How to get a bigger return from your seminar or conference

March 20, 2012 by
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I was reading some tips on planning a successful conference and thought there was one tip that was missing. Every event you run should be recorded.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a speech, an all day seminar, a webinar, teleseminar, or a multi-day conference, why settle for only what you can get from a one time event?

If you record it, you can

  • Make it available for those who couldn’t attend
  • Sell the video, or create products from portions of the content
  • Run the video periodically on your web site
  • Offer the video, or portions thereof, as a lead generation incentive
  • Transcribe the event and create reports, articles, blog posts, and audio content
  • Watch the event so you can make the next one better
  • License the event to other lawyers in other jurisdictions

In fact, with any content you create, whether it’s a live event or something you write on the weekends, always look for ways to get a bigger return on your time and investment. Evergreen content that you create once and use over and over again is a smart, leveraged use of your time.

Wouldn’t it be great to do the same thing with your services? No, it’s not possible with a service, but you can do the next best thing. Every time you create a form, a checklist, a template, or a script, something you can use over and over again, you are leveraging your time and increasing your return.

To earn more and work less, never settle for a one-to-one return on your time or investment.

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Filed Under: Leverage, Marketing legal services, Presentations, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , ,

How to get that creative project (finally) started

March 16, 2012 by
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I want to help you get your project started. You know the one I’m talking about. It’s the one you’ve had in the back of your mind that you can’t stop thinking about.

It might be writing a book. Starting a blog. Or planning the trip of a lifetime.

You want to do it. You just don’t know how or where to begin.

The first thing is to give yourself permission to not do it. That’s right, let it go. You don’t have to do it. You can let someone else do it, you can keep it on your “someday” list, or you can let the opportunity pass and suffer the consequences. You will survive.

Too often we become attached to things we think we want to do, or believe we have to do, and our attachment gets in our way. It clouds our judgment, our sense of priority, and basically, messes us up. We begin projects when our heart isn’t in it and we do a poor job or we give up. It may have been a great idea, but if the timing wasn’t right, we haven’t done ourselves any good.

Let go of the idea. Let it ruminate in your subconscious. If you’re meant to do it, you will. When the time is right and you are ready.

I’ve got hundreds of creative projects that will never get done. They will remain “someday” for me and that’s just fine.

The creative projects I move forward with let me know I need to do them. I wake up thinking about them. I see something online and I am drawn to it. The idea nags at me and inspires me and excites me. When it won’t let go of me, that’s the project I do.

But there’s a process I go through between “idea” and “do”.

When I have an idea, the first thing I do is write it down. I use Evernote, but you can use anything you want: a text file, Word document, spiral notebook, whatever, but get it out of your head and onto paper (virtual or otherwise).

Guess what? It will still be in your head. Writing it down simply helps you to see what the idea looks like from a different perspective.

Once the idea is recorded, I add notes. I may write a bunch of bullet points, tasks, and ideas for categories or steps, or I might free write–letting my thoughts flow as I talk to myself about the project. I may record audio, talking about the idea, why I want to do it, issues I may have to resolve.

Next is research. Nothing formal, just reading and collecting snippets of information, blog posts, quotes, web clips, and anything else that catches my attention. I might collect a large volume of information in a short period of time or I might do a little here and there, over a period of months. You can’t force creativity. At least I can’t.

With Evernote, I have a tag for the project, so everything I collect is tied to the project. If I have other notes on the subject or documents I’ve saved from other projects, I’ll add the project tag or “note links” in Evernote.

And then I put the idea aside to let it germinate and continue working on whatever I’m already committed to completing. But I still think about the project and record notes and ideas. I may re-write my original idea and see if it still looks good, but always, I give it time to take root and grow.

At some point, either my interest in the project will have waned and I will again put it aside (or kill it), or my interest will have grown. If I still want to do the project, the next step is to make a list of tasks.

