#357: Intentional Productivity

Read this episode: Intentional Productivity

How you think about what it means to be productive in your law practice can either move you closer towards accomplishing your goals or move you away from accomplishing them. 

If you don’t have the skill of intentional productivity, you will make your life harder, you will feel more stressed, you will feel more pressure throughout your day, and ultimately, you will sabotage yourself from moving faster towards what you want to achieve.

In this episode of Be a Better Lawyer, I’ll share with you how to overcome the typical approaches to productivity, so you can know:

• whether you’re unintentionally sabotaging yourself from achieving your goals
• What to look out for to ensure you stop following an unhealthy definition of productivity that so many lawyers tend to do
• How to strategize when it comes the biggest enemy to being productive: EMAILS
• ONE question to ask yourself daily that will help you take control of your productivity today and be a filter to become an intentional productivity powerhouse

Ready?

Before we talk productivity in this episode, I want to make sure you’ve downloaded a workbook that will help you become more intentional about your productivity. 

It’s called, “3 Sneaky Problems Stealing Your Time and Productivity (and How to Fix Them Now!)” – Not only that, but you’ll be notified when my program Time Peace for Lawyers opens, so you can ensure you’re more productive than ever with way less stress and overwhelm in your life.

You can grab the workbook and learn more about Time Peace for Lawyers™ at dinacataldo.com/timepeace

It’s a fabulous companion to this episode where you’ll learn even more about how you approach your work and how you could be sabotaging your productivity without even knowing it.

dinacataldo.com/timepeace

What is productivity?

Not many of us stop to ask ourselves this question, and it was a question I posed in my Time Peace for Lawyers coaching session this week, and the answers were fascinating because it was different for everyone at first.

The fascinating thing is that even though we all think productivity should be self-explanatory, when we stop to question what it really means to us, it may become perplexing.

Merriam-Webster defines productivity in a few different ways, but these two were relevant to what we’re talking about today:

1. Having the quality of producing, especially in abundance, and
2. Yielding results, benefits or profits

This meaning is ridiculously vague, and if you know me, you know we can only solve problems when we get specific about what the problem is.

Here’s the problem with how most lawyers measure productivity:

Productivity can be measured in lots of different ways by different lawyers. 

For example, it could be by:

• the number of billable hours you produced in a day
• how many tasks you checked off your to do list
• how you feel at the end of the day — maybe relief or satisfaction that you moved along or completed, 
• it can even be the feeling of rushing through your day and looking back to see what your brain says was, “a lot.”

Let me tell you why all of these measurements are wrong.

You heard me.

None of these definitions of productivity serve you if you want to make more money, meet deadlines, deliver impeccable customer service.

They also don’t serve you if you want to have a life and love your life outside of the office.

These measures of productivity rely on an emotional response versus managing your mindset.

Managing your mind is what creates intentional productivity.

Intentional productivity is the ability to see where your mind and body want to react to your environment instead of consciously manage it, so you prioritize your most important work.

Let’s get more granular here.

You can bill 8 hours in your day, but not touch your most important work.

You can complete lots of tasks and respond to dozens of emails without it making you more money in your practice.

You can feel really good at the end of the day for completing lots of projects or one big project, but if it’s not your most important work, were you truly serving your clients at your highest level?

When it comes to intentional productivity, working all day isn’t enough to move the needle towards your goals.

That’s why you may find yourself feeling like you’re moving two steps forward one step back or three steps forward 4 steps back.

You’re simply not spending enough time in intentional productivity.

I know you can work like the best workhorse. You’re a high-achiever, so I see you.

You want to do all the things and move fast through your day, so you can accomplish more.

So it feels counterintuitive — and you may even resist — the idea of pausing and reassessing whether you’re in intentional productivity or not.

Your nervous system is used to work-work-work.

But working hard doesn’t cut it if you want to accomplish your goals and live true to what you value in your practice.

As long as you define productivity by how much you get done during the day, you won’t intentionally direct your mind to do the most important work.

Important work will look different day-to-day, but you must define this for yourself before you get started.

This is the work I do with my Time Peace and 1:1 clients because being intentional move the needle.

Being intentional requires that instead of you just jumping into the day, you pause and assess what’s happening in your brain and in your body. We’re going to talk about that.

This is important because if you don’t pause long enough to recognize how you’re reacting in your day, to recognize when you’re shooting from the hip about what task to take on next, you’re wasting precious time and energy. Not only that but when you’re not doing your most important work with intention, you’ll make mistakes and may even feel demoralized when you look back at the end of the day seeing that you didn’t even touch the work you wanted to because you spent way too much time doing low value tasks or low priority tasks.

