Monday, September 19th, 2011
Remember that old Maxell tape ad? The commercial with a guy sitting in the armchair with his hair blowing back from the intensity of the sound waves? Well that’s pretty much what I look like these days as I move through my weekly schedule. Abundance is great and abundance can be a challenge. For those of you who are in a similar state, here’s a simple practice that will help keep your priorities on track. I call it the weekly meeting with yourself.
Schedule a meeting with yourself.
Go somewhere where you can be undisturbed. If you stay in your office turn of your email and blackberry. Work on your project-list, to-do list, and calendar, and spend time reviewing what you finished in the past week. Treat this meeting with the respect you would give to a client meeting. Put it in your calendar and don’t book over it. This ritual is very effective for being mindful of how you are spending your time.
Here’s a Harvard Business Review blog post with great additional information:
How to Stay Focused on What’s Important by Gina Trapani
Best wishes for a productive September!
Posted in Balance, Goals, Strategy | Permalink | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, July 13th, 2011
Practice number 3 we talked about the concept of Good Enough as a tool to battle perfectionism and practice 4 addressed using the time management skill of Beat the Clock to support Good Enough. Our next practice is about Waves. The world around us ebbs and flows. You would be very hard pressed to find anything that remains constant and static, and we are no different.
Our brains and bodies work in rhythms. We are physically designed to work best by cycling between periods of energy spending and renewing.
Fact: “Research in the 1970s showed that 90 to 120 minute ultradian rhythms (ulta dies – many times a day) account for the ebb and flow of our energy throughout the day. Physiological measures such as heart rate, hormonal levels, muscle tension and brain-wave activity all increase during the first part of the cycle. After an hour or so, these measures start to decline and the body begins to crave a period of rest and recovery. Signals include a desire to yawn and stretch, hunger pangs, increased tension, an inclination to procrastinate.” – The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
Fact: Your brain can only operate at peak capacity for periods of up to 90 minutes.
“Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.” – TheEnergyProject.com, Tony Schwartz
Work intensively for up to 90 minutes at a time with brief ten minute periods of recuperation to walk around the office, stretch, or fill a glass of water. Notice the impact of this practice on the quality and effectiveness of your output.
Posted in Balance, Goals, Organization, Planning | Permalink | No Comments »Friday, June 17th, 2011
Sandra works three times as long as she needs to on her files, checking and re-checking and going through countless drafts. She is driven by her fear of making an error. Sandra works long hours in the office but rarely meets her billable target because she consistently edits down her time.
Mary is unhappy. While she enjoys commercial litigation files she is stressed all the time. The partners provide her with positive feedback as do her clients but every time she makes any kind of error she takes it as a sign of failure.
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?
Some might say the answer is simple. Sandra just needs to take a different approach. Sandra needs to do fewer revisions, record all her time and let the partners decide what needs to be written off.
As for Mary, shouldn’t she just pay attention to the positive feedback from the partners and her peers and realise that she is good at her work?
If only it were so simple.
Sandra and Mary are each in the grip of their inner critic and it is obscuring their judgment.
To learn more about dealing with your inner critic please visit my article on the Canadian legal weblog Slaw.ca.
Posted in Balance, Business Development, Goals, Planning | Permalink | No Comments »Sunday, October 10th, 2010
Ever feel like you were falling behind in all the important areas of your life? As the pace of work shifts into high gear in autumn it is all too easy to get trapped in survival mode – just working to make it through each day and pushing aside your own personal priorities and objectives.
I have had many lawyers tell me they feel they are failing at both their jobs in life – as parents and as lawyers. One thing I know for sure is that this feeling of falling behind and of failing at those things that are most important is shared by many professionals.
