Getting things done by re-thinking the definition of a to-do list

November 28, 2016 by
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No matter what task management system you use, or even if you don’t use one at all, the odds are you have a seemingly endless list of things to do.

You might keep them in an app. You might keep them on paper. You might keep them in your head. But there’s your list, a mile long and growing every day, overwhelming you to the point where you don’t want to look at it anymore.

Okay, maybe that’s just me.

But I have a new weapon in the battle of wits between my lists and my sanity and you may want to use it.

It starts with thinking about a to-do list as simply a list of things to do TODAY.

Not tomorrow or next week. Today.

It is a list of 3 to 5 tasks you are committed to doing today because they are urgent or important.

Take a deep breath and imagine a list of ONLY 3 to 5 tasks. That’s a list you can and will do.

If you find yourself resisting a task, break it up into 15-minute bites. You’ll be less likely to procrastinate when “it’s only 15 minutes”.

You can also use 15-minute increments for bigger projects. I’m working on something right now that’s tedious and will take many hours to complete. I had put it off for a long time but I’m doing it now because my task list only commits me to 15 minutes. I can do more than 15 minutes if I want to, and I often do, but only if I want to.

Yay me.

Now, what do you do if you have more than 5 important or urgent things to do today? You keep them on a second list.

Your first list (today) has your most important or urgent tasks on it. Your second list is what to do after you’ve taken care of those tasks.

Your second list has no more than 15 or 20 tasks on it. It includes other things you need to do today, and things you need to do in the next week or so. Or things you’d like to consider doing.

When you have completed the tasks on your today list, you look at list number two and choose additional tasks.

Two lists: 3 to 5 most important tasks you are committed to doing today. 15 to 20 back-up or “next” tasks.

Check your today list frequently throughout the day. Check your second list once a day, after you have finished your today list.

Put everything else–all of the someday/maybes, ideas, things you’re not committed to doing–on a third list. Check that list once a week. Skim through it and find things to put on your first two lists and then put your third list away until the following week.

I’ve been doing this for about a week and it’s making a big difference in how I feel about my lists and in my overall productivity. My lists are much more manageable and much less daunting.

And, you can use this with any other task management system because it’s basically a way to combat overwhelm by limiting the number of tasks in front of you and the amount of time you commit to doing them.

One more thing.

While your first two lists are purposefully limited in number, list number three (everything else) will no doubt grow to hundreds of entries, many of which don’t need to be considered each week. To keep list number three from overwhelming you, at some point, you’ll want to segment it so that you don’t have to look at every task or idea on it every week.

You can do that by creating sub-lists or by using software to label or tag items to consider at some point in the future or under certain specified conditions. I have a list of more than 1000 blog post ideas, for example, but I only look at that list occasionally.

How to use Evernote for getting things done

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: , , ,

Today’s a good day to get organized

November 23, 2016 by
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Any day is a good day to get organized but the day before a holiday is especially good. You’re relaxed and looking forward to Thanksgiving. You’re probably not in the mood to do a lot of serious work. And you like the idea of starting the week without 102 things to do and no idea where to start.

Take a look at your email inbox. This would be a good time to zero it out. Go through the first few hundred (the rest are probably too old to bother with). When you find something that you want or need to do, tag or label it, or forward it to your task management software, and then archive everything else. It will still be there if you need it but you won’t have to look at it.

Take a look at your tasks and projects and do the same thing. Flag those that are important and should be done soon and put everything else out of sight (e.g., archive, someday/maybe, or tagged for future review).

Take a look at your current and upcoming projects. Consolidate your notes and ideas, clean up your outlines and task lists and get things ready so that when you see them next, you can finish them quickly or start them with aplomb.

Get organized today and then enjoy the morrow. Clear your mind, fill your belly, and give thanks for what you have and what the future has in store.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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How to create a task you’ll actually do

November 21, 2016 by
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If you find yourself procrastinating about certain tasks on your list, one reason might be the task description itself. If it’s unclear what you’re supposed to do, if the task looks daunting or overly time consuming, it’s easy to see why you might put it off until later or skip it completely.

You can avoid this by writing better descriptions. Here are three ways to do that:

1) Make sure the task is something you can DO.

