Hack away at the unessential

January 30, 2014 by
Share

I just heard about a hoarder who had 30 years of newspapers and magazines stacked floor to ceiling in nearly every room of his house. Yeah, he had a lot of issues.

(Rim shot.)

So last weekend, I cleaned out my closet and armoire and got rid of a lot of old clothes. There’s empty space now, and it feels good. Next stop, my office.

Once a year, I get the bug to de-clutter. I like to, “Hack away at the unessential,” as Bruce Lee said. Getting rid of things I don’t use, simplifying my life.

It’s not just about possessions. I try to do the same in my digital word. Eliminating (or at least filing away in a place I won’t see them) forms, emails, notes, and assorted paperwork. I pare down the apps on my iPhone, too.

I like looking at an empty email inbox and a slimmed down “My documents”. It gives me a sense of peace and control over my world. Fewer things to look at, think about, or update.

Bruce Lee talked about getting rid of the unessential to better focus on the few things that mattered most. He concentrated his work outs, his energy, and his focus on a few things. It made him more efficient, quicker and more powerful. He may never have described it as such, but he appears to have embraced the Pareto Principle, eliminating the “trivial many” so he could focus on the “precious few”.

In a law practice, that might be achieved by getting rid of (or filing away) eighty percent of your forms (letters, checklists), so you can focus on the twenty percent you use the most. You’ll have time to make them even better.

You could do something similar with client intake. Identify the most important parts of the process and spend more time on them. Do you really need to know all of the facts or review all of the documents at the first meeting or might some of this be done later? Freeing up some time at the first meeting would allow you to get to know the client better and he, you.

It could also mean paring down your client list, getting rid of marginal clients who pay the least or give you the most trouble, so you can focus on your best clients.

Bruce Lee believed that simpler is better. When you hack away at the unessential, you aren’t mired in complexity or distracted by minutia. Fewer moving parts makes you more agile. You get better at the most important things.

How can you hack away at the unessential in your law practice?

Share
Filed Under: Law office management, Personal development, Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Attorney marketing plan: 15 minutes a day or two hour a week?

January 21, 2014 by
Share

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you’ve heard me repeatedly say that marketing doesn’t need to take a lot of time. “Just 15 minutes a day is all you need, just make sure you do it every day.”

Why every day?

  • So that it becomes a habit. Because if you instead block out two hours every Friday for marketing and you miss a week, you’ll fall behind and may have trouble getting back in the groove
  • Because doing something every day programs your subconscious mind to to find ideas when you’re doing other things
  • Because marketing should be an integral part of running your practice and something you enjoy doing, not a chore you have to force yourself to do once a week
  • Because the little things we do every day, a quick phone call or email, for example, are not only effective because they involve reaching out to people, they are also efficient, compared to big blocks of time which often involve a lot of waste
  • Because marketing ideas and opportunities present themselves daily, via people you meet, things you read, and ideas that pop into your mind, and if you don’t use them in the moment, they will pass you by

There are times when a big block of time for marketing can be useful, especially when you are working with a team. Planning and developing a new advertising or social media campaign or meeting with a web developer are examples. Of course some things like networking or delivering a seminar require a block of time.

You could also utilize blocks of time to get ahead of the marketing curve. With a little preparation, you could create a month’s worth of weekly blog posts in a single two hour writing session.

Investing 15 minutes a day (weekdays) for marketing is 5.5 hours a month, certainly not to much to ask of even the busiest attorney, especially considering the immense return on that investment. Could you add two more hours to that once a month for bigger projects? Do you need to?

How much time do you spend on marketing? Do you have a fixed schedule?

Need an attorney marketing plan? Get The Attorney Marketing Formula.

Share
Filed Under: Law office management, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Productivity, Time Management

The simplest time management system in the world

January 10, 2014 by
Share

Everyone has their favorite time management system. Except those who don’t. Many people don’t have any system. They look at the choices and conclude that they’re too complicated or, ironically, too time-consuming to use.

