Many productivity experts today avoid using the term "time management" because in truth, we cannot manage time. The only thing we can manage are our priorities.
If you have a list of tasks ("todos") that's longer than Joe Biden's gag reel, you may be wondering how to prioritize that list so that you get the most important things done.
"What do I do first?" you ask.
Of course only you can answer that question (unless you're married–just kidding, dear. . .).
The challenge is in looking at everything on your list within the context of a single day. There's too much to do and it is overwhelming.
I've written before about how I use the concept of "MITs" (Most Important Tasks). Every day, I choose three MITs from my greater list and focus on those. If I get those done and I have time for more, I'll go back to my list and choose another, but if I don't, I'm satisfied because I completed the three most important tasks for the day.
I also wrote about how I use MITs in my Evernote for Lawyers eBook.
I first learned about this concept in "Think and Grow Rich". Napoleon Hill tells the story of Ivy Lee who was doing some consulting work for Charles Schwab, the head of Bethlehem Steel. Schwab told Lee that the biggest problem he had was making his managers more effective in the use of their time. Lee said he would give him the solution to his problem and Schwab agreed to try the system for a few weeks and send Lee a check for what he thought the idea was worth.
Lee told Schwab that at the end of every day, his managers should write down their top six priorities for the following day. Then, they should put the list in the order of importance. The following day they should begin with the first task on the list and work on it until it was completed. Then do the second task on the list and repeat this until the end of the day. Any unfinished tasks should be put on the list for the following day.
Schwab tried the system. In a couple of weeks, he sent Lee a check for $25,000, the equivalent of $250,000 today.
Whether you choose three MITs or six top priorities, the idea is the same: select from your greater list a finite number of priorities and work on those first. You may have a large list of important tasks but importance is a relative term–some things are more important than others.
Another popular method of prioritizing tasks, which could be combined with MITs, is the method taught by Franklin-Covey. The idea is to go through your task list and assign a priority to each item:
A—urgent and important
B—important but not urgent
C—urgent but not important
D—not urgent or important
At the beginning of each day, start on your A’s first. If you get those done, move to the B’s, then the C’s.
It's easy to get overwhelmed by everything we need to do. We can reduce our anxiety and increase our effectiveness by prioritizing our tasks and working on the most important things first. "What is the the most important thing you need to do right now? Don't worry about everything else.
Filed under Productivity, Time Management by 
One way to write more articles, reports, blog posts, or anything else, is by writing faster. One way to write faster is to dictate and record your thoughts and then have them transcribed.
When I first started practicing law we dictated everything and somebody else did the typing. Today, I write everything on a computer and find that I can turn out a finished document almost as quickly. But sometimes, I get caught up in the process of writing and something that should have taken ten minutes winds up taking an hour.
I also find that speaking my thoughts lends a freshness and clarity that is sometimes missing when I write. And so for my next big writing project, I'm going to go back to writing the way I used to do it, by speaking my first draft into a recorder and having it transcribed.
Here are the steps I will be following:
- Create an outline. No matter how well you know your material, having the points you want to cover in the order in which you want to cover them will help you stay on point and get the job done more quickly.
- Speak and record. The best way to do this is to keep in your mind's eye a real person you know (or an amalgam of your target audience) and speak to that person. Pretend they are sitting across the desk from you.
- Transcribe. You can have someone do this or do it yourself. Doing it yourself allows you to edit as you type.
- Edit. Cut out unnecessary ideas and words, flesh out thoughts that need it, and re-order material to enhance clarity. Take any "leftovers" and store them for future articles.
- Add an intro and conclusion.
- Final edit.
The average human being speaks at a rate of 125 to 150 words per minute. This means that you could dictate the first draft of a 500 word article in just a few minutes or an 18,000 word ebook in a couple of hours. Now, if we could just get paid by the word.
Filed under Productivity, Time Management, Writing by
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know how much I love Evernote. I use it for everything: notes, documents, writing, task management, you name it. Today, I'm proud to announce the release of a new eBook, "Evernote for Lawyers: A Guide to Getting Organized & Increasing Productivity".
Lawyers manage an incredible amount of information and finding that information quickly is imperative. More and more attorneys use Evernote for capturing notes and web clips, and initially, that's all I used it for. I've since discovered many other ways Evernote can be used to organize the information in my life, and that's what this book reveals.
Topics include using Evernote for research and writing, time and billing support, marketing and career development, and managing client files and documents. Other chapters include, "going paperless," "data security," "working with email," and "working with your calendar".
