You don’t want to review that big file. You don’t want to call the adjuster. You don’t want to deliver the bad news to your client. Usually, you don’t think about it, you just do it.

But not always.

Some days, when you don’t feel like doing something that needs to get done, you avoid it and busy yourself with other things.

We all have days like that.

We also have days when we don’t feel like doing anything but sitting on the sofa and playing with our phone.

What do you do when you have a file you don’t want to look at or an article you don’t want to write? What do you do when you’re not motivated to do something you need to do?

You start.

Open the file. Find the phone number. Sharpen your pencil and write your name and room number at the top of the page.

Do something related to the task you are avoiding, however trivial, and let nature take its course.

Your brain will see you’ve started and compel you to take the next step.

Action is the solution.

“Getting started is magical,” says psychologist Thomas Pychyl. “Motivation follows action, not the other way around.”

On days when you don’t feel like doing anything, get out of the house and go to the office. If you work from home, go to your home office and sit at your desk, as if it was just another day at work.

Move your body, engage your mind, pick up a file or re-read your notes and momentum will take over.

Unless it doesn’t.

Some days, you just want to sit on the sofa and play with your phone. In which case, maybe you should take the day off.

If you’re not getting the results you want in your work, you may be trying to do too much.

Which means you might get more done by doing less.

Take a few minutes to examine your schedule and see where you might need to cut down.

Too many commitments

When you take on too many cases or clients at one time and you can’t keep up with the work, the work suffers. To do your best work, you may need to hire more help or be more selective about the cases or clients you accept.

Too many projects or goals

Not everything on your list is equally important. You must ruthlessly prioritize your lists so you can focus on your most important tasks and goals.

It’s better to schedule 3 or 4 important tasks for the day, and get them done, than to complete (or attempt) 10 or 15 less important tasks. It’s better to set one or two achievable goals, and achieve them, than to reach for the stars and fail to get off the ground.

Too many hours

Humans are good for about 3 hours of peak mental performance per day. After that, we start to lose focus and the quality of our work suffers. Schedule two to three hours for “deep work” each day, early in the day if possible, and use the rest of the day for less-demanding tasks.

Working until exhaustion, or “eight to faint” as a friend of mine describes it, is never a good idea. Neither is working without taking breaks.

Many attorneys work too much. They see doing more as the best way to achieve more. Too often, it does the opposite.

If you’re not getting the results you want, you may be trying to do too much. Try doing less and you might find yourself accomplishing more.

I have an addiction. I can’t stop checking my email inbox. All day, every day, I click and see what’s new.

I delete 90% of what comes in, but that still leaves me with a lot of messages to respond to or think about or flag for future action.

True, that’s the nature of email, but when you process your inbox every hour, or several times an hour, you get distracted from other things you’re working on, or should be working on.

A lot of rabbit holes find their entrance in your email inbox, don’t they?

I know I’m addicted and not just busy because when I’m not checking email, I’m thinking about it. Which drives me to check again.

I’ve got notifications turned off, and that helps. But like Pavlov’s dog, I’m already conditioned. Whenever I’m in front of my computer or I have my phone in hand, I click and check.

No matter what else I’m doing, there’s always a bit of underlying tension in my body as I feel the urge to click something.

Enough is enough. Recently, I decided to break my addiction.

I set up two rules for myself:

1. I keep the browser tab closed. To check Gmail, I have to open a new tab. By making it a deliberate act instead of a reflexive one, I give myself a moment to consider what I’m doing.
2. I treat processing email as a task and schedule it. Once in the morning, once in the evening.

How’s it going?

I’m having withdrawal systems, that’s for sure. I had to break my rule once because I was waiting for something to come in and if I waited until the evening to check, I wouldn’t have had time to handle it.

But once I’m used to this new schedule, I think my brain will thank me for giving it some time off.

On the other hand, it might demand that I change the rules so I can check my inbox 3 times a day.

Most people check their email often. Which is one reason email is so effective for marketing legal services

I’ve been guilty of this myself. Creating a list of things I need to do each day, a collection of must-do’s and should-do’s and want-to-do’s, and rarely completely everything.

I would get the urgent stuff done but not necessarily get the most important stuff done, or even work on it.

And that was the problem.

I didn’t leave myself enough time to do “deep work” because there is a never-ending line up of other things I needed to do, and new stuff coming in every day.

I never got to the end of my daily list because my list was endless.

Productivity expert Mark Forster, author of Do it Tomorrow, which I’m currently reading, suggests a different approach. He says that instead of using an “open list” where new tasks are added as and when they come in, we use a “closed list,” meaning once we’ve made our list for the day, we add nothing to it.

If you get a call or email or remember something that needs your attention, unless it is a genuine emergency, you add it to your list for tomorrow.

This allows you to plan your day and allocate enough time to everything you have decided you will do.

Not necessarily everything you need to do or should do, everything you WILL do. And that’s an important distinction.

Your closed list is a commitment you make to doing the things on that list. It might seem like a minor difference but making a WILL DO list instead of a TO DO list forces you to decide what’s important and allocate enough time to do it.

If you’re frustrated with too much to do each day, this could be a simple way to gain some control over your day.