A Better Kind of Creative Accounting: A PICPA Blog Series

James J. Caruso CPA (Inactive)

This blog series discusses how accountants and financial professionals – contrary to public (and often our own) opinion – are, in fact, creative. Authors, musicians, painters, actors, and dancers are more traditionally thought of as “creatives,” but this is only because they happen to be experts in the creative process. This post explores the challenges of professional writers so we can identify and apply their lessons to our own work in accounting. Keep reading and you may find that we have more in common with authors than you realize.

Procrastination and Perfectionism Are the Enemies

Everyone suffers from procrastination to some degree. We envy creatives such as writers because we assume they are effortlessly productive. In reality, procrastination is our common enemy, and the underlying cause is often perfectionism. We don’t start because our vision of the outcome isn’t clear, or we know the desired outcome but cannot envision every individual step to get there.

“It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write,” says Steven Pressfield in The War of Art, a book about overcoming the self-imposed resistance endemic to writers and other creatives. As accountants, we like order and tend to think linearly; authors know it’s okay to start without knowing every step. In Bird by Bird, a book about the writing process, author Anne Lamott quotes the writer E. L. Doctorow: “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Perfectionism not only keeps us from starting projects, but also finishing them. Think of an author who keeps accumulating more research or endlessly tinkers with a manuscript. “There will always be more you could do, but you have to remind yourself that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor,” says Lamott.

Work Doesn’t Come from Inspiration; Inspiration Comes from Work

Pressfield writes, “The mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work” begins “a mysterious but infallible sequence of events” that leads to inspiration. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike. However, if just sitting down to work is easier said than done, perhaps preparatory rituals can help.

The ”First Draft” Antidote

Lamott extols the liberating feeling of allowing oneself to create a first draft that is rough and unrefined. When we write a standard operating procedure, a client proposal, a management discussion and analysis, or even build a new financial model, follow Lamott’s advice to just get something down. Editing is where the writing, or other work, really begins, and you can’t edit a blank page. As Lamott reminds us, nobody needs to see the first draft, so there’s no value in waiting for perfection before starting.

Writing Clarifies Thought

As accountants, one of our roles is to interpret and translate information into actionable insights, often for a nonfinancial audience. What we think we know and understand is sometimes revealed to be quite muddled when we first try structuring our thinking into a tangible deliverable. We need to trust that clarity will emerge from the editing process and appreciate the value of synthesizing our own understanding of the subject matter, even if nobody else ever sees the deliverable.

Embrace Difficulty

Author, podcaster, and computer science professor Cal Newport says that what people call writer’s block is just … writing. It’s what writing is supposed to feel like. If what we are working on feels like a slog in the moment, that shouldn’t be perceived as a problem any more than a workout at the gym is a “problem” because it feels hard. The struggle is the process.

Protect Focus Time

Does your mental image of an author deeply immersed in a writing session include the checking of email or Teams messages every five minutes? Of course not. Authors dedicate distraction-free time to write every day. They schedule it; they don’t wait for “free time” to present itself. Once they sit down to write, distractions like email and text would ruin their concentration and flow. As Mason Currey shows in Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, authors do not write all day either. Intense focus can only be sustained for a few hours. Like writers, we need to schedule and protect blocks of uninterrupted focus time for our most important and complex work. We must put guardrails around how much of the day is fragmented by communication, collaboration, meetings, and administrative tasks.

Busyness Is Not the Same as Productivity

What Lamott says about writing is true for our own work: “You can see the underlying essence only when you strip away the busyness, and then some surprising connections appear.” Our minds need space to wander – not just for creative acts like writing, but also for problem-solving and drawing strategic insights. In his book Slow Productivity, Newport relates an anecdote about author John McPhee, who after eight months of research was at an impasse in how to structure a long-form article. McPhee spent two weeks lying on a picnic table looking up at the trees before he developed his approach. McPhee would not have appeared “busy” to an observer during that time, but he was productive nonetheless. Constant frenetic activity removes space for thinking. Checking our phones every spare moment fills the space that our minds use to subconsciously work through projects and problems. “You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind,” says Lamott.

Cultivate a Sense of Craft

Lamott encourages everyone to write, even if it is just for themselves or their children, without fixating on achieving fame as an author: “Devotion and commitment will be (the writer’s) own reward. … In dedication to their craft they will find solace and direction and wisdom and truth and pride.” Ambition can be a driving force in our professional lives, but true contentment is derived from engaging with our work for its own sake. Fulfillment is found in a sense of mastery.

Most accountants do not think they are creative or that they have anything in common with creatives. This is only because we mistakenly imagine creatives to be driven by effortless epiphanies, constantly in a state of flow. The reality is authors and other creatives face the same friction and challenges that we do. There is no magic formula. For authors, and for us, it comes down to doing the work. As Pressfield says, “The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. … When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.”

James J. Caruso, CPA (inactive), is the CFO of ClearView Healthcare Partners of Newton, Mass., and a member of the Pennsylvania CPA Journal Editorial Board. He can be reached at jim.caruso@clearviewhcp.com.

Previous Posts in the Better Kind of Creative Accounting Series:

• Use Personal Rituals to Fuel the Creative Process 
• Exploring Creativity in the Accounting Profession 

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^{Statements of fact and opinion are the authors’ responsibility alone and do not imply an opinion on the part of the PICPA's officers or members. The information contained herein does not constitute accounting, legal, or professional advice. For actionable advice, you must engage or consult with a qualified professional.}