Wednesday’s post Top Ten Tips to Overcome Overwhelm apparently hit a nerve with more than a few readers! In comments sent directly to me by email, procrastination was identified as the top challenge for many of you. In response, I’d like to offer you a video — which may be enabling procrastination, but it’s a… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Time management/productivity
Subscribe to Time management/productivity RSS FeedPDA Peace
Posted in Time management/productivityPavlov’s dog had nothing on most BlackBerry/iPhone/BlackJack/other PDA users. All too often, we (and I include myself) hear the “beep” or feel the vibration and pounce immediately, even in the middle of a sentence — our own or someone else’s. And I’ve seen (and though I’d prefer not to admit it, experienced) the discomfort that… Continue Reading
Social networking, yea or nay: Part 2
Posted in Time management/productivityJust a few months ago, I wrote a blog entry titled, Social networking, yea or nay?, in which I reviewed an issue of Law Practice Management that featured several article advocating the use of social networking. Since then, I’ve networked on LinkedIn and I even set up a Facebook profile, though I drew the line at… Continue Reading
Clear your mind to increase productivity.
Posted in Time management/productivityEvery office has one: the messy lawyer, whose desk and/or office always looks like a bomb exploded and left behind papers and files and coffee cups and who-knows-what-else scattered everywhere. It’s a good practice to clear the decks weekly or following the end of a major project, just to keep some level of tidiness. This… Continue Reading
What’s the most important step you can take?
Posted in Billing time, Coaching for lawyers, Evaluations and feedback, The practice, Time management/productivity, Work/life balanceOnly 34 days remain in 2007, including weekends and holidays. Before we know it, the books will close and another year will have passed. What’s the most important step you can take today to ensure that you’re well-positioned as you move into 2008? Business development: Perhaps you could set aside a couple of hours to… Continue Reading
Tuesday Shorts — 10/2/07
Posted in Client development, Quick hits, Time management/productivityA few things I’ve been collecting in the last week… 1. Fundamental attribution error This is a new term for me, though the idea is familiar. Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project blogs about our human tendency to assume that other people’s actions reflect their character or attitudes and to overlook the environmental influences that may shape… Continue Reading
Five Foundations of Time Management for Attorneys
Posted in Special offers, Time management/productivityHave you ever struggled with time management challenges? If you’re like most lawyers (myself included), it’s sometimes difficult to make sure that everything that needs to get done does get done. During my years in practice, I learned a number of time management strategies, and I now share those with my clients. On October 11… Continue Reading
Simplicity: where personal and professional meet
Posted in Time management/productivity, Work/life balanceOne of the rules I keep in mind when writing is that good writing is clear, crisp, and simple. The same rule often applies more generally as well. As Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” When it comes to managing one’s personal life while maintaining a practice, “simple” is… Continue Reading
Blog bankruptcy
Posted in Time management/productivity, Work/life balanceOne of the fundamental tenents of work/life balance, work/life integration, or any other name one might choose to describe the relationship between time applied on professional and personal matters is simple: conscious decisions on what to do and what to forego are mandatory, because no one can do everything. My husband has a photo in his office… Continue Reading
Back to the real world: how do you return from vacation?