Attorneys who use David Allen's Getting Things Done® methodology (or want to), will want to read Chapter 4, which covers this subject at length. I've written before about my Evernote/GTD system. Evernote for Lawyers presents my latest thinking on this subject, as well as the latest updates to my gtd system and work flow.
Evernote currently has 20 million users world wide and was recently honored as Inc. Magazine's 2011 Company of the Year.
Evernote is free and is available for Windows, Mac, on the web, and all major mobile platforms. A premium version with enhanced features is also available.
Evernote for Lawyers: A Guide to Getting Organized & Increasing Productivity is available for immediate download for just $4.99 at OrganizedLawyer.com
Filed under Law office management, News, Productivity, Technology, Time Management by
Being productive means doing more of the things that advance your most important objectives and less of the things that don't. How to you find more time to do the high-value/high-payoff activities?
You don't.
You can't find time. But you can buy it.
We only have so many hours in our day. We have to sleep and eat and take care of household duties. We have family and hobbies and other things we do that add value to our lives. We also have responsibilities, things we simply cannot delegate. Add it all up and there are only so many hours a day for work.
The only way you'll be able to spend more of your work time doing high-payoff activities is by cutting out something else. You must buy back the time you now spend on low-payoff activities so you can spend it on the activities that matter most.
If you want to be more productive (translation: earn more without working more), the following three-step exercise will help:
Step one: take inventory.
For the next week (assuming it is a typical week), write down everything you do, 24 hours a day, in 15-minute increments. (Okay, if you want to use 6-minute increments, you can, but no padding. . .)
If you're like most people, you'll resist doing this exercise. You'll make excuses, you'll "forget," you'll bitch and moan about yet another silly personal development exercise.
Trust me, it's worth it.
If you can't do a week, try it for a day. You'll see. You'll be amazed at how much time you spend doing some things.
This simple exercise is a real eye-opener for a lot of people. They find large pockets of wasted time they can easily reclaim to do other, more valuable activities.
Which leads to. . .
Step two: Grade yourself.
Go through your time diary again and put a mark next to all of your high-payoff work-related activities. Write down the amount of time you spent on each. Add it all up for the week and divide by five (or six) days.
On average, what percentage of your working day is spent on high-payoff activities?
Highly productive people spend at least 70% of their time working on high-payoff activities. Most people (who are honest with themselves) find their number is 30-40%.
If you discover there's room for improvement, it's time for step three.
Step three: Go shopping.
Go through your diary one more time and circle all of your low-payoff activities. Feel free to skip things like grooming, sleeping, meals, caring for children–things you still have to (or want to) do.
What remains is your shopping list of low-payoff activities. This is where you will "buy" time. Go through the remaining list and ask yourself, "What can I cut down on?" and "What can I cut out?"
The point of this is to help you define your current reality and show you a simple way to change it. Spending a few hours this week doing this exercise is truly a high-payoff activity.
Filed under Personal development, Productivity, Time Management by
Last night, I heard a speaker talking about how he found more time for work in his already busy schedule.
He had his weekly calendar up on a slide, showing his 12 hour work-days, and showed how he was able to find another 30 hours a week (30!) by doing things like making calls during his commute to and from work, taking 15 minutes to eat lunch instead of an hour, and who knows what else he said, I tuned out about a third of the way through his presentation.
I don't want to do more work. I work enough as it is. Actually, if I were honest about it, what I want to do is less work. Much less. Like none at all.
Of course that depends on how you define work. Here's a simple definition I just made up: if it's not fun, it's work.
So what I really want to do is get rid of everything I don't like doing and replace it with things I enjoy.
Is that unrealistic? Good! Then unrealistic is what I want to be!
Yes, I know there will always be things I can't delegate, things I don't want to do but must. But that doesn't mean I have to fill my day with these kinds of things, let alone find ways to squeeze even more hours of unpleasantness into my day.
Okay, I know I'm ranting, but this guy bummed me out. I should have heard him out (so I could share more of his ideas with you) and simply changed the word "work" to fun. "How to find an additional 30 hours a week for fun". Now that would have been an awesome presentation.
Filed under Just for fun, Productivity, Time Management by
In his excellent article, "27 Productivity Killers: Why Nothing Ever Gets Done!" author Matt Tanguay presents a laundry list of reasons for failed productivity.