To be the best we can be, it is essential to parcel out time to take a deep breath, let go of stress, and return to center. I have two friends who are currently balancing busy professional practices while mothering children who are living with life threatening health challenges. The way these mothers survive is they schedule regular time each day to do those activities that provide them with stress release and re-charge their spirits. For one it is a daily yoga practice. For the other it is taking a long walk with the dog each day. What these woman both know is that these activities are not selfish breaks from their work. These are essential coping strategies that allow them to be at their best for their families and with their clients. Every day counts.
Don’t wait until you are faced with life-altering challenges. Develop a habit of taking care of yourself and matching your actions to your values and priorities. My October column for Slaw.ca is about taking action in three ways: First, put the oxygen mask on yourself. Second, take time for some reflection to connect your values with your actions. Third, automate and create processes to support you in making time for what is most important.
Posted in Balance, Goals | Permalink | No Comments »Monday, June 1st, 2009
There’s a lot of talk about goal setting in the new year but there is no better time for really thinking about strengths and goals then while relaxed and unplugged in the summer sunshine with the blue sky above.
This summer why not engage in some quality lawn chair thinking? Sit back, enjoy some sunshine and with a cold drink in hand allow yourself to contemplate. Start by exploring your strengths. What have you got going for you? How are you making the most of your strengths in your professional life? Here are some of my favourite strength questions:
- What do you consider to be your greatest abilities and talents?
- How are you employing these gifts at this time? How could you make the most of them?
- Where do you find yourself most often wanting to help or be of assistance to others? What are the things that you are most motivated to do?
- What would your closest friends say are your top ten strengths?
- How are you/could you put those strengths to work in your practice?
Next, move on to some goal setting. What is it you want to make happen in your legal practice? Do you want to grow your practice? Bring in new clients? Move your practice to another firm or in-house? Here are some questions to lead you in your lawn chair pondering:
- What would count as a really big professional win for you? This question is a way to explore some of what motivates you at the office. One client once told me “having a patent client make a huge amount of money from their invention”. Another client told me “winning the lottery and never having to come back here” which just said loud and clear that a career transition was called for!
- Looking forward five years what do you want to be doing? This question gives you a chance to think beyond the next twelve months.
- Who are your preferred clients? It’s always good to explore who are the clients you most enjoy working with. What is it about them? How can you get more clients like them?
- What are the opportunities right now you are not taking advantage of? This question is a helpful reminder about the opportunities around you.
And the best questions are quite simply:
- What do you enjoy most about your legal practice? And the converse, what do you least enjoy? What percentage of your time at work is spent, on a weekly basis, doing what you most enjoy and conversely least enjoy?
These get to the heart of what lightens your life and what weighs you down. Ultimately whether you are on a job hunt or in a secure position in a law firm, the question always comes down to: “how can you get more of the good stuff on your plate and the bad stuff off?” When you move out of your comfortable summer seat and into action what can you do to make your work life more enjoyable?
Posted in Goals, Planning | Permalink | No Comments »Friday, January 4th, 2008
Welcome to January, the stern sister to December. While December is about gift giving and celebration, January arrives like the dreaded morning after bearing with it bill payments, back-to-work anxiety and of course the latest batch of New Years resolutions. I will lose weight, quit smoking, save money, go to the gym, meet my billable hours target. Can there be any grimmer start to the New Year?
I’m a professional business coach, goals and resolutions are the heart of my business, so trust me when I tell you, this year ditch the resolutions and abandon the guilt. Life’s too short! Replace all the gloom and puritanical posturing with some first class day dreaming. You know the kind you did when you were a kid. What do you want to be when you grow up? There’s always something new to learn, or see, or do. What to you want to get out of 2008? When you are raising your glass to bring in the New Year on December 31, 2008 what do you want to look back on?
Compelling and inspiring goals are the key ingredients of a fulfilling and successful professional life. They give you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. They encourage your creativity. They get you thinking, and planning, and moving forward. They provide the challenge and the meaning that is so easy to lose when things get busy at work.
For my own guide to goal setting follow this link to the full article posted on the Canadian Legal Research site Slaw.ca.
Posted in Goals | Permalink | No Comments »
