Young Lawyers Network

Young Lawyers Network Editor: Josh Crowfoot, Daspin & Aument, LLP, 633 Chestnut St., Suite 600, Chattanooga, Tennessee 37450.

Making the Most of a Finite Life

In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman writes: “[T]he average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short.” If you live to be 80, you will have had about 4,000 weeks on earth. How do you make the most of your finite time? The book provides insight on how we, as modern humans, view time and how that creates problems for us in an era when technology provides numerous ways to save time, yet we are somehow “busier” than ever. Below are a few takeaways that can assist even the busiest lawyer among us.

Embracing the Limits of Time

Organize your days with the understanding that you will not have time for everything that you want to do or that other people want you to do. Avoid denying the temporal limitations that life places on you and embrace them instead. None of us has infinite time to accomplish what we want. A decision to “do” something is also a decision to forego something else. When we are reminded that our day is merely a series of decisions regarding how to allocate our time, it is easier to accept that it is rare that in any given day we are going to accomplish “everything” that needs to get done.

Stop Clearing the Decks

It’s not uncommon for lawyers to be plagued by busyness. In a frenetic law practice, everything can feel important, and the list of tasks big and small that need to be completed can grow quickly. When this happens, lawyers believe that we can postpone the “big” tasks, which usually require more of our time and focus, for a while because we do not have an immediate and large block of time to allocate to that big task. Instead, we complete numerous smaller, less time-consuming tasks. These are things that need to get done, too, so we feel some accomplishment in having completed them. But what happens? The big and, ostensibly, more important tasks get delayed. We “clear the decks” of the smaller items, but we delay the completion of the big ones. This delay in completion can cause stress in one of two ways. First, the mere delay in the completion creates anxiety. Second, because one may not leave himself enough time to complete the big task, one can rush through its completion and do a mediocre job in the process. What’s the solution? Focus on what is “truly of the greatest consequence while tolerating the discomfort of knowing that, as you do so, the decks will be filling up further, with e-mails and errands and other to-do’s, many of which you may never get around to at all.” In other words, the best way to operate a law practice is to let go of the illusion that in any given day, you will have time to do everything that needs to get done. Complete the big tasks of consequence and let go of the smaller ones, knowing that decisions must be made.

When It Comes to Time, Pay Yourself First

If there is a goal you have for your law practice, claim time for it at the beginning of the day. If you do not save a little bit of time for yourself each day, there is no moment in the future when you’ll magically be done with everything and have loads of free time. If there is something that really matters to you, then at some point you are going to have to start doing it. Whether it’s developing a business development plan that will net you an additional client each month, standardizing some forms to streamline your practice, or writing an article to solidify your position as an expert in your area of law, start today and designate a specific time to do so.

Focus on Three Tasks to the Exclusion of All Else

Each day, set a hard limit for the number of things you allow yourself to work on at any given time. Burkeman recommends three projects, but it can be any number. The idea is to set a number, and then all incoming demands on your time must wait until one of those three projects has been completed. Follow through on what you set out to complete, rather than have many halffinished items on a long to-do list. The more you can prevent starting projects and then having to restart them later, the more efficient you will be. Any time you can eliminate that goes toward “reacclimating” yourself on a specific project is time you can allocate elsewhere. In summary, pick a select few projects and knock them out. Anything else you can fit afterward is a bonus.

Prioritize What Is Important in Your Practice

Sit down and write the 25 things you want most in your law practice. Then arrange them in order from the most important to the least. The top five should be those around which you organize your time. What about the remaining 20? Avoid them at all costs. Why? They are ambitions insufficiently important to you to form the core of your law practice, yet desirable enough to distract you from the ones that matter most. It’s a cliché that one must learn how to say “no” to things one doesn’t want to do, but it’s equally as important to learn how to say “no” to the things you do want to do to free up time for the stuff that really matters.

Published in Probate & Property, Volume 36, No 5 © 2022 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

Probate & Property September/October 2022