Posted in Musings, Time management/productivity, Work/life balanceBy the time this posts, I will likely have landed back at the Atlanta airport, home from vacation and from the ABA annual meeting. First, I’d like to thank Peter Vajda publicly for his posts. Relationship is always an interesting topic, and I believe that in many ways our relationships shape and promote or inhibit… Continue Reading
The reset button
Posted in Coaching for lawyers, Time management/productivity, Work/life balanceOne of the interesting things about coaching is that periodically, the topics on which I’m coaching someone will rise up and smack me in the face. Pride may go before a fall, but working with someone else on an issue they’re facing seems highly likely in some bizarre cosmic way to raise the same issue… Continue Reading
Recreation: a foundation of balance and productivity
Posted in Time management/productivity, Work/life balanceIt occurred to me this week that there’s (at least) one activity that, perhaps counterintuitively, is a foundation of work/life balance and productivity: recreation. While coaching a client this week and introducing Stephen Covey’s Urgent/Important quadrant system for prioritizing and completing tasks, I explained that true recreation — something that’s reenergizing, that “re-creates,” rather than passive… Continue Reading
Addressing burnout: your productivity depends on it
Posted in Time management/productivity, Work/life balanceBecause of the stress of practice, burnout is a real issue for lawyers. Just about every lawyer has at least an occasional period in which it seems that work is pressing 18-20 hours a day, and most of us know intuitively that it’s important to recover following that kind of exertion. But what about the… Continue Reading
Monday’s efficiency/productivity tip
Posted in Time management/productivityMost of us start each day with a “to do” list, or at least a good idea of what must be accomplished. Time management experts often suggest starting by knocking off the easiest tasks, and overachievers often attack the toughest item first. However, each of these approaches misses the mark and may facilitate being busy… Continue Reading
Resolving office conflict
Posted in Time management/productivityWelcome back from the holiday weekend. I hope everyone enjoyed some relaxation over the long weekend! I’ve observed over and over that lawyers tend not to be very good at managing in-office problems. It’s easy to try to wait out conflict when there’s a lot going on otherwise, because the work that must be done… Continue Reading
Think multitasking is beneficial? Think again.
Posted in For new lawyers, Time management/productivityI’ve been intending to post about a New York Times article I read a few months ago, and today’s the day. I have noticed recently that I’m receiving a lot of emails informing me that the sender is now limiting the number of times she checks email in the course of a day, and to… Continue Reading
Are you busy — Or productive?
Posted in Coaching for lawyers, For new lawyers, The practice, Time management/productivityOne of the most important pieces of coaching rests in illuminating distinctions. I have several favorites that come up in the course of a great many coaching engagements: reaction vs. response, hearing vs. listening, assertion vs. assessment, interesting vs. purposeful, and so on. One distinction is particularly relevant to effective action: busy vs. productive. My… Continue Reading
When the words just won’t come.
Posted in The practice, Time management/productivityHave you ever had the experience of sitting down to write something important, having a rough idea of what you wanted to say, and yet finding yourself so tired or so distracted that you have significantly reduced ability to get the writing done? I’m not talking about ordinary writer’s block or waiting for a muse… Continue Reading
Another take on what constitutes work/life balance and why it matters
Posted in Time management/productivity, Work/life balanceI’ve been rereading First Things First, by Stephen Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca Merrill recently, as I’m creating my list of “must read” books for clients concerned with time management, work/life balance, and the like. This book was first published in 1994 and I read it then. Perhaps the best accolade I can give… Continue Reading
Ultimate guide to productivity: My tip
Posted in Time management/productivityCristina Favreau, The Savvy Entrepreneur, has tagged me to participate in The Ultimate Guide to Productivity, started by Ben Yoskovitz of Instigator Blog. The rules are as follows: Write a post on your best productivity tips. Challenge yourself by picking your single best productivity tip (although this isn’t a requirement; you can give us more… Continue Reading
Timesheet habits: don’t procrastinate.
Posted in Billing time, The practice, Time management/productivityTimesheets routinely come up as a bemoaned part of practice, something that no one likes to do. Many lawyers develop the habit of doing timesheets in bulk, usually at the end of the week but sometimes at the end of the month. That’s a terrible habit for a wide variety of reasons. Unless your notes are… Continue Reading
6 Tips to turn your commute into valuable time
Posted in Time management/productivity, Work/life balanceVery few people have truly short commutes these days. I know of only one woman who lives within 15 minutes of her office, regardless of the time of day she makes the trip — and that’s because she’s only a 15-minute walk away. The rest of us put up with anywhere from 30 minutes to a… Continue Reading
Time management skills: is a task urgent or important?
Posted in Coaching for lawyers, Time management/productivityOne of the top concerns for most lawyers is time management. We all have so much to accomplish in so little time, and it often seems that we’re always trying to cram more activities (whether professional or personal) into the non-negotiable 168 hours we have each week. Most of my coaching clients bring time management… Continue Reading