At the good ship Plankind, we pride ourselves on feeling your pain and helping you to overcome it. Those of you who are super solo entrepreneurs and self-employed amongst you may currently have the dread of knowing your tax return is due by 31^st January and wishing you’d started earlier.

If that sounds familiar, here are our top tips for helping to dig yourself out of the tendency to beat yourself up and actually make progress with getting things done. NB these tips can be applied successfully to non-tax-related projects too, so everyone can benefit!

1. Make a list. You’ve gotta make a list. This list should be of what you actually need, and what you need to do with it. The list for a tax return is probably shorter than your catastrophising brain thinks. You probably don’t need much more than a physical or digital pile of receipts/invoices for the year, and a document where you add these up, perhaps a calculator if you aren’t familiar with excel or automatically calculating totals. Info from any benefits you receive and from the Student Loans company, if that’s applicable to you.
2. Use the tools that are there to help quell panic about what you’ve forgotten/might be missing. Whether you love digital or prefer good old fashioned talking to people and pen and paper, you will have arranged all your business appointments by phone, email, text message. Look through each of these formats in turn to check/double check if you’ve missed anything that you billed people for or they billed you for, or any receipts for items you bought for the business that you are including in your tax return.
3. Give yourself a talking too. Most of the tax return form is stuff you totally know (such as your name and address) or boxes that you can easily tick yes or no to (any pensions income for example). Although it’s not the most user-friendly, you can definitely do this. A simple tip to quit procrastinating is to set yourself a 10 minute timer and see how much you get done in that time. If you still feel good, repeat the timer and do another 10 minutes. You’ll definitely be done by the deadline if you start this habit now!

This Philosopher-in-Residence trusts you will find this useful – but it’s good to talk – drop us an email if you’re stuck with the return and need any help.

Next fortnight I’ll be writing On February. February is the new January, in case you didn’t know!

Please get in touch with any particular aspects of this subject you’d like me to write about.

In the meantime,

Happy Planning

PS If you want some other free tips for your business life, check out the Working Well blog – out fortnightly on Wednesdays, courtesy of Make Me A Plan’s Productivity Expert, Penny Le Kelly. Browse the latest edition here:

https://www.makemeaplan.com/news/a-guide-to-staying-healthy-and-happy-at-work/