Your to-do list just keeps growing. It seems like there’s never enough time in a day for you to get things done. And because you don’t feel like you’re getting enough done, you’re beginning to feel intimidated. Did you know that intimidation affects your law practice management plan? It’s true.
Your law practice management plan is designed to help you stay in control of your business. It’s specifically focused on helping you remain in compliance with the legal ethics rules in your jurisdiction. When you feel intimidated by your to-do list, you’re less likely to take action on the pressing and often complicated matters listed. When you don’t take action, you have less to report to your clients or be properly prepared to appear on their behalf. Failure to update your clients or to properly prepare for hearings and meetings are just a couple of issues that could case someone to file an ethical complaint against you. If that occurs because of your intimidation, your law practice management plan failed.
What You Can Do to Better Execute Your Law Practice Management Plan
To better execute your law practice management plan, you must find a way to deal with the intimidation that’s affecting you. Here’s how you can identify and handle the intimidation:
- Look at your to-do list and determine which item(s) never get done. This is the thing (or the things) that stay on your list week after week.
- Determine why its not getting done. Generally, tasks don’t get done for one of two reasons. It could be that it’s really just not a priority. It might be something you want to do, but you just don’t have the time, resources, or desire to take care of it. The second reason is it’s something that’s intimidating you. Tasks that fall under the first reason are easy to deal with. Just mark them off your list. We need to focus on the items that are intimidating.
- Think about why the task intimidates you. Be honest with yourself. Why is the task intimidating to you?
- Start your to-do list over. Of course, you’ll want to make note of the intimidating tasks particularly if they relate to active matters. Yet, sometimes it makes us feel better to just ditch the list and start over on it. You can reorganize your tasks.
- Take action every day on your to-do list. Yes, this includes those items that make you feel intimidated. We get intimidated when we allow tasks to go unattended. Begin taking action on your list.
Don’t let intimidation grow. It really can affect your practice. Make a plan and work through the items on your list every day.