Others, try lots of systems and are never satisfied, so they keep looking.

If you don’t have a system that’s right for you, or if you don’t have any system at all, I want to present to you the simplest time management system in the world.

There are three parts to this system:

(1) Write down everything.

Get it out of your head and on paper or in some kind of electronic list. I use Evernote, but there are many alternatives.

What’s important is that you have a place to go to see all of the tasks and projects you have to do, want to do, or might one day consider doing, and that place is not in your head.

(2) Use a calendar.

Anything that is time-oriented–due dates, start dates, appointments, reminders–should be recorded on your calendar. If there is a specific time when it must be done, like an appointment or a conference call, record the time. If not, and you’re using an electronic calendar, record it as an “all day” event.

The key is to only record things you actually intend to do. As David Allen says, the calendar is “sacred territory”. If it’s on the calendar, you do it.

Of course throughout your day you need to look at your calendar to see what’s on it. You can also set up electronic reminders if you want.

(3) Ask yourself THIS question every day.

So the first two elements of this system are nothing new. I’m pretty sure every time management system uses them. Where things get complicated is with what happens next.

Time management systems use many different ways to categorize and prioritize the items on your master list. They uses tags and codes and allow you to put things in different boxes or on different sub-lists. If these work for you, use them. If they don’t, once a day, ask yourself one simple question:

“What are the most important things I need to do today?”

Write these on a separate list. These tasks are your “most important tasks” for the day. If you get these done, your day will be successful, even if they are the only things you do that day.

You don’t need to complete a lot of tasks to make it a successful day, as long as those tasks are important. I usually write down three “most important tasks” (MIT’s) for the day. Sometimes it’s just one or two, sometimes four or five. So the question I ask myself every day is, “What are the three most important things I need to do today?”

And that’s it. That’s the system. You look at your big list, decide what to do that day based on what’s important, and do them. You don’t do anything else on your list, or that comes up during the day, until you have done your “most important tasks” for the day.

What about the rest of your list? Forget about it. You’ll never get everything done and that’s okay. Let it go. Focus on getting the most important things done each day and when you’ve done that, you can go back to your list and choose additional tasks to do if you want to or you can call it a day.

Now, you may be wondering if this system requires you to read through your master list every day so you can choose your most important tasks. No. That’s too much. Reviewing your master list once a week is enough.

But here’s the thing. You probably already know what to put on your list of most important tasks for the day. At least your subconscious mind does. I’ll prove it.

Without looking at any lists or your calendar, ask yourself this question: “What is the most important thing I can do right now?”

I’ll bet you had an answer.

That’s what you should do next. When it’s done, go ahead and ask yourself that question again.

Do you use Evernote? Have you read my ebook, Evernote for Lawyers?

Share
Filed Under: Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

When is procrastination a good thing?

January 6, 2014 by
Share

I’ve got until the first of next month to complete my CLE credits. I’ve been watching videos over the last couple of weeks and making good progress. I know some people would say that doing three years worth of CLE in a few weeks is unwise. They would point out that I could have done an hour a month and been done months ago.

Their math is correct but their advice is misplaced. They assume that procrastination is a sign of weakness or poor organizational skills and leads to unnecessary anxiety and poor results. But is that always true? Is there a time when procrastination is a good thing?

I think so.

Procrastination helps you prioritize. It allows you to filter your list of tasks so you can focus on what’s important and not merely what’s urgent.

CLE isn’t important to me since I no longer practice. Now, it is urgent that I get those credit done, but waiting as I did allowed me to concentrate on important projects.

Procrastinating served me another way. It allowed me to express (to myself) my resentment at being required to take courses I don’t need and don’t want. It allows me to give the middle finger to the system.

Hey, I’m human.

In school, procrastinating served me another way. Waiting until the last day to write a paper or study for exams gave me a built in excuse in case I got a poor grade. “Hey, I didn’t spend any time studying.”

I almost always got good grades, however. But what if I hadn’t?

