Leave your baggage in the trunk

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If you’ve done a lot of networking, you may have heard the expression. It means “don’t bring your problems into the meeting”.

If you had a bad day, nobody wants to hear about it. They don’t want to see your grumpy face or listen to your complaints.

Your clients and prospects and professional contacts may know, like and trust you, but they have problems of their own and don’t want to hear about yours, any more than you want to hear about theirs. Unless it’s a legal problem and they brought their checkbook, of course.

The same goes for your partners and employees. Nobody wants to work with a Debbie or Dennis Downer.

Leave your baggage in the trunk. If you’re meeting online, put on your happy face before you turn on the camera.

This doesn’t mean you can never display emotions. You don’t have to be like Mr. Spock. Your emotions are part of who you are and you would be wooden and unlikeable without them.

But if you’re in a dark place, filled with anger or sadness or feeling sorry for yourself, don’t ask anyone to join your pity party. Reschedule the meeting or send someone in your place.

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Do you have a re-reading list?

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I read an article the other day I’d read a few months ago. It was as if I was reading it for the first time. I saw things I could have sworn weren’t there the first time I read that article.

That’s why it’s important to re-read good articles and books and reports, re-watch videos, and re-listen to audios.

If you got something out of it the first time, read it again. Highlight your highlights. Take notes on your notes. You learn more and remember more when you do that.

Isn’t that what we did to prepare for exams in school?

If the subject is really important to you, re-read it several times. You’ll get something out of it each time.

But don’t this immediately. Wait a few days or a few weeks or even longer, before you go through the material again. “Spaced repetition” is a key to learning and remembering.

Why? Because as time passes between reads, you forget what you read and what you thought about what you read. On your next read, you notice ideas you didn’t notice before, because you are a different person now than you were when you first read the material.

How so?

With the first read, everything was new to you. On subsequent reads, you’ve had time to use the information, or think about it, or to read other ideas on the subject, all of which provide you with context you didn’t have the first or tenth time you read the material.

Clearly, many things we read or watch aren’t worth a second glance. More than a few aren’t even worth finishing. When you find something exceptional, however, something that opens your eyes to new ideas or new ways to use old ideas, put it on your re-reading list and read it again.

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Why is more important than how

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I’m big on “how to”. I like learning how to do things and getting good at doing them. To be the best that I can be so I can accomplish my goals, feel pride in creating things and changing people’s lives.

So I read and study and practice the how-tos

But while “how” is important, it’s not as important as “why”.

You say you want to grow your practice by one-third this year? Why do you want that? What will you do with the money?

Pay some bills? That’s probably not enough to motivate you to do what you need to do to achieve your goal. Money in, money out, another day, another dollar.

On the other hand, if the reason you want to earn more money is to help your aged parents finally retire, because they worked hard all their lives and are still working to pay their bills. . . that’s a big reason why.

That’s the kind of “why” that will motivate you to make the calls or start a newsletter or do other things to bring in more business. It’s what will keep you trying new ideas, staying the course when things get tough, get past rejection or disappointment or fatigue that might otherwise cause you to give up.

Ask yourself what you want. And then ask yourself why you want it.

When you have a big enough why, you’ll figure out how.

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What would you buy?

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It’s been a rough year for a lot of folks. A lot of belt-tightening, deferring purchases, raiding retirement accounts. A lot of resistless nights, fatigue-filled days, and worries about the future.

Stimulus payments and PPP loans may help, but they’re not a long term solution. Building your practice is a long-term solution. For many lawyers, however, the client-pool isn’t quite as deep these days, given that many would-be clients have had an equally bad year.

And yet, there is more than enough business out there for you. I don’t know about the other guy, but for you, there’s plenty.

You just have to find a way to attract them.

I’m not talking about marketing. Yes, that’s part of it, but it might not be the key ingredient for attracting more clients.

What is that key ingredient?

You.

If you want to attract more business, you need to become more attractive.

When you’re feeling nervous about the future, worried, confused, skeptical, scared, or you are otherwise in a bad place mentally and emotionally, it’s difficult to attract anyone, least of all, people who are similarly situated.

Clients come to you because you give them hope for a better future. They need to feel like you can take them there.

It’s not just what you say or promise to do. It’s your music. How you feel and how you make them feel.