A task should be something simple, meaning something you can actually do.

You can’t “buy a car,” for example. There are too many things you need to do first: research makes and models, read reviews, consider extras and add-ons, choose a color, compare prices, take a test drive, inquire about financing, and so on.

Buying a car is a “project” not a task. Break up your projects into the component tasks and record those on your list.

2) Use ACTION VERBS to describe your tasks

Describe each task clearly and concisely. Start the description with an action verb: write, call, review, outline, research, send, etc.

If your task is to compare prices on your new car, for example, you might write, “Call five dealers for written quotes”.

Specific, clear, concise, and doable.

3) Make it EASIER to do

The easier (and quicker) it is to do a task, the more likely it is that you’ll do it. When writing the task description, include additional information and resources you’ll need so you don’t have to go looking for them when it’s time to do the task.

If the task is to call someone, put the phone number in the task description. Add notes you might need to reference during the call.

If the task is to review a document, embed the document or a link thereto in the task description. If you need to fill out a monthly report, include the template or the previous month’s report to refer to and/or modify for this month’s report.

Make your tasks something you can do, make the description action-oriented so you’ll know exactly what to do, and make the task easier to do by adding additional information and resources.

“Get more referrals” is a project, not a task. Here’s everything you need to do

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Is this the key to success?

October 31, 2016 by
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Pastor, business owner, speaker, and author, the late Mark Yarnell, offered his recipe for productivity and success. He said, “Work on one thing at a time. Do it right. Finish it.”

Simple. But not always easy to follow.

Working on one thing at a time is difficult for a lot of people. But it’s easy to see the value of doing so. Numerous studies prove that multi-tasking is inefficient to the extreme. Fortunately, there are strategies and tools aplenty that can help us to curb this habit.

“Do it right” certainly makes sense, but we must recognize that the way we learn to do it right is usually by first doing it wrong.

This leads to the third piece of advice, to finish what we start. That’s the key to making everything work.

When we finish what we start, we can move onto something else. No chance for multi-tasking. We’ve also learned something so the next time we do it, we should do it better.

Finishing is the “Big Kahuna” of productivity. The more things you finish, the more you accomplish. The more you accomplish, the more likely you are to succeed.

Author Philip Roth said, “The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress”. What have you started but not finished?

Before you go looking for new ideas and new projects, you might want to dust off some of the half-finished projects lurking on your hard drive or in the recesses of your brain and finish them. Then go work on something else.

Dust off your marketing plan

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Filed Under: Productivity, success

Working hard or hardly working?

September 15, 2016 by
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All our lives we’ve been told that hard work is essential to success. The person who works harder than other people generally achieves more than other people.

But is that always true? Does someone who earns a million dollars a year work ten times more than someone who earns $100k? What about people who work incredibly long hours every day but continually struggle?

We’ve also been told that there are no shortcuts to success. It doesn’t happen overnight. Okay, then how do you explain the many tech entrepreneurs who are billionaires before they’re 30?

I don’t purport to have all the answers but clearly, there isn’t an absolute causal connection between effort and results, hard work and success. There are other factors at play. That’s why I continually look for ways to work smarter.

Working smarter is about leverage. Getting bigger (or quicker) results with the same or less effort. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to do that.

You frequently hear me prattle on about the 80/20 principle. I do that because it is the quintessential illustration of leverage and I encourage you to continually look for ways to use it to increase your income and improve your life.

Where does most of your income come, for example? The odds are that a high percentage of it comes from a few things you’re doing, the so-called “20% activities that deliver 80% of your results”. Look at your practice area(s), target market(s), and marketing methods. You’re likely to see that most of your income comes from a “precious few” things, not from the “trivial many”.

When you find your precious few, do more of them. Get rid of other things to free up time and resources so that you can make that happen.

If 80% of your income now comes from one or two marketing activities, for example, doing more of those activities could increase your income by 160%. That’s because you’ll have two blocks of 20% activities instead of just one.

Back when I was a cub lawyer, struggling to figure things out, I made three changes to what I was doing and my income skyrocketed. In a matter of months. I also went from working six days a week to just three.

So nobody can tell me there aren’t any shortcuts. Now, if you will excuse me, it’s time for my nap.