What if procrastinating is harmful? What if it keeps you from doing what’s important? What if it results in poor performance or results?

Then you have a problem.

There are lots of techniques for dealing with “bad” procrastination. I think the simplest solution is to get the task out of your head and onto paper–your calendar or other “trusted system”. Give yourself enough time to get the task done and then forget about it. If you’ve schedule a start date and given yourself enough time to do what you need to do, you can then devote your mental energy to other things until it’s time to start.

That’s what I did with my CLE. I knew what I needed to do and when I needed to do it. And I’m getting it done.

Calendaring tasks for the future also gives you a buffer of time which may allow you to adjust your priorities. When the scheduled start date arrives you may find that the scheduled task can be safely postponed, or that you don’t need to do it at all. Since I am not actively practicing, I keep thinking about changing my status to inactive. If I do that I won’t have to do CLE.

When is procrastination a good thing? When it serves you in some way. It’s okay to do things at the last minute, as long as you are getting important things done. And as long as you’re still getting good grades.

Share
Filed Under: Continuing Legal Education, Dealing with stress, Personal development, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , ,

Slowing down to speed up: getting ready for the new year

December 30, 2013 by
Share

It’s time. The last few days of the year when the holiday craziness is nearly over, the tree and the lights are coming down, but the new year has not begun. This is the time when I tie up loose ends from the current year and get ready for the new one.

I’m sure you’re doing something similar. Or you will in the next few days. Much like we do in the days leading up to a vacation.

It’s called “slowing down to speed up”. We shut off the flow of regular business and look at things from a different perspective. Because we’re not consumed with taking care of clients and projects, we can better see where we are and make plans for where we want to be.

In addition to doing some goal setting and planning, I’m getting caught up on CLE and learning some new software I plan to use extensively next year. I’m also cleaning up my computer workspace, catching up on email, consolidating files and folders in “my documents,” and consolidating my Evernote tags.

Not difficult stuff. Kinda fun, actually. But important, because it will allow me to start the new year with fresh eyes and fewer distractions and, therefore, be more productive with “real” work.

At least it feels that way. And that’s why we do this year-end ritual, isn’t it? So that we’ll feel refreshed and empowered?

So, how about you? How are you getting ready for the new year?

If you’re planning to upgrade your Internet presence next year, you need this.

Share
Filed Under: Goal Setting, Law office management, Productivity Tagged With: ,

How to make next year better

December 26, 2013 by
Share

If you want to make next year better than this year, start by taking a look back at your practice over the last 12 months. Look at every new case or client and figure out where they came from.

Who referred them? How did they get on your list? What did you do to get them to call?

Do the same thing for repeat clients.

Also look at the quality of those clients. Some clients are better than others. They hire you more often, pay higher fees, and provide more referrals. Which of your new and repeat clients fall into the category of “better”? Where did they come from?

Grab your calendar, your bank statements, your website statistics, your notes and records, and take a mile high look at what you did last year and your results.

Look at your networking, speaking, writing, and blogging. Look at your keywords, your content, your offers.

What worked for you? What worked better? What worked best?

Look at your professional relationships. Who provided referrals or other help? Who referred more or better clients? Who provided you with important intangibles–support, ideas, friendship?

(Note to self: “Make sure to keep better records next year so the next time I do this analysis I’ll have everything in front of me.”)

You can see that some things you did this year worked great, many didn’t work at all, and most fell somewhere in the middle. The same with your relationships.

If you look hard enough, you will see that although a lot of things produced a lot of results (clients, money, subscribers), a few things produced the majority of your results. You may find that

  • Eighty percent of your results came from just twenty percent of your activities
  • Eighty percent of your referrals came from twenty percent of your clients and professional contacts
  • Eighty percent of your income came from twenty percent of your cases
  • Eighty percent of your new subscribers came from twenty percent of your posts, keywords, speaking gigs, ads, (etc.)