Sometimes I put all those tasks into one continuous list. Sometimes I set up separate notes for each task. Of course some tasks are themselves projects (i.e., having more than one step), but I’m not really fussy about how I list what I need to do. I just make sure everything is tagged and/or linked.

Some of the project’s tasks I begin right away. Others, I schedule (or delegate). And some, I need to do further research before I know what to do.

There is a logical progression to most projects, but it can also be a messy process. Many projects are mundane. Beginning, middle, end. But big projects, especially ones that invoke creativity, are a journey of discovery. You may have a general idea of where you want to go but no idea how you will get there. Sometimes you wind up in a place you never expected.

With everyday projects, you’re the boss. With creative projects, you are merely the scribe.

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Filed Under: Productivity, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How I collect and organize articles and documents to read later

March 9, 2012 by
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I read a lot. I know you do, too. I also know that the volume of articles and documents that cross our paths every day is overwhelming.

We can’t stop the river of information. It would be foolish to ignore it. All we can do is manage the information that comes at us every day, and I want to share with you how I do that.

Here’s what I do to collect, organize, and read the articles and documents in my life:

  1. I subscribe to (over 100) blogs with Google Reader. I can read them later, on my laptop or on my iPhone (I use Mobile RSS).
  2. On my iPhone, I also use Zite, an intuitive app that learns what you like to read and serves up similar content. This brings posts from a wide spectrum of blogs I would never know about. I also use Flipboard and Twitter.
  3. I use Instapaper as a web app (Chrome) and their app on my iPhone. This is where I send posts I can’t read at the moment. I send them from my RSS reader, from Zite, Flipboard, by forwarding emails and via a web clipper.
  4. Every morning I go through my RSS feeds and Zite and Flipboard, scanning the headlines of the posts. I delete 98% of them. A few, I read on the spot. I may send five or ten to Instapaper. If it’s something I know I want to save, I send it to Evernote. If I’m reading it on the web, I’ll open it first with Evernote Clearly, to remove ads, etc. (Evernote is my go to app for saving everything I need to save (for reference or a project) or do. (If you haven’t tried Evernote, go check it out (it’s free). If you have Evernote and have not been using it much, get my ebook, “Evernote for Lawyers: A Guide to Getting Organized & Increasing Productivity”. You’ll be amazed at what you can do with Evernote.
  5. For blog post ideas, I go through Instapaper and when I find a post that catches my eye, I’ll read it. I may use the article as the basis for a post or it may give me other ideas. I also go through Evernote. I have a tag, “blog-post-ideas,” and with one click I can call up hundreds of notes with complete articles or one line ideas.
  6. I save documents (pdfs, Powerpoint, Word, etc.) in Evernote. I usually add a few key words to the body of the note and assign tags. Most of these documents are saved for reference purposes, or to use in connection with projects I am working on or plan to work on. However, I also use a couple of tags to identify notes for later reading. One is “Read/Review,” which is assigned to notes I know I want to read at some point. I will also assign a “When” tag (i.e., Now, Next, Someday, etc.) if I know when I want to read it. The other tag I use is “ebooks” for pdf ebooks I’ve saved. I can browse this tag to find things to read or for ideas.
  7. If there are emails I need to read or save or take action on, I forward them to my Evernote account. I now maintain “inbox zero”.
  8. Every day I focus on getting my work done, not on how much I can read. This is key. If I don’t read articles I’ve saved for later reading, I don’t worry about it. We’re talking about electrons here, so there is no problem with running out of storage space. The articles I’ve saved in Evernote are searchable and thus a repository of reference materials I may use in the future. So again, I do the best I can and I don’t worry about what I don’t get to.

So that’s my routine. I know there are many other methods and apps available for collecting, organizing, and reading. I’ve tried many of them and continue to try new ones when they come out. I like keeping things simple, however, and that means using as few apps as possible. Evernote is my “information hub” because everything is synced and available to me wherever I am, and because there are so many ways to get information into it.

