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Triage Your To-Do List
To keep yourself on top of what is truly important, we recommend that you triage your to-do list. Examine all of the items on your list and then rank them according to their importance. To distinguish what is most important among the myriad tasks on the list, look for what we call the A priority tasks, or the highest priority tasks. Identify a task as A priority if one or more of these four questions receive a “yes” answer.
- Does this task forward your long-term goals?
Long-terms goals come from your overall vision—such as buying an office building, learning a new practice area or cultivating new referral sources. Read your vision statements prior to planning your week in order to remind yourself of what is truly important.
- Are there pending legal deadlines associated with these files?
Block out time for these tasks on your computer or delegate them to staff. These time-sensitive issues are extremely important and must be handled in a timely fashion.
- Are there client expectations attached to this file or task?
Have you made a promise to a client to complete something by the end of the week? Always calendar these promises. These are your “soft” deadlines. Though they aren’t legal deadlines, they are nonetheless very important in terms of maintaining the confidence a client has in you. Monitor yourself to make sure you aren’t consistently over promising and under delivering. It is much better to under promise and then over deliver with your clients.
- Are there cash flow needs that should dictate your next step?
You may interfere with your own cash flow by not focusing on production. Many attorneys are the bottleneck in the system due to the number of files that accumulate in their offices and remain untouched.
Once you have pulled out the A priority tasks, identify those that remain as B or C tasks. How do you tell the difference?
• B priority tasks do not require your unique talents or abilities and can be easily delegated.
• C priority tasks are not worth your time and attention and should absolutely be delegated or delayed as long as possible until you can deal with them at your leisure.
Take Priority-Based Action: Delegate, Eliminate Or Schedule
Now that you have triaged your to-do list, you have a method to plan intelligently. Delegate the B priority tasks and seek to eliminate as many of the non-essential C priority tasks as possible. Next, rank the A priority tasks as A1 (most important), 2 or 3 and take action accordingly. Let actions associated with your vision statement, your legal deadlines and client expectations drive your decisions.
Though it may sound like work initially, once you are in the habit of triaging your tasks, your to-do list won’t seem like one long, indistinguishable roster. Prioritized, it becomes more helpful because you have identified the truly important tasks and won’t be tempted to pick out tasks at random just to knock something off the list. Take a little time at the beginning of each week to use this approach and lift yourself out of the daily game of catch-up in which you may find yourself.
Excerpted from Time Management for Attorneys: A Lawyer’s Guide to Decreasing Stress, Eliminating Interruptions & Getting Home on Time by Mark Powers and Shawn McNalis
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