Social networking, yea or nay: Part 2

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Just a few months ago, I wrote a blog entry titled, Social networking, yea or nay?, in which I reviewed an issue of Law Practice Management that featured several article advocating the use of social networking.  Since then, I’ve networked on LinkedIn and I even set up a Facebook profile, though I drew the line at Twitter — microblogging is not for me.  Meanwhile, I’m getting pelted with Plaxo requests and trying to figure out how social networking can work for me.  My next step was to listen to a few teleseminars, on how to use Facebook and LinkedIn, and I was aghast at the amount of time people were spending.  An hour or two a day???  Is it just me, or does that sound insane to anyone else?

So I was mightily curious when I saw a recent article by Larry Bodine titled, Is the Party Over for Social Networking?  Larry starts out like this:

What if you gave a party, hundreds of people showed up, but almost nobody talked to each other? That describes the state of social networking for lawyers on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and the new Plaxo Pulse. The masses get the idea, but only the evangelists are using it.

Ah, so it isn’t just me.  Citing research by the ABA about the online networking habits of young lawyers, Bodine concludes that few lawyers (only 8% of the young lawyer respondents, who might be presumed to be early adopters of such technology) find social networking important.  LinkedIn seems to be the professional tool of choice for lawyers (at least, “old” lawyers, which I fear means those over 30 or so), and Facebook seems to be preferred for personal use and by younger lawyers.

But here’s my question: other than using these tools to update contact information, employers, and the like, what are lawyers doing with social networking?  As a teen and college student, and even into law school, I used to play online and met some dear friends that way, through forerunners of IM technology, so I’m certainly not opposed to it — and I’d certainly prefer to network online while sipping good coffee than to schlep to another breakfast networking event (usually, it seems, in the rain) in hopes of making a connection.  I just don’t get how it works.

And so, I’m going to try an experiment.  I have one more week of very heavy travel, and then I’ll have a bit of a pause, when I’ll be in my office with computer handy for most days of May.  So, I’m going to give social networking a shot for the month of May and see what happens.

As I prepare, I invite your comments.  Do you use social networking sites?  Do you find them fun and/or professionally useful?  What’s your favorite site?  How much time do you spend on social networking?  I’ll keep you posted on what I learn!

(And, an aside about the blog: one of the kinks yet to be worked out is image-posting.  They will return!)

Clear your mind to increase productivity.

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Every office has one: the messy lawyer, whose desk and/or office always looks like a bomb exploded and left behind papers and files and coffee cups and who-knows-what-else scattered everywhere.  It’s a good practice to clear the decks weekly or following the end of a major project, just to keep some level of tidiness.  This time of year is especially auspicious, since you may find a few spare minutes for cleaning, and it’s such a good feeling to return to a clean office on January 2.  Especially if you have the luxury of calling in an assistant to help with filing and organization, 30 minutes to an hour will often prevent an overflow.

What if it’s your mind that needs decluttering?  When your brain is filled with “must do” tasks of both professional and personal origin, when you’re worried about something, when you’re trying to make a difficult decision, and when all of your thoughts are further agitated by the “noise” of life, it’s easy to get lost in mental chaos.  One day when I was preparing for a major client meeting and dealing with my mother’s terminal illness, I stopped by the grocery store on my way home.  I knew I was distracted, so I’d takent he time to write down the items I needed to buy.  But I proved how distracted I was when I returned to my car to find it still running with the keys in the ignition!  I wish I’d had access to the recent terrific post by Zen Habits titled 15 Can’t-Miss Ways to Declutter Your Mind.  The tactics (with clarification available in the Zen Habits post):

1.  Breathe.
2.  Write it down.
3.  Identify the essential.
4.  Eliminate.
5.  Journal.
6.  Rethink your sleep.
7.  Take a walk.
8.  Watch less TV.
9.  Get in touch with nature.
10.  Do less.
11.  Go slower.
12.  Let go.
13.  Declutter your surroundings.
14.  Single-task.
15.  Get a load off.  (Vent!)

And I’d add one more: do something creative that gets you into a state of flow, where time passes without your notice.  Examples might be drawing or playing music.  Time spent in any of these areas is indeed time well spent.