How about you? What do you do to collect, organize, and read articles and documents? Please share in the comments.

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Filed Under: Productivity, Technology, Time Management, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Two questions to ask yourself every day

February 24, 2012 by
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Every day we accomplish things. Most of them are trivial. A few are important, advancing us towards our goals.

If you want to accomplish more of the important things, there are two questions to ask yourself every single day.

The first question should be asked the night before, about the following day: “What are my three ‘most important tasks’ for today?” I’ve talked about the concept of “MITs” before. They are a key to effectiveness, making sure you’re not just getting things done but that you are getting the right things done.

You may have ten things you need to do today. Only some of them move you forward and bring you closer to your goals. Those are your MITs.

Most people let their circumstances dictate their actions. They do whatever shows up for the day. Successful people, people who know what they want to be, do, or have in the future, let their vision of that future pull them forward. Your day may be busy, filled with many tasks, but “busy” isn’t the same thing as “effective”. If you want your day to be effective, you must do your MITs.

The second question to ask yourself each day is a reality check: “What did I do today that brought me closer to my goals?” Did you do your MITs? Did you start something and not finish it? Did you do other things that weren’t on your list of MITs but which advanced you towards your goals?

Being honest with yourself about what you did today will help you choose your MITs for tomorrow.

Ask and answer these two questions every day. They will help you create your own future.

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Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

6 rules for saving time with email

February 22, 2012 by
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Leo at Zen Habits says most emails are too long. They take too long to write, too long to read, and too long to respond to.

He has made a habit of writing shorter emails, five lines or less. Everyone is better off.

Here are his 6 rules for short, effective emails:

  1. Keep it to 5 sentences. No more. I stole this from five.sentenc.es of course, but I’ve used it for years and it works. I usually try to do fewer than 5.
  2. Figure out your main point. If you think you need more than 5 sentences, you haven’t figured out the key thing you want to say. Take a second to figure it out, and stick to just that.
  3. Ask one thing. Don’t ask 10 questions, just ask one. Or two at the most. You’re much more likely to get an answer quickly.
  4. Edit. If you stretched it to 8 sentences, cut out 3.
  5. Link. If you need to refer to info, include a link to it on the web.
  6. Post it. If the info you need to share isn’t on the web, put it there. Create a long answer or long background document (then edit it to the essential info) and post it online. Use your blog, or one of the many free tools for posting info. Create an FAQ if it’s useful. Link to it in your email.

Ironically, it might take longer to craft a shorter email as this famous quote from George Bernard Shaw quote reminds us: “I’m sorry this letter is long, I didn’t have time to make it shorter.” So if you bill by the hour, you’ll actually earn more by writing shorter emails. (Insert smiley face here. . .)

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Filed Under: Communication, Email, Productivity, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Attorneys: are you spending too much time on blogging and social media?

February 8, 2012 by
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The big knock on blogging and social media is that it takes up too much time. And so many attorneys give up on it before they see any appreciable results. Many others never start.

It takes two things to be successful marketing online:

  1. You have to know what to do, and
  2. You have to do it long enough to see results.

You can’t just throw up some content or tweets and expect the world to come rushing to your (virtual) door. You need to know the fundamentals. And you need to put in some time and effort.

But you don’t need to take courses or read countless books. You don’t need to keep up with the latest plug-ins or stake your claim on every new site. Read a few blog posts, watch a couple of videos, and you’ll be on your way. The real learning comes from the doing, as this post clearly shows.

How much time do you spend on blogging and social media? Now, how much time do you spend reading about blogging and social media, or thinking about it and wondering if you should? What if you traded in some of the reading and thinking time and used it to actually write a blog?

Blogging and social media (the doing part) don’t require a lot of your time. It’s not the quantity of time that’s paramount, it’s the consistency. A few minutes a day, every day. Do that for six months and you’ll be amazed at what can happen.

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Filed Under: Blogging, Productivity, Social media, Social media marketing, Time Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

We’re putting our lives on a diet

February 7, 2012 by
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After decades of acquiring and complicating, I’m going in the opposite direction. I’m downsizing. Uncomplicating. Uncluttering.

This week, my wife and I started a major spring cleaning. (You can do that in February in California.) We’re going through closets and storage cabinets, file boxes and dresser drawers.

It’s astounding to see how much we have collected. We’re not pack rats. We’re pretty good about “not buying too much” and “not keeping too much”. And yet we’ve already gone through and disposed of (trash, re-cycle, give-away) more than I thought we even owned.

Simple. Clean. Minimal. Relaxing. That’s the feeling I want to achieve.

I donated over thirty boxes of books to my library bookstore. They were taking up room in storage. If I want to read any of them again, I’ll replace them with an ebook version.

Lean. Light. Uncomplicated.

We’re getting rid of TVs we no longer watch. (We cancelled cable two years ago. If there’s anything we want to see, we watch it online.) And furniture we no longer use. We’re going through everything, drawing hard lines about what we will keep and what we won’t.

Less. Fewer. Modern. Efficient.

One of my goals is to become paperless this year. We’ve already converted most of our billing accounts to online. We no longer carry subscriptions to newspapers or magazines. We print very few documents anymore. We prefer to save them to Evernote where they are searchable and safely stored in the cloud.

I work from home. My wife and I agree, we want to live and work in an environment that is simple and uncluttered. Sometimes it’s difficult to get rid of possessions we’ve had in our lives for many years, but once you begin, it gets easier. And since we began, I can tell you it feels great.

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Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity Tagged With: , , , ,

Save time and reduce mistakes with form letters

February 2, 2012 by
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I suspect that as much as one third of the mail and email messages you send each week are routine responses or messages. Inquires are answered, new clients information is transmitted, newsletters are mailed. You probably have some of these saved as form letters. You may also store snippets of text you use frequently, ready to copy and paste into your outgoing messages.

If you’re not doing this, now is the time to begin assembling a library of form letters, just as I’m sure you have for pleadings, discovery, and agreements.

If you do use form letters, it’s a good idea to review them to see how you can make them better.

Not only do form letters save the time otherwise spent drafting an original letter, they also save time spent instructing others who respond on your behalf. After all, it’s a lot quicker to tell your assistant to “send letter 3-B” rather than explain what you want them to say (or dictate the letter yourself).

Form letters also reduce mistakes. You won’t forget to tell someone something that is already in your letter.

Form letters also reduce the number of incoming calls seeking additional information or clarification. Clients and prospects will like seeing that you are prepared and thorough.

The first step to improving your form letter library is to make extra copies of every letter and email you send over the next week or two. If you use Evernote, you can send everything into a temporary notebook for this purpose or assign a “form_letters” tag. You might also want to go through your sent email folder for the last few months and selectively forward emails to your Evernote email account. You can do the same with digital copies of letters sent by regular mail.

Also, go through your incoming mail. You may be getting letters sent to you that are (a) answered by phone or in person (i.e., at the consultation or meeting), (b) not being sufficiently answered, or (c) not being answered at all. Send these to your email account, too.

(For more ways to use Evernote in your law practice, check out my Evernote for Lawyers eBook.)

Once you have assembled a sampling of letters and emails, the next step is go through them and ask yourself,

  • How often do I send all or part of this information?
  • Is there anything in here that I could save and use?
  • Is there anything here that could be improved? Expanded? Clarified?
  • Is there anything here that could be put into a form letter?

Take the time to create or expand your library of form letters and get in the habit of using them. And every time you dictate an original letter, ask yourself if some or all of it could be added to your library.

If five percent of your current messages today are form letters, and you could increase this to just ten percent, you should see a significant time savings.

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Filed Under: Email, Law office management, Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Prioritizing tasks: what do I do first?

January 30, 2012 by
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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.

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