The Finance Leader Podcast

108: Managing Your OCD to Succeed in Your Accounting and Finance Career

June 01, 2023 Stephen McLain Season 14 Episode 4
The Finance Leader Podcast
108: Managing Your OCD to Succeed in Your Accounting and Finance Career
Show Notes Transcript

Do you ever find yourself obsessing over your work, doubting your competency, or struggling to stay productive? What if you could harness your obsessive-compulsive tendencies to supercharge your career in finance and accounting? In this eye-opening episode, we explore the traits of the obsessive-compulsive accounting and finance professional and discuss how sometimes, our OCD can be our superpower! Listen in as we share our experiences with obsessing over perfection, worrying about miscalculations, and how our OCD has helped us solve problems that require intense focus and dedication.

Note:  I am not a mental health expert. Seek professional help to access tools that can help you, if you need to.

Episode outline:

  1. Traits of the obsessive-compulsive accounting and finance professional,
  2. Sometimes our OCD can be a superpower, 
  3. Tools for better productivity, and 
  4. Our mindset is the gateway to success. 


Please connect with me on:

1. Instagram: stephen.mclain
2. Twitter: smclainiii
3. Facebook: stephenmclainconsultant
4. LinkedIn: stephenjmclainiii

For more resources, please visit Finance Leader Academy:  financeleaderacademy.com

  1. On the website, you can download the Become a Finance Leader Guide. You can use this guide to build your Finance Leadership skills so you can help senior leaders develop and execute the strategy.
  2. I also offer a course, Advance Your Finance and Accounting Career: Developing a Promotion Strategy that Sets You Apart.


Stephen McLain : How many of you face inaction due to worrying about your work products or you exert excessive control over your work environment. That also impedes your ability to meet deadlines or achieve excellence. We can become obsessive over our work tasks, which can limit our ability to take additional risk, which then affects our career potential. I am not a mental health expert, but I am aware that we can obsess a little in our fields, so I want to equip you with additional tools so you succeed. You can overcome the limiting beliefs that are preventing you from going to the next level in your career. Please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Finance Leader Podcast, where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host, stephen McLain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. Please consider following me on Twitter, facebook, instagram and LinkedIn. My usernames and the links are in this episode's show notes, thank you. This is episode number 108, and I will be talking about managing our obsessive compulsiveness, and I will highlight the following topics Number 1. Traits of the obsessive compulsive accounting and finance professional. Number 2. Sometimes our OCD can be a superpower. Number 3. Tools for better productivity. And 4. Our mindset is the gateway to success. Tennis legend Venus Williams said, i don't focus on what I'm up against. I focus on my goals and I try to ignore the rest. Now, when you start a new spreadsheet, what cell do you start with? Is it A1?, b2? Maybe C3? Or is it something else? Do you begin the same way every time? And when you open an Excel file from someone else, do you immediately start judging the formatting or how the info is arranged? Do you have trouble getting beyond the format or the layout? A spreadsheet is really a tool to give us the number we are seeking. Our ultimate goal isn't really the spreadsheet creation, but it's the output we are seeking. It's the numbers. Maybe it's one final sales projection or some other number. Did I really just say that spreadsheets aren't important? Well, i may have, but we all live and die by the spreadsheets we create. Now let's focus more on the output instead of obsessing over the format. How many of you excessively worry about your work products and often have trouble hitting send on the email, even though you know your numbers and your report is 100% accurate? Does this happen to you? It has happened to me, even after you hit send on the email. Do you also reopen the email multiple times to recheck your numbers And then you don't get any relief until you know the recipients have opened the email and provided a thank you back or some other indication that your numbers are good. Does this all sound familiar? Do you obsess over perfection? Do you worry that you miscalculated the wrong numbers or your projection is completely off? Now let's talk more about this. 

Stephen McLain: Obsessing over the numbers can also be our greatest strength. It's true. When we go to close the books or reconciling an account or trying to analyze the actual results from a projection we calculated, and then we determine we are off by some even minute amount, we then become determined to find where the discrepancy is. I know our OCD will kick in and we will find it. We always do. This is our superpower. We are always able to find the missing pennies in the pile of millions of dollars. If our accounts are not balanced, how do you feel when you calculate your trial balances before close and it doesn't balance? 

