How to stay motivated as a career accountant

Working as an accountant can be very rewarding. It’s a way of using a love of numbers to optimise the performance of a business or the financial security of a client.

Accountancy is a career where you can help others while also making best use of your skills.

However, after working as an accountant for a significant period of time, it can be challenging to remain motivated. There are certain steps that you can take in order to make this challenge easier to overcome.

Make a real difference

A career should never be just about making money if you want to maintain your motivation levels. You need to feel as though you are making a real difference. For instance, you may volunteer your skills for a local charity or you may be involved in the survival of a struggling small business.

Envision your own success

If your accounting career seems to have reached a plateau, you need to find a source of new motivation. Visualising future successes can help with this. It helps you to focus on your goals and feel re-energised in your effort to achieve them.

Become a mentor to others

One of the best ways to remain motivated as an experienced accountant is to share your skills with others. You can develop mentoring skills in order to help young and inexperienced accountants to achieve the success that they are aiming for. Doing this provides you with a great sense of achievement that is different to anything else that you will ever feel.

Discover your passion

You can spend some time focussing on passion in your career. However, this is not all you need to do. You also need to concentrate on the passions that you have outside of work. For instance, you may want to learn a new language, or take up baking in your spare time.

You need to identify the things that you love to do and spend more time doing them. Doing this helps to give you some downtime from your work. It also helps to reduce your stress levels. This makes you feel better overall and makes it easier for you to remain motivated while you are working.

Add variety to your role 

Becoming stuck in a role where you do not have any variety makes it very difficult for you to stay motivated. You need to do all that you can to inject variety into your accounting life. If you work for yourself, this may involve taking on clients with different needs, or unique projects.

It can be more difficult to get the variety that you need if you are employed as an accountant with a company. However, it’s still not impossible to vary your role. You can apply for jobs in a different area of the finance team or volunteer for opportunities that give you a deeper understanding of the business.

It’s not easy to remain motivated as a career accountant. However, these steps can help you to achieve the motivation levels that you need.

If you are an accountant or accountancy professional looking for the next step in your career, register with us.