The Organized Professional
By ZARAH WALPOLE
I recently presented a seminar on “organizational tips” to my colleagues at the law firm where I practice. Then in a moment of organizational inspiration, I thought, if these tips can help a busy lawyer get more out of her day, I bet they’ll be helpful to other business women with too much work and too little time. This is my list of my most useful and (sometimes) counterintuitive tips for getting more of the important stuff done.
Create a “Don’t Do” List.
Sure we’ve all got our daily, weekly and “sometime in the next ten year’s” To Do list. But this time, think about creating a “Don’t Do” list for all the things you shouldn’t be spending your time on. This list should include all of those things you need to delegate, outsource, or just say no to. Items could include: don’t check my e-mail every time a message pops up (I find checking three or four times per day plenty – when I check more, I’m procrastinating from working on the stuff that really needs to be done – like write this article). Don’t accept work from x (either an individual or type of client) because the aggravation is not worth the pay-off. Don’t accept calls between 10 and 11 because that’s when I’ll be getting my work done.
Never touch a piece of paper more than once (and that includes e-mail and voice-mail messages).
Admittedly this is more of a goal, than an actual accomplishment but it is certainly one I strive for. You can waste a great deal of time continuously going through your Inbox (both paper and e-mail). Set aside time each day to deal with your snail, voice and e-mail and deal with them at once and only once. Anything that you can respond to in less than 5 minutes should be dealt with immediately. Everything else needs to be delegated, or filed with a notation in your diary system (you have one of those, right?) whether paper or electronic, with a reminder of how and when you need to respond.
Know Thyself.
Figure out when you are most productive. For me, it’s between the hours of 8 and 12. Set aside time every week during these productive hours to work on your important and challenging projects. Make judicious use of the “do not disturb” feature on your phone and do not allow interruptions during this time. Answer phone calls and respond to snail and e-mails during your less productive hours.
Play mind games with yourself.
Whenever I have a big, ugly project that starts tempting me to procrastinate (and we all have them), I bring out the big guns and play mind games with myself. Instead of trying to find half a day of clear time when I can really tackle the project (because that time will never come), I find half an hour at the end of the day just to review the file and create an outline of the items that will need to be done. That’s easy to do. The next day, I tell myself I’ll just deal with a couple of the easy things on the list that I know I can handle. Suddenly, I’ve got a sense of accomplishment because I’ve actually started working on the file and half the work is done.
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The above is not intended to constitute
legal advice. Please contact a lawyer to clarify your
legal rights.