Stephen McLain: At first you may sigh, maybe quietly cuss under your breath, and then you go to work. The OCD kicks in. You roll up the sleeves, maybe get some coffee, and then you go looking until you find it. But you always find it. Our OCD comes to the rescue and you find the missing amounts you always do and is always hilarious. We talk and joke about our OCD because we believe it leads us to completing our tasks better, because we are more attentive or driven to finding a solution. 

Stephen McLain: But it can lead to anxiety and ineffectiveness if we don't understand our situation, ask and seek help. If this is the case, it can lead to a degraded life experience for you and your family. The obsessive part can lead to actions that detract us or delay us and we are robbed of joy throughout the day. Do you excessively worry if you locked your door or shut off the stove? Simple exercises of looking at the locked door and saying the door is locked as you leave can ease your mind later. Or checking the stove and telling yourself the stove is off so you don't run home at lunch to check on everything. When you begin to doubt, you remind yourself that you went through that exercise of stating the stove is off or the door is locked. 

Stephen McLain: You can move on confidently, that everything is done and taken care of, so you don't obsess about it later. Keep focusing on your goals. Be confident in your technical abilities. Once you have calculated a projection or assembled a routine report. Feel confident that what you did was correct, that it was accurate, the email you wrote was error free, with correct grammar. Don't reopen that email a dozen times, rechecking your work or rechecking the data in the math. You did it right, you did it correctly. Now move confidently on to the next task and don't look back. 

Stephen McLain: Now we all face limiting beliefs. It is our daily task to strengthen our mindset so we overcome what we think will stop us. I want to encourage you to go back and listen to Episode 38 Overcoming limiting beliefs to ensure your success. We all face these challenges in our personal and professional lives. Now, to help you in your finance leadership development journey, i have a new written guide for you, called Become a Finance Leader. You can download it for free at the link in the show notes or go to financeleaderacademycom and download it there Again. It's free and it will help you with your mindset and the Finance Leader Insight cycle so you can help leaders throughout the organization. 

Stephen McLain: The obsessive, compulsive accountant is a common story. We joke about our OCD and our ability to stick with a problem that doesn't make sense until we are able to solve the discrepancy. We stick to finding out why an account is not balancing, other people will give up way before we do and that is why they did not enter the field. Our OCD can be a superpower as we solve problems that require intense focus and dedication. Our OCD can be our forensic partner to uncover which set of transactions is causing the balance sheet or income statement to not make sense. Now let's talk about managing our obsessive compulsiveness. 

Stephen McLain: 1. Traits of the obsessive compulsive accounting and finance professional. In finance and accounting, we do sometimes fit the reputation of having OCD. We joke about it often. In reality, if you need professional help, please seek it. It will make a huge difference in your life to get professional tools to manage and overcome OCD. 

Stephen McLain: There are a few traits that I wanted to address. So we have a common language. I want every one of us in these fields to succeed, so nothing holds us back. Get professional help if you need to. Again, i am not a mental health expert. 

Stephen McLain: The first trait is doubting your competency. I think we have all had this trait. We doubt our work. We fear sending the email with our report or our analysis. We fear posting a journal entry. We fear briefing a senior leader. 

Stephen McLain: The next trait is being too orderly with the details. This actually sounds like a great trait for our profession, but when does it cross the line? When you don't meet a deadline or become too difficult to work with? Another big trait is losing control. Do you feel the need to control every process? Do you panic when something doesn't go as planned? 

Stephen McLain: And the last trait I want to mention is excessive rigidity and stubbornness. In our fields this is sometimes necessary. We need to comply with regulations and generally accepted accounting principles. Senior leaders, investors, the employees and other stakeholders are expecting us to do so. We can't bend regulations that could cause a fine or jail time or some other penalty. So being rigid with gap and the regulations is okay. But what about your personal life? Are you too rigid with your life partner or your kids? Can you back off a little? Can you adapt? Can you be less rigid in your family life? Number two sometimes our OCD can be a superpower. The funny, quirky and undiagnosed OCD you may have may also be your greatest trait, because you will find any discrepancies in the accounts. Accounting, particularly, is rule intensive for a reason. Consistency and transparency with the financials are critical. So sometimes our OCD can actually help us complete our job a little bit better, so you can rely on those traits a little bit more. 

