CBA Record May-June 2023

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

Going from Frazzled to Focused: Unexpected Approaches to Time Management By Sharon Nolan

T ime management is a core skill to succeed as a lawyer. In fact, LinkedIn ranks time manage ment as one of the top skills employers look for in job candidates. In honor of Women’s History Month, featured CBA Career Counselor Kathy Morris of Under Advisement Ltd. hosted a panel of female time management specialists at a recent CLE program, “It’s About Time,” to help you go from frazzled to focused. Panelists included Aileen Leventon, Principal, Law Strategy Coach; Cheyne Scott, Founder, The Spiritual Litigator, LLC; Jamie Spannhake, Coach, Lion Life LLC; and Sarah Tetlow, Founder, Firm Focus, LLC. The speakers shared the following take aways to help your day-to-day law prac tice and personal life run more smoothly. Members can watch the on-demand CLE at learn.chicagobar.org at no charge to get the full breadth of helpful tips (IL MCLE Credit). Stop welcoming distractions. A dis traction is something that is within your control. Email is a prime example of a distraction. While you can’t control when an email comes in, you can control when you read it. Tetlow recommends that before you check email, know what is on your calendar and what prep you need to complete for your top two or three tasks for the day before looking at your email. If you look at your email first, it becomes the priority. Consider a productivity app. Tetlow also suggests using a productivity app (Trello, Asana, Evernote, Todoist, Airtable) to store your ideas, thoughts, strategies, tasks, and projects. She makes a productiv ity app comparison available at no charge (including features and costs) on her website at https://www.firm-focus.com/ resources.

Change “I don’t have enough time” into “I have too much to do.” Spannhake recommends this change in perspective to take charge of what we must accomplish. Ask yourself instead if there are things you don’t have to do and what you can del egate to others. Consult your calendar. Before you start a new matter or agree to take on a case, consult your calendar first. Work backwards from the assignment/case end date and be realistic about whether you can complete the required task. Leven ton also suggests once you have an agreed timeline with your client or supervisor, continually update your timeline and calendar to ensure expectations and dead lines can be met. She also suggests having a debrief at the conclusion to evaluate what could have been done better. Set expectations. How do you deal with the client who expects everything immediately? Leventon suggests setting expectations at the start. The ability to be clear about your boundaries and cir cumstances (e.g., I have to drop my kids off for school and won’t be accessible for meetings until after 10 a.m.) will help keep your professional and personal life running smoothly. Tetlow also suggests letting the demanding client know you received the email, have read it, and when you will be working on the request. Respect your time. Many supervisors struggle with protecting their own time when faced with requests for help from subordinates. Leventon suggests setting up the office hours. Put the “office hours” on your work calendar so junior staffers can see when you are available for non emergency issues. Meetings need real agendas. Meetings can be real time wasters. To stay on track and respect your (and others’) time, create

Pictured, clockwise from top left: Jamie Spannhake, Aileen Leventon, Kathy Morris, Sarah Tetlow.

an agenda. Ask yourself: Are we trying to solve a problem or need a consensus? Do we need a brainstorming session or a status update? And keep the meeting moving and know when it’s time to end it. Tetlow suggested using the new sched ule polling feature in Outlook to save time when scheduling meetings. Just say no. How to say no to an assign ment or a case? Tetlow remarked that “doing the work when you don’t have time cheats everyone.” She suggested declining a task by starting with a positive statement: “I’m glad you asked me, but I’m working on X and my time is limited.” Break out of being overwhelmed. Spannhake suggested that sometimes when you are most overwhelmed you simply need to press pause and do a cen tering activity (this is the perfect time for a mindfulness activity, she suggested). Then assess what really needs to be done, what you can delegate, and what deadlines you can extend. An Eisenhower Matrix (easily found through a Google search) is a pro ductivity, prioritization, and time-man agement tool that Spannhake recommends for prioritizing a list of tasks or agenda items by categorizing those items accord ing to their urgency and importance.

Sharon Nolan is the CBA’s Director of Marketing.

CBA RECORD 29