How I learned to earn more and work less. Yep, it’s all here

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Filed Under: Leverage, Productivity, success Tagged With: ,

Is this the cure for procrastination?

September 7, 2016 by
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You’ve got things you need to do but you don’t want to do them. You may even have things you want to do but for some reason, you’re putting them off. I just heard about a simple way to overcome procrastination, courtesy of the late Raymond Chandler.

As a full-time novelist, Chandler believed that he should maintain a schedule of 4 hours of writing each day but he sometimes struggled to stick with it. He decided to do something about it by creating a simple rule to follow, and it helped him do the job.

Chandler’s rule was simple: either write or do nothing.

And nothing meant nothing.

By giving himself a choice, he avoided the guilt of not writing and thus didn’t force himself to do it, something he was sure would lead to poor results. He quickly found that when you don’t do anything, you get bored and getting back to work feels like a much better alternative.

Chandler’s rule applied to writing but is equally applicable to any task. If you want to try it, schedule a fixed time limit for your work and, perhaps, a fixed time of day. This should make it easier for you to choose the work, knowing that while there might be some unpleasantness, it won’t be never-ending.

In addition, eliminate all of the usual distractions. Close your browser, turn off your phone, and ask your staff not to disturb you. For some tasks, you might consider getting out of the office and going to the library.

Or, do what I did when I was faced with a big stack of files on my desk I had been avoiding for several weeks.

These were problem files and I didn’t want to look at them. I knew I had to but kept putting it off. I was getting anxious about what might happen if I put them off any longer and had to find a way to do it.

I got some help.

I had my wife come to the office and sit across the desk from me. She didn’t do anything or say anything, she just sat with me, silent, giving me the choice of either sitting quietly and doing nothing or digging into the files. I chose the latter and got through them in less than an hour.

It’s amazing what you can when you have a choice to not do them. It’s also amazing what you can do when you have your wife in the room watching you squirm.

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Making the case for doing what you feel like doing

August 23, 2016 by
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Grab your task management system, your calendar, and whatever else you use to manage your lists.

Next, put aside anything that has a due date or deadline or is associated with an upcoming appointment.

What you’re left with should be a large quantity of optional tasks and possible projects. Your “somedays” and “maybes” and ideas.

If you’re like me, you’ve got a boatload. Good ideas, dumb ideas, things you’ve already done, and things that make you wonder, “What was I thinking when I wrote this?”

Now, maybe you’re a good boy or girl and do weekly reviews and regularly clean up and prioritize your lists, in which case you have already decided which tasks to do next and which ones you’ll do after that.

Forget all that. Lump everything together (temporarily) into one big pile. We’re going to take a different approach and see if we like it better. C’mon, it’ll be fun.

Remember, if there’s a deadline or due date, put it aside. This is for everything else.

Alrighty. You have a big list of tasks and projects. What do you do with it?

Break up your list into groups of 25 to 35 items. Take one group and read through the list quickly, then come back to the beginning and read it again slowly, thinking about each item on the list. Put a mark next to any item that stands out to you and that you feel ready to do today.

Don’t try to prioritize them based solely on what you think you “should” do. Let your intuition guide you. Then go through the next group of 25 to 35 items and do the same thing.

When you’re done, you should have a short list of tasks you are ready to do today. They may not be things you previously thought you would do next, but they will be important and they will be things you will actually do because unlike other things on your list, you’re ready to do them.

If you are familiar with Mark Forster’s Autofocus system (aka, “The Final Version”) you will recognize this process. I’ve been reading about it and there are aspects of it that appeal to me.

The essence of his system is balancing the rational and intuitive parts of our brain. Forster says, “It’s very difficult to focus on what is important with one’s rational mind alone, because what your conscious mind thinks is important may not be what your subconscious mind thinks is important.”

There’s a lot more to the system but one thing to note is that it doesn’t rely on elaborate tagging or detailed prioritization methods. It’s based on repeatedly reading through your list and doing what you feel ready to do.

The result, says Forster, is a greatly increased volume of work getting done, and done faster. “This seems to be mainly due to the fact that there is very little friction in the way of resistance or procrastination.”