Stephen McLain: Number three tools for better productivity. I am going to briefly talk over a few tools that do have some overlap. The first one is self-care. Our health and well-being is important to our daily challenge in being productive and enjoying life overall. We must get good sleep, we must eat well, get exercise, drink water and to address our mental and spiritual needs. The next one is I want you to better manage your thoughts and your stress. Please seek professional help if you need to. So how do you process your thoughts? How can you better focus your thoughts in a healthy manner? Find some way to manage your stress throughout the day. It could be going to do a workout in the middle of the day or even in the earlier part of the day. So really work on trying to manage the thoughts that you have. If you have negative thoughts, please seek some kind of help. If you do have excessive stress, find some way of working out that stress. Now I also want you to set priorities and deadlines. We must prioritize our tasks and set hard deadlines if we were not given one. Prioritizing helps us to focus on what is most important And then we also have that deadline to help us manage our time and also works in conjunction with those priorities that we have set. 

Stephen McLain: The next tool is I want you to continually strengthen our mindset, and we're going to talk about this in just a moment. I want you to stop overthinking and I want you to be confident in your work. And, finally, i want you to be kind to yourself. Don't be so hard on yourself. Give yourself a break. The work you are doing is complex. It's hard, so be kind to yourself. Give yourself a break. Enjoy life. Don't be obsessive over the work that you are doing. Now I want you to achieve excellence, but I don't want that to get in the way of really getting your tasks done to excellence and enjoying your life to its fullest capacity. Now these suggestions sound easy, but it will take some effort to apply. I am with you. I can understand the difficulty Now. 

Stephen McLain: Finally, number four our mindset is the gateway to success. How we see ourselves relates to how well we can succeed and how far we can go in our career. Our mindset is everything, and how we view ourselves and how we interact with others, how we view our ability to learn and to work on complex problems and projects that may test our limits. Does anything stop you from achieving excellence? Strengthening our mindset is a daily exercise Every day. We need to work on our mindset. Once we don't prioritize it, we endanger ourselves by not pushing ourselves to excellence. If you change your mindset, you will change your outcome. I say this often and I believe it. If your current mindset is holding you back, make a change. Get passionate again. Make a change with the input going into your mind and your spirit. Change up your inner circle. Make the necessary changes so you strengthen your mindset every day. 

Stephen McLain: If you manage with OCD at any level, i can empathize with you. Often your OCD helps you to clean up transactional discrepancies or other complex task issues, but sometimes it takes your confidence from you. We don't want that. I want you to be confident in your work and avoid doubting your technical work or how you write that email. You are doing great. I want you to manage this at an even better level so that you achieve excellence and that you can maximize your career potential. 

Stephen McLain: Now for action. Today, how insightful are you with your own level of OCD? Seek professional help if what you endure severely affects your life, your relationships, your career and anything else in your life. Ask for help. Don't worry about it. Ask for help. There are professional tools that can help you identify and overcome what you may be facing every day. 

Stephen McLain: Today I talked about managing our obsessive compulsiveness and I highlighted the following points Number one traits of the obsessive compulsive accounting and finance professional. Number two sometimes our OCD can be a superpower. Number three tools for better productivity. And four our mindset is the gateway to success. We know we can be intense sometimes and it serves us well often when we need to dig into details to balance our accounts or to evaluate a data set. But we want to have a healthy approach to that intensity. Does it serve you well all the time? Maybe, or maybe not, or sometimes, does your intensity or obsessiveness hinder your career progress or your enjoyment of life? We all need to do that assessment to determine if we need professional help to make a healthy change. I want to encourage you to take a deeper look so you can enjoy a better life and so you can maximize the potential in your career, that you can take full advantage of the opportunities that come along to get on a high visibility project and for you to grow your finance leadership. 

Stephen McLain:  Next episode I will be talking about the treasury function. I hope you enjoyed the Finance Leader podcast. I am dedicated to helping you grow your leadership skills, to change your mindset and to clarify your goals so you can advance your career. You can find this episode wherever you listen to podcasts. If this episode helps you today, please share and leave a quick review so that others may find the podcast. Until next time, you can check out more resources at financeleaderacademy.com and sign up for my weekly updates so you don't miss an episode of the podcast. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you.