Doing My Best to Conquer my ADHD Brain

The quote “If you can’t handle me at my worst, then you don’t deserve me at my best” is attributed to Marilyn Monroe. I was thinking about it the other day when slogging through my bookkeeping, thus the slightly tortured title.

My business is VAT registered. My most recent VAT period was November to January. The VAT return is due 7th March but my accountant likes to get it in early.

I have learned* over time that the best approach to getting routine (boring) things done is to do them more frequently and in small batches. Doing the bookkeeping for 90 days, all at the same time, trying to find receipts for things up to four months ago can be a right PITA.

Most of the time I do bookkeeping every few days and so the end of the quarter is so much easier *knowing something is not the same as doing it consistently though. Every now and then I find that I have not done it and it is a nightmare.

This quarter is that time and so I am writing this post instead of processing the final 30 transactions. Having realised my displacement activity I will go and do that and come back.

OK, I’m back. I have done it. It is finished for another quarter. That was a bad one, I had a lot of unusual things in this period e.g. I sponsored an event and so I bought stickers, cards etc I got a new website and so I had photos taken and had costs associated with that so lots more transactions than usual.

What is the impact of this?

• I have spent a lot of time over the past week either doing the bookkeeping or avoiding doing the bookkeeping, it has been very time consuming and has stopped me from being able to do other things.
• My accountant has emailed me six times since the end of the VAT quarter and called me twice, even though he was away for a week.
• I have nine transactions for this quarter which I can’t find receipts for and so I have transferred those to directors loan account meaning that I will personally pay for those. That totals about £400.

So the fact is that even though I know that it is better to do it over time my brain likes to be in charge and will probably do this again. I need to give myself the best chance of doing it the easy way as much as possible.

If you have any issues like these and would like to see how you can do things the easier way, get in contact to see if I can help.