He begins with a "top level" view:
- You have too much on your plate. Whether you don’t want to say no, you don’t know how or you can’t, you end up having too much to do.
- The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Your body has needs. You need to give it the proper food, exercise and time off to stay optimally healthy.
- The flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak. Your attitude is greatly affected by external factors such as your relationships, your finances and the kind of work you’re doing.
- There's always tomorrow. Procrastination is caused by obstacles and friction. These tips will help you make sure you stop procrastinating altogether.
- Stuff keeps coming up. Interruptions from email and phone calls, distractions from your personal life, as well as meeting overload can easily kill your productivity.
- Doing the wrong things. Clarity is power. And once you’re clear about what you want, you need the right strategy and plan of action.
He then presents "productivity killers" in each of these areas.
But what is productivity? Is it
- Getting things done?
- Getting MORE things done?
- Efficiency?
- Effectiveness?
Productivity isn't about getting things done, it's about getting the right things done. Getting things done means you're busy; getting the right things done means being effective.
But productivity is also about producing desired results efficiently, meaning as quickly and abundantly as you want.
You may be effective at bringing in clients but inefficient if this takes up too much of your time. You may be efficient at organizing your files but if this isn't helping your practice grow (desired result), you're not being effective.
Productivity requires effectiveness and efficiency.
By and large, Tanguay's 27 "productivity killers" are really "efficiency killers". They don't necessarily stop you from producing desired results, but they could be slowing you down or making you pay too high a price for those results.
There are some good suggestions here. Just make sure you don't use them to become efficient at the wrong things.
Filed under Productivity, Time Management by
One of the precepts of the Getting Things Done or GTD methodology is that it's not necessary to prioritize your Next Actions in advance, nor is it recommended. For one thing, priorities change. What seems important today might be completely unnecessary a week from today.
Also, priorities are contextual. Picking up a new cartridge for your laser printer is something you do while running errands, not at ten o'clock at night.
Priorities, then, should be established during your daily planning, which I contend should take place the night before, and "in the moment".
To prioritize, review your action lists and determine what you want to do based on three factors: time, energy, and importance (priority).
So today, I may see a task that is important but will take a block of two hours and I don't have that much time. Or it requires a fair amount of energy and I'm tired. Or I have lots of time but the task under consideration really isn't that important. These tasks will have to wait.
Some people partially prioritize tasks as they add them to their lists, noting time (how much time they estimate the task will take) and energy (how much they will need, i.e., low, medium, or high). This way, when they don't have a lot of time or energy, they can scan their lists to find tasks that match.
I usually don't prioritize in advance. I add a lot of tasks to my list each day and I don't want to take the time to think about whether something will take ten minutes or twenty minutes or whether I will need high energy or just medium. To some extent, I make these decisions when I review my lists and often, I simply choose what I am inspired to do.
This week is Thanksgiving week in the United States. Some people are working like crazy to clear their desks before the long weekend and some are already in "vacation mode". If you are in the latter category, at work but finding yourself unable to get much done, go through your lists and look for low time/low energy activities you can do.
If you have "vacation brain" and don't have a list of low energy tasks to dig through, or your list doesn't inspire you to take action, check out this list of mindless, but productive tasks that inspired this post.
Or, if you're like me, you'll just catch up on your reading.
Filed under Productivity, Time Management by
Peter Drucker once said, "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." Far more important than "doing things right," he said, is "doing the right things".
Every day, I review my task lists and choose the three "most important tasks" for the day. My most important tasks are those which advance my most important objectives. My "MITs" go at the top of my list and I make an effort to do them before I do anything else. If I get these three things done, I consider it a good day.
Three is a good number, but sometimes there are only two. There are days when a fourth MIT slips through and makes it to my list, but I try to focus on no more than three.
Three MITs keeps me from getting overwhelmed by a longer list and gives me a sense of accomplishment. When I get my three MITs done, I then take care of less important tasks. Or, if it's early in the day and I feel like it, I might add another MIT to the list.
At times, you may find it difficult to choose three MITs. You may have ten things that MUST get done today. No problem. Of the ten, which three are the MOST IMPORTANT? Make those your MITs and do them first.
Each day, you will have MITs and you will have other tasks. The other tasks may be important and need to be done. They may even be urgent. I'm not telling you to ignore these other tasks. Do them, but whenever possible, do them after you do your MITs.
The GTD methodology helps me to get things done. A daily list of MITs helps me to get the right things done.