If your “music” isn’t attractive right now, you’ve got to change your music.

A simple way to do that is to use your imagination.

Humor me. This is the real deal.

Imagine what your life will be like when things are the way you want them. Or remember what it was like before lockdown living became the norm. Imagine a time when you have lots of clients and cases and money comes in like clockwork.

Get quiet and imagine a better future for yourself. A time when you don’t have to tell yourself you “don’t need that” or you “probably shouldn’t spend that”. A time when money is plentiful and you don’t have to think about it.

In that future, what would you buy? Where would you put some cash?

Would you upgrade that ancient laptop you’ve been lugging around? Hire another assistant? Advertise more?

Would you get some new clothes? Fix up your house? Give more to charity or help out a needy friend?

Would you start a passion project, get braces for your teeth, or hire someone to clean your house once a week?

Think about what you would do when you have plenty of money. More importantly, think about how you would feel.

Take a deep breath and imagine it.

Feels good, doesn’t it? Warm and fuzzy. That tightness in your gut is gone. You feel relaxed, centered, confident. You feel like anything is possible and you’re excited about the future.

Yes or yes?

The only thing left is to find a way to feel that way now, because that feeling is what will take you from where you are to where you want to go. It’s what will make you more attractive to clients who want that, too.

That’s crazy, you say? Woo woo nonsense. It’s just wishful thinking and you need a plan, something you can do that will bring in more money.

I just gave you that plan.

Give a try. Meditate once a day for ten or fifteen minutes and imagine things the way you want them. Do that for 30 days or 90 days. Make it a part of your daily routine.

Worst case, nothing changes, but for ten minutes a day, you take a mental vacation and feel great.

Best case? You change. Your confidence grows and you start taking action, inspired by your wishful thinking.

Your music changes. You become more attractive to people who need your help and they find their way to you.

Because the Law of Attraction is real.

If this is a message you needed to hear right now, if you are inspired by these words, realize that you attracted them to you. What will you attract next?

When you’re ready to take action, here is a great option

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What to do when you don’t know what to do

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You’ve got a situation. A problem, something you need or want and you can’t figure out how to get it. You’re confused and frustrated and don’t know what to do.

We have a situation like this in our family right now. A close relative is ill and we’re trying to sort out the medical, legal, and financial options. It’s all been a bit overwhelming.

When you have a problem and you don’t know what to do, your feelings aren’t going to help you, you have to focus on action.

Here’s how:

1) State the goal

Where do you want this to end up? What would be a good outcome? How would you define success?

You need to know the destination before you you know what to do to reach it.

2) Write down the facts

What do you know about the current situation, and what do you need to find out?

What are the options? What can you do? What are the problems, issues, and obstacles stopping you from reaching the goal?

3) Choose the “next action”

Once you know the facts, it’s time to take action. Not just any action, however, the logical “next action,” in Getting Things Done terms, meaning something you can do to move the situation forward.

If you’re having trouble getting started, choose something small and easy to do:

Write down a list of questions. Make a call. Do some research.

Once you’ve done that, ask again: “What’d the next action?”

And do that.

If the next action is too big, break it down into smaller steps and find one you can do.

If you have several next action candidates and don’t know which one to choose, your next action might be to talk to someone or to weigh the pros and cons of each option so you can decide which one to choose.

We did this with our family situation and while it’s been a bumpy ride, we’ve moved forward from a place of not knowing what to do to knowing what to do (next).

And we know that if we continue asking, “What’s the next action?” and doing it, we’ll get through this difficult situation and eventually reach our goal.

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How to defeat ‘Productivity Shame’

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‘Productivity Shame’ is the feeling that you haven’t done enough.

You haven’t accomplished enough, you didn’t work hard enough, you’re not good enough.

In part, it’s caused by believing you “should” accomplish at a certain level or pace. You should work as hard as others do and accomplish as much as they do, and if you don’t, you’re weak and ineffectual.

So, we push ourselves to do more than we’re able to do and set ourselves up to fail.

We do that by setting unrealistic goals or schedules for ourselves, because humans tend to underestimate the amount of time needed to complete a task, and/or overestimate our ability to complete a task in that amount of time.

How can we change this?

First, stop comparing yourself to others.

