Swallow the Frog First

Special thanks to Charles B. Hall, CPA CFE of CPA Hall Talk for providing this information.

Swallow the frog first.

What does ‘Swallow the Frog’ mean?

CPAs are prone to work on the easy things first.

For instance, we might work on cash rather than receivables and revenue (the toad) in an audit. Or we might do the search for unrecorded liabilities rather than the walkthrough of controls (another croaker) for the payables area.

And after we do those easy things, our audit file might have several work paper signoffs making us “feel” like we are making progress.

But reality strikes when we do the hard thing (later) that takes a disproportionate amount of time. We may think we’re 70% done when we are only halfway through.

Swallowing the frog early helps ensure we finish the job on time. It also removes the psychological drain that comes from procrastination. We are more at peace.

It means don’t procrastinate!

So, go ahead: swallow the frog.

You’ll be glad you did.

–Charles

Don’t fall behind on your CPE

Like our good friend Charles mentions above, procrastination rarely improves situations. That goes for your CPE requirements, too! Get a head start on your compliance with Yellowbook-CPE.com’s several live webinars, video courses and self-study E-books.