Here’s what important work looks like, so you can have some guidance around defining important work for yourself:

Important work looks like:

• sending out bills to clients to get paid on time and ensure your clients get closure on matters
• Completing work that’s time sensitive
• Working on tasks that will move the needle towards your revenue goals
• having a conversation with your assistant about over-booking your calendar
• Reaching out to someone in your firm to connect you with someone who can help you grow your practice area
• If you’re a content creator growing a law practice, important work could be sitting down and writing a podcast and recording it

Your most important work is going to vary from week to week and in some cases day to day depending on your practice area.

Here’s what low value or less important work looks like. 

You know, I’m hedging here, this is plain old unimportant work you’ve got to say no to if you want to be intentionally productive.

• Tweaking the footers of your documents

• Doing $60 an hour assistant work instead of training your assistant to do that work and freeing you up to do $300 an hour work

• Here’s a big one: constantly checking emails and responding to the alerts on your phone and computer. This is such a drain on your attention. Your attention is energy. The more attention you give to these alerts, the less energy — and time!!! — you’ll have to take on the most important work in your day.

Email is an enemy to intentional productivity, so you’ve got to be ruthless about how you manage your attention with emails. Ruthless.

One of my Time Peace lawyers also had a thought about emails that you may have had too.

She thought, “If I reply to this email now, then it’s one less thing I have to do later.”

Seems like replying would then make her more productive.

But it wasn’t.

Noticing what your brain says about replying to emails is essential if you want to be intentionally productive because your thoughts can sabotage you from your plan for the day.

I’m going to do a whole other episode just about emails because there are a ton of ways our brain sabotages productivity, so if you’re worried you’ll miss something or have some other reason you believe you’ve got constantly check emails, I’ve got you.

For now, let’s just focus on this one because it a mindset that seems like it would create productivity, but it’s creates the opposite: 

“If I reply to this now, it’s one less thing I’ll have to do later.”

In the moment — if you’re not paying attention — it seems logical.

But this is where mindset is so important. If you stop for a moment and examine what you’re thinking, is it even true?

Can you even be intentionally productive if you’re constantly replying to unimportant emails?

If they don’t directly relate to the important work you planned to accomplish in your practice, then the answer is no.

When we simply allow our brain to go unchecked and unnoticed, when we don’t examine the thoughts driving our actions — which is next to impossible to do if you’re rushing through your practice — you can go down an unproductive rabbit hole that has you:

• replying to emails all day even if they’re not time sensitive or relate to your priorities

• Lose out on leaving the office when you want to because you’ve been focusing your valuable attention on your email instead of your priorities

• Missing out on having a more predictable schedule because you’re constantly moving important tasks on your calendar to another days because you used up your time and energy on the unimportant tasks

This brings me to the ONE question you can ask yourself daily that will make you an intentional productivity powerhouse.

To create a filter, you’ve got to take control of your mind around your work.

You can’t constantly think you have so much to do or you’re so behind.

That mindset creates a ton of pressure that prevents you from calmly assess your work, so you can be intentionally productive.

This was a beautiful question a lawyer shared in Time Peace the other day. 

It comes from a litigator of 20 years who is a self-proclaimed calendar convert after going through Time Peace.

She never used a calendar before, and now she’s feels more control over her practice.

Here’s the question she asks herself to become internally productive in her day now when she notices that she’s starting to feel overwhelmed by all the work she has to do:

“What’s your plan for the day?”

This ONE question helps her redirect her brain, so she can think intentionally about what’s most important.

This one questions allows her to feel more empowered to make decisions about how she uses her time.

I love this because it puts her in the driver’s seat of the day instead of feeling like she’s at the mercy of her work or the people walking in her door.

It’s a reminder that you have more power than you think about how your day goes.

Let’s do a quick run-through of what you got from this episode, so you can apply it to your practice right now:

1. Ask yourself what YOUR measurement of productivity is. 
2. Ask yourself whether it makes sense given what you want to accomplish in your week or day.
3. What tasks do you notice yourself giving your attention and time to that are unimportant or law value tasks instead of important tasks?
4. Remind yourself to consciously ask yourself, “What’s your plan for the day?”

There’s two ways you can work with me to become more intentional and deliberate, be more focused and grounded, and feel more peace and ease every day in your law practice.

One is in my private coaching container where I work with you 6 months one-on-one to focus your energy on making more money in your practice, feeling more peace and ease every day and creating a life you love.

The other is in my 12-week group coaching container called Time Peace for Lawyers™ where we focus on time management mindset and strategies that will put you in the driver’s seat of your practice. Get all the details at dinacataldo.com/timepeace

Alright, my friend.

Thanks for listening.

I’ll talk to you next week.

Bye.