We all have different goals, responsibilities, and energy. What someone else does (or says they do) may inspire you to attempt to do more but if that doesn’t work for you, stop it and allow yourself to do what you can do.

Because you can only do what you can do.

Your body needs time to rest and recharge and time to do other things. You have to stop beating yourself up because you can’t (or don’t want to) live up to someone else’s standard.

Pushing ourselves when we’re exhausted leads to bad decisions and bad outcomes. Things take longer to do because we’re tired, make mistakes and need time to fix them.

If we keep pushing, it can lead to burnout.

On the other hand, when you work at a pace that’s suited to you, you get more done in less time and you get better results.

Second, focus on what’s important and let go of everything else.

There is never enough time to do everything. Determine your priorities and get them done.

When you do that, when you get your most important tasks done each day, the things you didn’t do don’t matter.

Look at your list of tasks and choose the most important one. Ask yourself, “If I could only get one thing done today, what would it be?”

This doesn’t mean you can’t do more. It means that if get your most important task done, your day has been productive and you have nothing to be ashamed of.

Finally, celebrate your accomplishments.

When you have a good day, meaning you accomplished one or more important tasks, pat yourself on the back, forget about everything else, and don’t look back.

Think about what you did, not what you didn’t do.

Feel good about yourself and reward yourself for having a productive day.

Whatever you do, stop caring about what other’s think. What they think is none of your business.

The Quantum Leap Marketing System for Attorneys

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Daily notes: a journal by a different name

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I’ve tried keeping a journal and find it useful (and fun) to record my thoughts but the habit hasn’t stuck.

I’d like to try again and may have found a way to do that.

There’s a new breed of note taking apps (Roam, Obsidian, and others) and I’m trying out one of them.

One feature is a “daily notes” page that automatically appears (unless you turn off that feature), with the date and plenty of room to write. You can also set up templates to prompt you to record whatever is important to you.

Yes, it’s really a journal with a different name. But it might work because the daily notes feature is built into the app. I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to go write in my journal, I can simply add some thoughts or notes on my daily notes page when they occur to me throughout the day.

In that sense, the daily notes page work like an inbox—a place to deposit ideas and notes to be sorted, filed and worked on later.

A daily notes page also works like an “outbox”.

At the end of the day, you can record notes on what you did, what you thought, and what you plan to do later. Because it’s built into the app, it’s easy to drag or copy/paste notes written elsewhere onto the page.

What can you record in your daily notes? Anything you want:

  • What you did today, what you learned today, what you want to remember
  • Goals, plans, ideas
  • Quotes from books you read, a list of books you want to read
  • Websites and apps you want to check out
  • Questions you have about something you’re working on
  • Habits you want to track
  • New clients, new prospects, new marketing campaigns
  • Earnings, expenses, debts you need to pay, money you need to collect
  • Ideas for new projects, notes about improving your workflow, your attitude, your skills, or your well-being

Anything you did or want to do, anything you want to remember, in as little or as much detail as you want.

Some days, you’ll write hundred of words. Other days, you might write a single sentence, or nothing at all.

This morning, I wrote a few questions about the notes app I’m trying, and a few thoughts about the concept of daily notes.

At the end of the day, you can add comments and additional thoughts, and tags or labels or links to related notes. You will no doubt want to move some of those notes to other folders or pages or other apps.

Daily notes allow you to memorialize your journey and build a repository of information you can go back to help you manage your work or personal life.

Daily notes also help you hold yourself accountable to doing what you said you would do, and what you need to do to achieve your goals.

When I look at what I did and didn’t do last week, I see what I’m doing right and what I need to improve.

Yeah, I’m not sure I like that part.

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3 rules for better note taking

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In school, taking good notes improved our understanding and retention of the material, leading to better papers and test scores.

In a law practice, good notes can help us win cases by helping us see aspects of the case we might otherwise miss.

Good notes also help us create better articles, presentations, and books.

Learning and using what you learn starts with good note taking. Here are 3 rules to help you do that:

(1) Record the source.

Attribution of authoritative sources lends authority to what you write or say about a subject. Recording the source will also allow you to go back to the original material if you want to take another look, or find other material by the same author.

(2) Don’t just write what someone said. Write what you think about what they said.

One of the best ways to get more out of your notes is to record your thoughts and ideas about the points you read or hear immediately after you hear them. Write down why they are important, other ideas and questions they make you think of, examples from other books you’ve read and from your own experience, and notes about what to do with this information.

In law school, after I wrote a note, I often wrote my opinion—what I thought about the point made by the court, the professor, or fellow student. I also noted related cases or ideas, and questions I wanted to explore further. This helped me study more effectively, recall the material during exams, and write more persuasively.

I did the same thing in my practice. I recorded what a witness said, for example, and then added my thoughts and questions about what they said, and how I might use it, in the left margin of the page.

The Cornell Note Taking Method advocates this. They also suggest that when the lecture, interview, or chapter is done, you immediately add a summary at the bottom of the page.

(3) Reread and review your notes after you write them. Preferably more than once.

Add additional thoughts. Add links to other notes you have on the subject. Then, re-read and reflect on your notes again, to re-enforce what you’ve learned, and explore additional ideas you can use.

Taking better notes takes practice. I know that after I hear a presentation or read an article, I’m usually in a hurry to move on to the next video or article. I have to remind myself to record my thoughts about the subject and how I could use my notes.

When I take time to do this, I almost always find my notes are more useful to me. Try it and I think you’ll find the same thing.

Evernote for Lawyers ebook

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I’m a professional quitter

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In eighth grade, I joined the wrestling team. I gave it a semester and quit when I realized I wasn’t good enough and didn’t like it.

But isn’t quitting for losers?

Everyone says

  • Work harder
  • Give it time
  • You’ll get better with practice
  • You’ll learn to like it
  • If you quit, you’ll never know how good you could be
  • Do it anyway, it’s good for you

Well-intentioned advice, I’m sure, but is it right?

Ozan Varol says that sometimes quitting might be the best thing we can do:

I’m a professional quitter. After serving on the Mars Exploration Rovers mission, I quit rocket science and went to law school. After practicing law for a few years, I left to join academia. Most recently, I decided to quit that as well and give up the security of tenure to double down on popular writing and speaking.

I quit things I don’t enjoy. I give up on ideas that fail to live up to expectations. I jettison projects that no longer serve me or my mission in the world.

He acknowledges that many people quit too soon and never find out what they might have accomplished. “Yet many people persist when they should quit,” he says.

If you continually fail at something, or resist doing it, it might be a sign that you should stop doing it.

Varol notes that when we continue doing things that aren’t working for us, aside from being unhappy, we pass up the opportunity to do something else, something we might be great at and love.

Those of us who have changed careers and found success doing something else know this is true.

And what’s true for careers can also be true for work projects, marketing methods, and marriages. Quitting may not only be a viable option, it might be the best one.

So, what would you like to quit today?

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3 things that make habits sticky

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Writing my blog post/newsletter is a well-established habit for me. I’ve been doing it for years and never have to remind myself, it’s just something I sit down and do.

It’s a sticky habit.

I have another habit that was sticky but has come unstuck.

For a long time, I took a walk 6 days per week. Then I missed several days and had trouble getting back to it.

I’m back to doing a short walk a few days per week, but I want to work my way back to my regular schedule.

James Clear, author of the best-selling Atomic Habits, tells us there are three things that help habits stick:

1) Repetition. Habits form based on frequency, not time.

2) Stable context. If the context is always changing, so is the behavior. You need a reliable environment.

3) Positive emotions. If it feels good, you’ll want to repeat it.

My thoughts:

1) Repetition

I started writing my blog/newsletter once a week. I increased this to thrice weekly, and for several years now, I write a post every weekday.

Repetition clearly made a difference.

What really got this habit to stick, however, was announcing my schedule to the world.

The world held me accountable.

Even today, when I might feel like taking the day off from writing, knowing there are people waiting to hear from me keeps me on schedule.

2) Stable context

The main issue with my walks is the weather. When it’s cold, it’s harder to get out the door, especially in the morning.

My context isn’t stable.

The solution might be as simple as getting warmer clothes, sweatpants and sweatshirt, instead of the shorts and t-shirts I usually wear.

3) Positive emotions

I enjoy writing my newsletter. I also enjoy the results it brings me.

I enjoy my walks. I get exercise, time to think and time to dictate notes.

So, how about you? Are your (positive) habits sticky? If not, now you know what to do.

Ready to up your marketing game? Here’s how

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