Or not. It doesn’t have to be eighty percent and twenty percent. But it is almost certain that a big percentage of your results came from a small percentage of efforts or sources.

Identify the activities that produced most of your results so you can do more of them. Identify the handful of referral sources that sent you most of your referrals or your best referrals, so you can strengthen your relationship with them and leverage those relationships to meet their counterparts.

If you want next year to be better than this year, you need to find what worked best and do more of it. To find the time and resources to do that, cut down on or eliminate things that didn’t work, or that didn’t work as well.

For me, one thing worked better than any other. My twenty percent activity was writing. The books, courses, and blog posts I produced brought me more traffic, subscribers, and revenue than anything else I did. Knowing this means I can make next year a better year by being more prolific.

I know where to focus. I know my priorities. I know where to spend my time.

How about you? What will you do more of next year? What can you cut down on or eliminate? How will you make next year better?

The Attorney Marketing Formula comes with a simple marketing plan that works. Check it out here.

Share
Filed Under: Increase your income, Law office management, Marketing legal services, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , ,

Marketing plan for lawyers: getting ready for the new year

December 19, 2013 by
Share

I’m being interviewed later today by a reporter for the Canadian Bar Association. She’s doing a story about what young lawyers need to do to prepare for the new year. I plan to tell her the same thing I would tell any attorney. Just follow these three simple steps:

STEP ONE: TAKE INVENTORY

The first thing you should do is to figure out where you are. A good way to do that is with a “S.W.O.T. Analysis”–figuring out your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

THREATS

Are you in danger of losing a good client? Are unreasonably high expenses causing cash flow problems? Have you been accused of doing something wrong that’s hurting or may hurt your reputation?

If there are holes in your ship, plug them so you can continue your journey. Do what you have to do to eliminate threats and minimize potential losses, but don’t dwell on them. Deal with them and move on.

WEAKNESSES

Are you deficient in any areas of knowledge? Do you need to improve certain skills? Do you need more referral sources, more clients, or better clients? Are you attracting clients who can’t or don’t pay? Do you need to get better at getting retainers? Is your bookkeeping a mess?

Figure out where you are weak and then look for solutions. Take courses, ask other lawyers for help or advice, buy equipment, delegate or outsource the problem so you can focus on your strengths and opportunities.

STRENGTHS

What are you great at? Find something you excel at and leverage it to make it even bigger and better. Focus your time and energy on taking something that’s going well for you and build on it.

If you get good results with a certain type of client or case, you should focus on getting more of those clients or cases. That may mean eliminating other practice areas or turning away clients who don’t fit your ideal client profile.

In the marketing arena, if you are good at networking, do more of it. Ask your contacts to introduce you to their colleagues. Find a second networking group if you have the time or a better group if you don’t. Work deeper within the organization to gain even more influence. Volunteer for committees, take on more responsibilities.

If you like the Internet, create more content, learn about SEO and social media, do more guest posts, and start creating videos.

If you like to write, write. If you like to speak, speak.

Look at your skills and your preferences and focus on them. What do you do best? How can you do more of it and get even better at it? How can you leverage it to get an even bigger return?

OPPORTUNITIES

Make a list of people you know and like and brainstorm ways you can improve and deepen your relationship. They can lead you to new clients and new referral sources. They can provide you with advice and ideas. They can send traffic to your website, provide content for your blog or newsletter, and promote your event or offer.

Make another list of people you don’t know who sell to or advise your target market. Make plans to approach them to see how you might work together.

Go through your notes and files and collect all of the ideas you have recorded for marketing your practice, improving your work product, increasing your productivity, or increasing profitability. Put a star next to your best ideas.

STEP TWO: CHOOSE ONE BIG GOAL

Once you know where you are, the next step is to determine where you want to go. What do you want to accomplish next year relative to your practice or career?

Instead of writing down five or ten goals, as you may be inclined to do, I suggest you write just one big goal. Come up with as many candidates as you want to but then, choose one big goal that gets you excited.

