them one by one, and realizing none of them fit.

I may not have solved the puzzle yet. But I know a hell of a lot more about the piece I’m looking for than I did when I started.