Have you used the Autofocus system? Does it sound like something you’d like to know more about? If you tried it, how did it work for you?

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Why being a bit neurotic might be a good thing

August 16, 2016 by
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If you’re like me, you are constantly fiddling. No matter how well things are going, we’re never completely satisfied and we’re constantly looking for something better.

We may be running a tight ship at work but good isn’t good enough. We’re “getting things done” but we can’t help but think there are ways to get more things done, or get them done faster.

I’ve used Evernote as my primary productivity application for several years but I am continually trying new apps. I’m also trying new methods–new tagging schemes, new ways of organizing tasks and projects, new ways of approaching how I work.

I used to think my mercurial ways were a sign of weakness. It turns out they might actually be a strength.

According to Charles Duhigg, author of Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business, the most productive people frequently try new systems. “I found that the people who are most productive decided to think about it deliberately,” he says. “Habits are useful tools, but they can hinder as well as help,” he adds. “Constantly cycling through systems forces you to think about your own productivity.”

Each time we try a new app, a new system, or a new process, we critically examine what we have been habitually doing. Things may be good but they can always be better and by continually trying new ideas, we continually find ways to improve.

So the next time you’re feeling guilty about changing your methodology or replacing your favorite app with another, give yourself a pat on the back.

And if you’re not a jumpy monkey like some of us, if you’re satisfied with the way everything is working and have no interest in re-examining what you do, you might want to smoke some of what we’re smoking and join us on the cutting edge.

Evernote for Lawyers

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How to save time without looking like a jerk

August 11, 2016 by
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If you spend a lot of (non-billable) time on the phone and find that all that chatting is keeping you from doing other work, I have a suggestion. Okay, two suggestions.

First, whenever you’re on the phone keep a clock or timer in front of you. Being aware of how much time you spend on each call will help you reduce that time.

If you can cut the average call from 15 minutes to 10, for example, and you are on ten calls each day, at the end of the day, you’ll reclaim 50 minutes.

The second suggestion will allow you to cut calls short without appearing rude.

All you have to do is to make a point of announcing at the start of the call that you “only have five minutes” or that you have an appointment coming up and you “have to make this quick” or something along those lines.

By telling them in advance that you have limited time, and giving them the reason (e.g., an appointment, a client waiting, another call you have to make, etc.), you have the excuse you need to cut the call short without making the other party feel slighted.

Do this at the start of every call. Every meeting, too. Always be in a hurry. Always have something else you need to do. Not only will this save you time, it has the added benefit of enhancing your posture and perceived value.

Successful people are busy. They have places to go and things to do. They have other clients, other appointments, and other people who want their attention. They are truly “in demand” and when clients and others perceive this about you, they will be more likely to see you as worth more than others.

That means you can charge more. It means you will be more likely to get referrals. It means you will be asked to speak at events. And it means that you will be less likely to be asked for free advice.

Being busy will increase the demand for your services and allow you to charge more for those services.

So, what are you waiting for? Don’t you have something else to do?

How to earn more and work less

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Filed Under: Image, Productivity

Do you go to the office on Saturday?

July 25, 2016 by
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When I was practicing, I would often go to the office on Saturdays. Even if it was only for an hour or two, I was able to get a lot of work done because there were no interruptions or distractions.

No ringing phones, no appointments, no secretaries bringing me papers to sign, updating me, or asking questions. Just one block of quiet time and nothing else to do but concentrate on the work.

I would dictate letters and pleadings and instructions, review documents and make notes, and chew my way through a big pile of files. The quiet also allowed me to dive deep into problem files I might not want to look at during the week.

A few hours on Saturday allowed me to catch up on work that had piled up during the week and get ready for the upcoming week.

I often brought files home with me but it wasn’t the same. Unless I had court on Monday and had to prepare for it, those files usually sat unopened.

Once in awhile I would go to the library or a coffee shop and do some work in a different environment. But nothing beat the office, especially when I had come in a little later and knew the air conditioning was going to be turned off at 3pm.

I know, if you’re successful, you shouldn’t have to work on weekends. Or so some say. All I can tell you is that I was successful because I worked on weekends, even if it was just for a few hours.

Building a law practice is easier when you know the formula

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Filed Under: Productivity
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