Selecting one goal will force you to focus on that one goal, and nothing else. The odds are that many of your candidate goals are related to your one big goal and are, in fact, stepping stones on the path to reaching it. If your goal is to increase your net income to $250,000, for example, other goal candidates, e.g., “bring in six new clients per month,” are action steps you need to take to accomplish your singular income goal.

Of course you will have additional action steps. You don’t just bring in six new clients, for example, you have many things you need to do to bring in those clients. And that leads us to step three.

STEP THREE: WRITE A SIMPLE MARKETING PLAN

Why a plan? Because you need to know what to do, silly. Because come the first of the year, when you’re ready to get to work, you need a list of projects and tasks that will move you forward towards your goal.

Why simple? Because if your plan isn’t simple, you won’t do it. You’ll get bogged down in detail. You’ll spend more time working with your lists and planning your plans, and have little time to get anything done.

So, figure out where you are, then where you want to be, and from that, write a plan for accomplishing it. Keep in mind that the plan you start out with will almost never be the plan that gets you to your goal. That’s because plans change, circumstances change, and you will change. And that’s okay. Your plan will get you started, and getting started is the most important part.

The Attorney Marketing Formula comes with a simple marketing plan for lawyers. And a lot more stuff you need to know.

Share
Filed Under: Goal Setting, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Personal development, Productivity Tagged With: , , , ,

Taking inventory and getting organized

December 9, 2013 by
Share

Most people have way more “stuff” in their life than they need or want or even know they have. I was reminded of this over the last few days while setting up my new laptop.

I went through the old hard drive, making a list of programs to install on the new drive, and realized I didn’t recognize half of the program, and others I never used. There were many programs I didn’t install on the new drive. I mean, how many pdf makers and readers does one really need?

I’ve organized documents and folders. Put things in a more logical order. The new machine is lean and uncluttered. I can see what I have and find what I need. It feels good to be on top of things.

So now, I’m looking at other things in my life I can inventory and organize. December is a good month to do that. I’ll start with my projects and someday/maybes, so I can make decisions and set goals based on what’s important rather than what happens to be in front of me.

Why not do the same?

An easy place to begin is with your physical environment–closets, drawers, desks, the tool shed, the trunk of your car. What can you get rid of? As you eliminate things you don’t use, you make room for new and better things.

In the office, you might organize forms, form letters, and templates. Get rid of or update the ones that are obsolete or that you don’t use. Do the same for books, email subscriptions, and blog feeds.

How about taking inventory of your clients? Some are more valuable to you than others. Which ones can you ask to find another attorney? Which clients should you give more attention to?

How about your friends? Are there people in your life who enervate you? Cut down on how often you see them, or resolve to not see them at all. Do you have a friend you don’t see often enough? Now you’ll have more time for them.

Do you belong to too many groups? Support too many causes? Have too many hobbies or take too many classes? By cutting down on some, you can do more with the ones that matter.

Take inventory of the people and things in your life and pare things down to a more manageable number. Organize what’s left so you can access it more quickly. You’ll be better able to see what you have, what you need, and what you want to accomplish in the coming year and beyond.

Taking inventory and getting organized is a process of deciding what’s important so you can focus on it. When I’m not sure whether or not to keep something, I ask myself if it can be replaced. If not, I’ll hang onto it and look at it again some time down the road. If it can be replaced, out it goes. Usually.

If you’re too busy to take inventory of everything right now, take inventory of what needs to be inventoried. Make a list of possible areas of your life you’d like to streamline and organize. Then, tackle one area each month. By next year at this time, you’ll be a lean, mean, organized machine. With lots of room for new stuff.

Learn how I organize my digital life in my Evernote for Lawyers ebook.

Share
Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: , , ,

Some perspective on marketing legal services

November 25, 2013 by
Share

You often hear me say, “marketing is everything we do to get and keep good clients”.

Everything.