Filed under Productivity, Time Management by
As you know, I use Evernote for everything: notes, writing, web clips, and task and project management. (Read my posts about how I use Evernote).
A missing element in using Evernote for task management is calendar integration. If I want to see a note on a certain day in the future, I have to manually put a reminder on my calendar, with a link to that note. I calendar "ticklers" to remind me of all kinds of things: reviewing a task, starting a task, calls–anything I need to do or review at a future date.
There is only one issue with this, but one I can live with until something better comes along: The note links that I paste into my Google Calendar aren't clickable. To find the linked note, I copy and paste the link into a new browser window, hit enter, and the note is launched in my Windows desktop client.
Followupthen.com is an email reminder service that can be used to send reminders to yourself or anyone else (e.g., employees, partners, clients), at pre-set days and times. For example, you can use the service to send yourself an email reminder to call a client three days from today or to begin working on a brief three hours from now.
I've tried the followupthen.com service and I like it. It's easy to use and requires no registration. Simply send an email (To, CC, or BCC) to (time interval) [@] followupthen.com to schedule a future email. The service is free and they have an upgraded version with additional features.
You don't have to use Evernote to benefit from the Followupthen.com service, but you might want to. Fellow attorney and Evernote lover, Daniel Gold, author of a new ebook on using Evernote for GTD, just posted a video showing how he uses the Evernote Note Links feature with Followupthen.com to remind him of his Evernote tasks:
[mc src="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAsKUFHlA60" type="youtube"]Evernote and followupthen.com reminders[/mc]
Followupthen.com may sound like the ideal solution to Evernote's lack of calendar integration, but there are two issues that preclude me from using it exclusively:
- The Evernote note link that is returned to you in the reminder email isn't clickable (at least not in my chrome browser). I still have to copy and paste it as I do with links in my calendar. This may not be the case if you use Outlook or another email client, but I still have the extra step I have when using gCal. Of course you can use the reminder without note links but then, once reminded, you have to search to find the note in Evernote.
- Email isn't as reliable as a calendar. If an email doesn't arrive, or you don't see it when it arrives, you won't get another reminder. The corresponding task that lies buried in Evernote (or whatever you are using) might forever be forgotten. On my calendar, when I do my weekly review, I can see all of the tasks I did and did not do that week. To re-schedule a task, all I need to do (on gCal) is slide it to another day.
I recommend Followupthen.com but I don't see it as the best solution for tracking reminders. I can see using it for reminders in addition to using a calendar or other application, but not as a replacement.
Evernote said they are going to release a "due date" field, at which point we will be able to use Evernote itself or other third party applications for reminders.
If you use GTD and Evernote (or want to) and you want to know how to use the two together, Dan's ebook is only $5. (My review). Dan is currently running a promotion and will be giving away one year of Evernote Premium.
If you are new to Evernote and want to get up to speed quickly, Brett Kelly's "Evernote Essentials" ebook is highly recommended.
What are your thoughts on Followupthen.com and Evernote reminders?
Filed under Productivity, Technology, Time Management by
Well, my wife struck again.
Yesterday's post was about my wife's experience at her dentist and an important marketing (billing) lesson for attorneys.
Today, she got her oil changed. She was very impressed with her experience (great customer service, low prices) and she told the owner how she felt. She asked him for some of his business cards because when my wife finds something she likes, she will go out of her way to tell people about it.
During her conversation with the owner, she happened to mention a service her business offers (she and I own a service-related business). He was busy, of course, but he was interested in hearing more, so she gave him a brochure.
Guess what? He thought his customers would also be interested in our service and asked for more brochures to display on his counter.
Networking doesn't have to be complicated or overly time consuming. It can be as simple as making new contacts while you're busy running errands or otherwise going about your daily business. When you find a product or service you like, ask for some cards or literature. Tell your friends and clients about it. Tweet about it. Promote it.
Do this because you like the products or services and without any expectation that the owner or manager will do the same for you. If that happens, consider it a bonus.
When you approach networking like this, without an agenda, without demanding reciprocity, you will enjoy the process and do it naturally. Your friends and clients will get the benefit of your recommendations and be grateful to you. "Wow, my lawyer always has these great tips. . .". They might even start reading your newsletter or Liking your Facebook fan page.
And. . . something else will happen.
What do you think the owner of the business you are promoting will do when three new customers come into his place of business this week and mention they were referred by you?
If you want to build your business, go promote someone else's.
Filed under Marketing legal services, Networking, Time Management by
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