So tell me, how much do you do on a typical day? How many tasks, appointments, or meetings? How many cases or projects do you work on? 

You want to do as much as possible, but you don’t want to burn out. 

You need a plan. 

Most people don’t plan effectively. They do the work that’s in front of them. They look at their calendar and task list, see what’s on deadline, think about their goals, and fill their day with as many tasks and appointments as possible. 

And end the day exhausted. 

They had a busy day. They got a lot done. But they aren’t running their business, their business is running them. 

If you ever feel that way about your practice, consider making a slight change. Instead of seeing what’s in front of you need to do each day, first decide how much you want to do. 

Pick a number. Not too much, not too few. Choose a number of “slots” to fill with work before you fill them.  

Slots first. Work second. 

Let’s say you choose 5 as the number of tasks you want to complete each day. That’s your upper limit. Maybe 2 or 3 are MITs (Most Important Tasks) and the others are less important. 

Whatever number you choose, it doesn’t include routine tasks you also do, such as clearing email, returning phone calls, and reviewing and signing routine letters and documents. 

A task is something that’s both important and takes a fair amount of time and energy to complete. More than a few minutes, anyway. In fact, you might specify that a task is anything that requires 30 minutes or more.

Of course, you can group small tasks, allocating 30 minutes for calls or for emails, for example. And yes, it’s a good idea to block out the time for this on your calendar. 

You can do the same thing with appointments and meetings. Decide in advance how many slots you allow each day. 

Maybe you allow yourself 2 tasks and 2 appointments each day. Or designate certain days for appointments, other days for tasks. 

The point isn’t how many tasks or appointment slots you choose, or when you do them. It’s that you decide how many slots in advance.

Planning this way keeps you from getting overwhelmed. You get your most important work done and have time and energy left to do anything else you choose to do. 

You run the practice instead of the other way around. 

As I’ve often mentioned, I plan my day the night before it begins, primarily because I like being able to start the day by getting to work. 

But I don’t get to work until I review the plan I made the night before. Just a minute or two, to double check everything. 

I might remember something I didn’t put on the list. Something important might have shown up in my email I need to address. My wife might remind me about something we need to do. Or I might realize I’m not ready to do something because I need to talk to someone, research something, or do something first. 

Plans change, after all. 

But there’s something else. Sometimes, I wake up, look at the list and realize that I’ve over-committed for the day. I overestimated how much I could accomplish and something has to go. Or there’s something on the list I don’t feel like doing that day. Unless there is a compelling reason why I must do it, I push it to another day. It’s my schedule, after all. 

It’s good to be king. 

Finally, once I’ve amended the list, I put things in the order in which I plan to do them. 

And then I get to work. 

Those two minutes in the morning make for a much more productive day.

Top athletes don’t train at the same level of intensity throughout the day. They front load their workouts, doing the heaviest parts earlier in the day, when they have the most energy.

They also front load their week, doing the most strenuous workouts Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, for example, and leaving the rest of the week for less intense parts of their training.  

This allows them to build muscle, speed, and endurance while getting sufficient rest so they can go at it again. 

We can work the same thing in our work.

The idea is simple. You start your day or week (or project) doing the most important tasks. This allows you to get started when you have more energy, so that if the rest of the day or the week you don’t work with the same intensity, or you work on tasks that are less important, you still make progress.

This doesn’t mean you need to start with the most disagreeable or difficult tasks, a la, Eat That Frog. Just start with your MITs, your “most important tasks”.

You don’t need to do them as soon as you roll out of bed. But when you’re ready to start your workday or a new week, you’re starting a new project or diving into a work-in-progress, do the most important tasks or steps first. 

When you structure your time this way, you make progress even if you don’t do that much with the rest of the day or the week. 

If you’re working on a new presentation, do the outline and first draft early in the day or week. Do the second draft, editing, and creating visuals later.

Many people do things just the opposite. They start their day doing easy tasks, to tick them off their list and make room to work on the important things. The problem with working this way is that we often run out of time and/or energy before getting to the important things.  

Front load your time by prioritizing the most important things on your list and doing them first.

Make that your SOP and, who knows, you might find that a four-day work week is your new reality. 

We all do it. We schedule something for a given day but run out of time (or energy) and push it to another day. That’s normal. If you rarely do that, you might not be getting as much done as you could. If you frequently do it, however, you might be trying to do more than you can handle. 

There is a sweet spot where you’re not doing too much or too little. But that’s a discussion for another day. 

Right now, a simple suggestion for you regarding what to do about tasks you postpone too often. 

Start by asking yourself why you keep postponing the task or project. Is it because it’s not that important to you, or not as important as other things you need to do? Is this task too difficult (right now)? Or tasks you find boring or otherwise unpleasant?

Because there are different options for each reason.

If you don’t see the value in doing the task, at least not in the short term, you might postpone it again (without feeling guilty about it), put it on a “someday” list, or delete it entirely. 

If the task is overwhelming, unpleasant, or too difficult, you might delegate all or part of it to someone who has more experience with that type of task or more time to do it. Or make the task easier to do, or at least easier to start, by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable steps. 

What if the task is too easy and you’re bored at the thought of doing it? You could make it more challenging or interesting by changing the way you do it. 

For example, instead of researching a project by piling through a bunch of books or articles, you might sign up for a course that shows you what to do step-by-step Or partner up with someone who does the parts you don’t like while you do others.

You could change the subject of a boring or unfulfilling task, e.g., writing a paper, to a different or more interesting subject.  

You could also expand the scope of a boring task and make it more challenging and/or more valuable. If you continually postpone outlining part of a presentation, for example, you might expand that into outlining the entire presentation.

Another idea is to change the software or tool you use, the newness of which should be more interesting and/or more challenging.

Once you know why you continually postpone a task, you can change that task, reframe how you think about it or how you go about doing it. It could be exactly what you need to do things you don’t want to do.