In terms of time, it’s mostly the little things we do every day. It’s the way we greet our clients and make them feel welcome. The emails and letters we send to former clients to stay in touch and remember them during the holidays. The articles and blog posts we publish to educate people about the law.

Marketing is also bigger things. Creating a new seminar or ad campaign. Scoping out and joining a new networking group. Recording new videos for your website.

And everything in between.

Most of the little things take little or no time to learn or apply. They are a natural extension of your values and personality, not the application of technique. Treating people with respect is part of who you are, not something you learn in a book.

Creating content for your website requires some time, but not an inordinate amount, given that it’s mostly writing things down you already know and do.

Bigger projects require more time and resources, it’s true, but you don’t do them every day. You outline a new presentation, create the slides or handouts, rehearse, and you’re done. Maybe it took you a week or two, but now you have a new marketing tool in your arsenal you can use over and over again.

Bigger projects can serve you long term. Getting involved in a new networking group, for example, takes extra effort initially, and may take months to bear fruit. But that group could eventually become a major source of new business (and friendships) for you, and last for decades.

Do something marketing related every day. 15 minutes is good. Reach out to a few former clients or other professionals with a note or email and watch what happens. Once a month or so, work on a bigger project. A 30 Day Referral Blitz, for example.

Whenever possible, invest your time and resources in creating things with a “long tail,” like new relationships, new content for your website, and new ways to grow your email list.

Marketing legal services doesn’t have to be daunting. If it is, you’re not doing it right. Sure, there are new things to learn and new things to do, but mostly, its about attitude.

If you’re struggling in your practice, start by examining your attitude towards marketing. If you don’t like marketing, if it’s something you force yourself to do, you will continue to struggle. If there are things you like and things you don’t, great–do more of the things you enjoy and are good at.

Marketing is a lot like lawyering. It takes place mostly in your head.

The Attorney Marketing Formula comes with a marketing plan.

Share
Filed Under: Leverage, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Productivity Tagged With: , , , ,

How to avoid procrastination when writing

November 22, 2013 by
Share

Do you have a procrastination pad? That’s what one writer calls a pad of paper you keep on your desk, onto which you jot down anything that you need to do or remember that occurs to you while you’re doing something else. It allows you to record the note and immediately get back to what you were doing.

Okay, not brilliant. But not a bad idea, either. Because you always have this pad within reach, you don’t have to go scrambling for a legal pad or scratch paper. And because it is dedicated to recording tasks to be done, not data to be filed, you can periodically input your list into your regular task management system.

Of course you can also set up a digital equivalent on your computer. Keep a text file open and minimized, and no matter what else you may be working on, you’re just a click away your electronic procrastination pad.

Or, you can do what I do. I have Evernote running at all times (I’m writing this now in a new note) and when I get an idea, I type it into a new note in my default notebook (my “InBox”). On my iPhone, I open Drafts and either type or speak-to-text the idea and send it to my Evernote Inbox.

When I’m writing, I often get ideas I want to record. Something I need to research, for example. I know if I stop writing to do the research, I’ll lose momentum and perhaps get lost down the rabbit hole that is the Internet. To avoid procrastination when writing, I make a note of what I need to know or do, and keep writing. I could record this elsewhere, but I find it best to write it within the text I’m working on.

Wherever I find myself stopping, I write a note to myself, within the sentence or paragraph. I put the note [in brackets] or preface it with my initials, “dw:”, to identify it as something I need to do. This allows me to keep writing, which is especially important for a first draft.

Once I’m done with the piece or section, I go back and find all of my “notes to self”. When I do the research later, I don’t have to remember where to insert it, I just go back to my note.

In addition to notes about research, I also make notes about passages that don’t sound right (i.e., “re-do this”), that need elaboration (i.e., “expand this”), or that might belong somewhere else (i.e., “put in chapter 2?”)

By separating the writing from the research, editing, and thinking, I procrastinate less and write quicker and better first drafts.

For more on how I use Evernote for research and writing, check out my ebook

Share
Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, Time Management, Writing Tagged With: , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »