Search Results for: getting things done

Todo List Triage

July 28, 2021 by
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When you have a big backlog of things to do, when your lists are out of control, when you feel out of control, as mentioned in yesterday’s post, the first step is to do a brain dump.

Get everything out of your head and onto one big list.

The next step is to cut that list down to size and to do that, you have to recognize that not everything on your list has to be done.

Many of the “wounded” on your list need to be left to die.

So, you might start culling your list by first figuring out which of your tasks are “must do”.

Mark them or put them on a separate list.

You don’t need to spend a lot of time figuring this out. Your gut will usually tell you the answer. But if you’re not sure about some tasks, asking yourself a few questions should help you figure things out:

  • Is this task aligned with my goals and purpose?
  • Is this a commitment to someone else/Was this assigned to me?
  • Is this important? What would happen if I didn’t do this?
  • Is this urgent? What would happen if I postponed this?
  • What are the benefits for getting this done?
  • Is there someone who is better suited to do this? Can I delegate all or part of this?
  • If I could only do three things on this list today, would I choose THIS task?

These questions should help you identify your must-do tasks and leave you with a shorter and more manageable list.

The next step is to schedule your must-do tasks.

Decide what you will do and when, and add them to your calendar and/or task list, alongside your existing commitments.

Once you’ve scheduled all of your must-do tasks, start or continue working on them. When you make some progress on your backlog, go back to your big list and go through it again.

You’ll pick up some must-do’s you might have have missed or things that have become urgent or taken on more importance. You’ll also be able to identify “nice-to-do” or “want-to-do” tasks you want to tackle next.

Because life is more than just getting your must-do’s done.

Take a deep breath and enjoy the feeling of having a list that’s no longer out of control.

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With:

Busy, busy, and more busy

June 22, 2021 by
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I’ll make this brief, in case you’re one of those perpetually busy folks who don’t have time to read an article about the perils of unbridled busyness.

A thought or two to chew on, and then you can get back to work.

Being busy with things that “move the needle,” that is, things that help you make significant progress towards your goals, is not a bad thing. Neither is being busy doing things that make you happy or give your life meaning.

Everything else—low value tasks, not-too-important projects, admin work, should not take up a lot of your time. You need that time to do important things.

Examine the things that are keeping you busy and make them earn their place on your calendar, task list, and in your mind. If something doesn’t make the grade, off with its head.

What about things that don’t contribute a lot of value, but still need to be done?

Maybe there’s something you can do about those, too.

For each “mandatory” task, take a minute and ask yourself:

  • Does it really have to be done? It might cost you something to not do it but it might be worth the price.
  • Does it have to be done by me? If not, delegate it.
  • Does it have to be done now? If not, postpone it and examine it at a later date. It might no longer be necessary, or you might have found a better way to do it.
  • Can I get some help so I don’t have to do everything myself?
  • Can I automate it, now or for next time?
  • Is there a way to do this more quickly?
  • Is there a way to make this easier?
  • How can I get more value out of this?

Being busy may be something you want clients and others to see, because busyness is often associated with success. But if you’re busy all the time and not getting the results you want, something has to change.

I suggest you start by making everything that’s keeping you busy earn its keep. Hopefully, you’re not too busy to do that.

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Filed Under: Productivity

Maybe you should go on a diet

May 28, 2021 by
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If you’re like many people, your work and personal life may have gained a lot of weight lately. And by that I mean you have too much to do that’s not getting done–because you have too much to do.

Too many tasks on your daily task list. Too many projects you’re working on or plan to work on soon. Too many commitments, responsibilities, and priorities.

You work hard but often end the day feeling like you got nothing done.

If this sounds familiar, you might want to put your life on a diet.

Once a year, or more often if you think it would help, schedule a quiet day to review your life and see what you can eliminate from that big plate of yours.

What are you doing that doesn’t need to be done? What can you do less of, or do less often? What can you delegate, automate, or do faster?

Look at the people in your life, the tools you use, and the processes you follow. There’s “fat” in there and you’ll do yourself a big favor by cutting it out.

Start by taking inventory. Make a list of everything you do in a typical day and week and note the amount of time you take to do it.

When your list is done, look at everything and make some decisions.

Nothing on your list should be sacred. Make every task and tool earn the right to continue in your life.

If you’re not sure, if you find yourself arguing to keep things the way they are, you might enlist the eyes and ears of someone who can be objective. Someone who might see things you can’t see, or don’t want to.

Make several passes through your list. On the first pass, add a label to indicate things that you can safely eliminate. Tools you don’t use, projects you are unlikely to do in this lifetime, people you really don’t want to speak to again.

On subsequent passes, identify projects you could move from “active” to “someday” or schedule to review them at a later date.

Think big. Cut your current projects or goals down to one or two in each area of your life and put the others out of sight.

But don’t ignore the small things. Collectively, they can take up a lot of time and energy.

Go for “lean” and “simple”. A small list of easy tasks and important projects, things you’re excited about and look forward to doing.

Favor projects with big potential. One big project that could transform your life instead of ten projects that probably won’t.

To get there, ruthlessly cut things you’re not certain you want to keep. For now, you’re just thinking and writing. You haven’t actually cut anything in the real world and you can always add something back if you change your mind.

There’s no right or wrong way to do this. Listen to your heart as much as your head. Favor things that make you happy as much as your most sacred obligations.

When you’re done, you should feel good about what remains. And feel good about all the time you reclaimed that you can now use to do important things and achieve your biggest goals.

If you “diet” day is successful, there’s just one more thing to do. Schedule your next diet day because if you’re like most of us, you’re going to gain back some of that weight.

Click here if you want to double your income in the next 90 days

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Filed Under: Productivity, success

You can write this type of article in 15 minutes

May 24, 2021 by
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In a previous post, I said the quickest and easiest type of article to write is a listicle. Ten ways to do this, five reasons you shouldn’t do that, seven steps to getting this result.

They’re easy to write because they are basically just bullet points or short paragraphs.

But while the writing is easy, if you don’t happen to know “five things” or “seven steps,” you may have to do some research to flesh out your article. Which means that this type of article may take you more time to write than you would like.

If you want to write an article in a matter of minutes, you need to write one that doesn’t require any research.

You need to write a personal recollection.

Something you did, something someone told you, something you thought.

Think about the last client you signed up who said something that made you smile, or something interesting or unusual about their case.

Think about something you did last weekend, something that happened to you when you were in college, or something you’ve been thinking about for a long time.

The idea may not come to you right away, which is why it’s important to keep a running list of ideas you can dip into. Interesting things, helpful ideas, amusing stories. Things that contain a lesson or illustrate something your readers might like (or need) to know.

But when you have the idea, you can write the article quickly, because it’s just a matter of telling the story. No research required.

Describe what happened and what you thought about it or why it’s important. Invite your readers to tell you what they think or ask them if they have had a similar experience. Make a final point and. . . you’re done.

If you’re taking more than a few minutes to write a personal recollection, you’re working too hard.

Want more ways to write faster? Get my email marketing course here

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Filed Under: Content creation, Newsletters, Writing

The easiest (and quickest) type of article or post you can write

April 13, 2021 by
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When you’re in a hurry and you need to crank out a blog post, a newsletter article, a social media post, or any other type of content to be consumed by others, one of the easiest (and quickest) types of post to write is a “list” post.

  • !0 Ways to (do something)
  • 3 Reasons (something doesn’t work),
  • 7 Steps to (getting a specific result)
  • 5 Things I tell all my clients about (something)
  • 4 Places to Find (information, people, forms)

Yeah, a list.

Write the list, add an intro and a closing comment or call to action, and you’re done.

Readers enjoy these types of articles because they can read them quickly, they’re easy to understand, and if some of the items on your list don’t apply to them or resonate with them, something else might.

These are easy to write because it’s just a list. Each item is a sentence or two. Or, go crazy and write 3.

Where do you get items to include in the list?

You can start with this short “article” I just wrote to answer your question:

5 Places to Find Ideas For Your Blog Post or Newsletter Article

  • From articles you’ve saved in an “ideas” folder
  • From your old articles and posts. Find something you wrote two years ago and reuse part of it
  • From presentations, videos, or podcasts, you’ve consumed (including CLE)
  • From websites or newsletters dedicated to clients and advisors in your niche market
  • From memory. Interesting clients, strange cases, funny answers in depos, things you tell clients to do or avoid

Just about anywhere.

So, here’s my challenge to you. Take ten minutes right now and outline a list article, AKA a “Listicle”.

You’ll thank me later.

For more article ideas, see my Email Marketing for Attorneys course

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Filed Under: Content creation, Email, Newsletters, Writing

Take a break and read this

April 12, 2021 by
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When you’re trying to work, getting distracted by a phone call, an alert, or your own thoughts about doing something else, can ruin your momentum. It can take many minutes to get back to where you were before that distraction, and let’s face it, too often you never do.

That’s why God created the phrase, “I’ll finish it tomorrow”.

And so, legions of productivity writers and speakers preach the value of eliminating distractions in your work day. Turn off your phone, close the other tabs on your browser, put on headphones and listen to white noise, they say, so you can focus and get your work done.

By and large, they’re right. I do some of these things myself.

But distractions aren’t entirely bad.

We watch sports or videos or play games or read fiction, in part, to distract ourselves from our problems, the news, and our own negative thoughts that sometimes plague us.

And that’s a good thing.

So, a few thoughts about the subject.

First, don’t feel guilty about taking breaks from your work or other responsibilities, to play a game or watch a video or three. If you enjoy doing it, do it. It’s good for your mental well-being.

Second, watch the time. Don’t play all day when there is work to be done. Yeah, that’s obvious, but we’ve all been guilty of telling ourselves, “one more video” or “one more game” and before we know it, it’s dinner time and we didn’t get much done.

Especially when working from home.

The solution is simple. When you take a break, set a timer and when the time is up, go back to breaking bricks.

Third, schedule regular breaks on your calendar. Time to play or goof off or close your eyes and do nothing. When we take scheduled breaks, we don’t feel guilty about playing for 20 minutes in the middle of the day.

When we don’t schedule breaks, however, when we allow distractions to just happen, that’s when we can get into trouble.

We want to do deep work but find ourselves in deep doo doo.

So, there you go. Break time is over. Thank you for spending it with me.

What’s next? You get back to work and I go watch a video. Or three.

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Filed Under: Productivity, Time Management

“The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous”

January 29, 2021 by
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Marketing legal services is often defined as “everything you do to get and keep good clients”.

That covers a lot of ground.

Everything from lead generation to getting prospects to sign up to getting repeat business and referrals, and a lot more.

It includes prospecting, qualifying, presenting, overcoming objections, and closing. Yes, pure salesmanship, for many attorneys, the bugaboo of legal marketing.

But selling your services doesn’t mean becoming a salesperson. You don’t have to use unseemly tactics to get people to do things they don’t want to do.

If your marketing is effective, you don’t have to do much selling at all.

Peter Drucker said, “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.”

When you do a good job of marketing your services, clients sell themselves.

Prospective clients learn what you do and how you can help them, and see proof of what you’ve done for others. They learn about your experience and abilities and get a sense of what would be like to work with you. And then, on their own, they decide whether to take the next step.

They make an appointment or contact you to ask questions or request more information. Eventually, they either sign up or they don’t.

Without you having to sell them.

Don’t misunderstand, it’s useful to know what to say when a prospective client hesitates. Knowing how to overcome objections and close can help them decide to hire you and thus get the benefits they want or need.

But it is your marketing that does the heavy lifting.

Marketing is easier when you know The Formula

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Filed Under: Closing the sale, Marketing legal services, Salesmanship

When is this thing really due?

January 28, 2021 by
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Are your calendar and task manager filled with due dates and deadlines you regularly fail to meet? I’m not talking about statutory or contractual deadlines; I’m sure you have these under control.

Because you have to.

Bad things happen when you miss “hard” deadlines.

I’m talking about “soft” deadlines, dates you assign to your tasks and projects that you would like to meet but often don’t.

There are ways to turn a soft deadline into a hard one, making it much more likely that you’ll meet it. Tell a client when you’ll have something ready for them, for example, and they (and your fear of losing the client) will usually hold you accountable to getting it done as promised.

But there’s something else you can do to prevent yourself from missing soft deadlines.

Stop setting them.

Many “experts” advise scheduling due dates for everything. The problem is, most people aren’t very good at estimating how long things will take, or what they will be working on weeks or months in advance, and wind up missing many of their due dates.

When you routinely miss soft deadlines without penalty, your brain learns that it is okay to miss due dates, and eventually ignores them.

It’s dispiriting to continually move tasks from one (missed) due date to another. It makes you feel like your tasks are in charge of you instead of the other way around.

A better system is to reserve “due” dates for hard dates only (meetings, filing deadlines, appointments, and things you’ve promised to get done). For everything else, use a “do” date or “start” date.

“Do” dates and “start” dates are aspirational. You plan to do something or start something on a certain date, but there are no negative consequences if you don’t. They’re not deadlines, they’re reminders.

For long-term projects, or projects you’re not sure you’re ready to start, you can also schedule periodic reminders or “review” dates.

Or you can do what I do.

I only record hard deadlines.

Everything else I need to do, or want to do, I keep on lists, and schedule hard deadlines to review those lists.

Once I week, I go through my lists and decide what I want (or need) to work on that week (or soon). I move these to another list.

I go through that list every day (or the night before) and decide what to work on that day.

I may not know what I’ll be working on next week or next month, but I get things done and never worry about missing a deadline.

If you use Evernote for your lists, check out my Evernote for Lawyers ebook

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Filed Under: Productivity

What’s the best marketing strategy?

October 8, 2020 by
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A busy sole practitioner asks, “Of all the possible marketing [strategies]. . . how would you rank them in order of effectiveness or “bang for the buck”?

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know I’m going to put referrals at the top of the list. If I could only do one thing, that’s what I’d do.

That’s what I did to build my practice. That’s what I recommend for every lawyer.

You should also know my second recommendation: email.

Stay in touch with clients and prospects and professional contacts via email. Do it consistently and it will bring you new business, repeat business and. . . referrals.

My third recommendation: write a book. It’s one of the best marketing tools for a professional.

Fourth, advertising. Done right, there’s almost nothing that will allow you to scale faster.

After that? It depends. Ask yourself questions like these:

  • What’s working for me now? What’s worked in the past?
  • Where does my target market hang out? What do they read? Who do they follow?
  • What am I good at? What do I enjoy? Speaking, networking, writing?
  • How much time can I dedicate to marketing?
  • How much money am I prepared to invest?
  • What could I outsource?

He asked about direct mail. Depends on your target market. It can be extremely profitable (like advertising) but you have to get a lot of things right.

He asked whether adding additional content to an already decent website makes sense? It might. How much traffic are you getting now? Are you dominating organic search for your keywords? If you’re doing well, you might work on increasing opt-ins and conversions.

So yeah, it depends.

Look at your numbers and look at what your gut is telling you.

Don’t do something merely because it’s worked for someone else or it looks like it could be profitable. Don’t force yourself to do something you don’t want to do.

Choose something that feels good to you when you think about it and focus on that.

This can help you sort things out

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan

What to do when a client complains

October 7, 2020 by
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It happens. Someone is unhappy about something. Often, that means that other clients are unhappy about the same issue, they’re just not telling you.

They just leave. Or don’t hire you again.

But you want your clients to tell you about their complaints. Why?

  • So you can fix the problem and avoid giving other clients the same bad experience.
  • So you can keep unhappy clients from telling the world about their bad experience with you on social media, et. al.
  • So you can assess weaknesses in your systems and improve them.
  • So you can build a reputation for listening to your clients and caring about them enough to respond to their needs and concerns.

Getting a complaint from a client also gives you the opportunity to turn that client into a fan.

Studies show that many of the most loyal clients (and sources of referrals) come from clients who previously had a complaint that the attorney addressed to their satisfaction.

So, you want clients to come to you if they have an issue with anything. Encourage them to do that. Provide forms they can fill out. Let them respond anonymously if they prefer.

And, when you get a complaint:

  1. Listen to it; don’t argue or become defensive.
  2. Thank the client for calling the problem to your attention.
  3. Fix it.
  4. Apologize and promise it won’t happen again.
  5. Tell them what you will do/have done to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
  6. Consider offering something extra to “make it up to them”
  7. Thank them again for telling you and giving you the opportunity to make things right.
  8. Contact them again and make sure everything is okay.

You don’t have to hire expensive consultants to advise you on improving client relations. Your clients will tell you everything you need to know.

How to quickly grow a big(ger) practice

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Filed Under: Client loyalty, Client relations Tagged With:
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