What’s the most important step you can take?

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Only 34 days remain in 2007, including weekends and holidays.  Before we know it, the books will close and another year will have passed.  What’s the most important step you can take today to ensure that you’re well-positioned as you move into 2008?

  • Business development: Perhaps you could set aside a couple of hours to evaluate your business development plan for 2007 and to lay out your strategy for next year.  Or you could make some appointments to take important contacts to lunch, for coffee, or whatever is appropriate.  If you’ve noticed that there’s something in your way concerning client development, invest some time now determining what you need to do to be more productive.  At a minimum, set aside a few minutes every day to take some marketing action.
  • Time management: How are your hours?  If they’re low, what do you need to do to get appropriate work?  (Perhaps see the business development ideas!)  Are you billing for the time you’re actually working, and are you using that time well?  Do you need to update your methods for filing, time tracking, or scheduling?  Perhaps it’s time to check in with your assistant and see what ideas he or she has for using time more effectively.
  • Professional development:  This is often a great time of year to pick up CLE.  Or check out some of the new publications in your area of practice or on practice management.  But first, check your progress on the development plans you set for this year.  What can you do to close out this year with a success?
  • Career:  If you’ve been considering a move, this is a good time to put out feelers and position yourself.  You may not have an opportunity to interview until the new year, but putting yourself “on the market” now will be beneficial.  If you’re mid-search, you may find this a busy period as employers try to wrap up hiring decisions before the close of the year.If you’re planning to stay in your current position, what can you do to improve your performance?  How successful have you been this year, and what changes would be helpful as you move forward?  The holiday season is also an opportunity to show your gratitude to support staff and colleagues who have made your professional life work well and perhaps brightened your days: don’t miss your chance.
  • Work/life integration: Are you happy with the amount of time and energy you’re putting into your personal life?  Do you need to rearrange your schedule, get some help on the home front, or turn off your BlackBerry while you talk with your spouse/partner/child?  Are you putting in time on the activities that will increase your energy, such as exercise and getting sufficient sleep?
  • Other:  If there’s an area that needs attention, you know what it is.  Spend some time putting it right, whatever that may mean.

Taking these steps will help you to realize or exceed the goals you’ve set for 2007 and carry you forward into 2008 with momentum.  Choose the most important action in the most important area and do it this week.

Simplicity: where personal and professional meet

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One of the rules I keep in mind when writing  is that good writing is clear, crisp, and simple.  The same rule often applies more generally as well.  As Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

When it comes to managing one’s personal life while maintaining a practice, “simple” is the name of the game.  (And this is a good time to note a favorite distinction: “simple” is not a synonym for “easy.”)  For instance, it’s much less stressful to prepare a simple dinner — say, a salad with various store-bought toppings and dressing — than it is to prepare a meal that requires numerous ingredients.  Likewise, I find that dressing in the morning is much more simple when my clothes are in reasonably good order and my closet not overstuffed.  Aspects of life that are more complicated than necessary drain energy.

And the same is true in the office.  If my files are a mess and I can’t find anything, I’ll have to stop and launch a search everytime I need a document, and that takes a tremendous amount of energy away from the task at hand.  Having a cluttered email box pulls at me because when I check for new messages, my eye is drawn to all of the messages I need to answer or otherwise handle, and slick filing system that put the messages out of sight make my life even more complicated.

Simplicity is especially important when personal and professional life intersect or affect one another.  One of my favorite questions to clients working on work/life integration issues is, “What can you stop doing?”  Releasing an activity that isn’t productive (in pleasure or in business) is often one of the most simple and most impactful steps to take.

Unfortunately, though, simplifying isn’t always an easy thing to do.  An overcrowded, disorganized closet may take hours or even days to get straightened.  So, I was delighted to find Simple Living Simplified: 10 Things You Can Do Today to Simplify Your Life on the zenhabits blog.  Ideas include:

— making a short list of top priorities (similar to an Absolute Yes list, which I previously discussed in this post);

— simplifying the “to do” list by identifying tasks that can be “eliminated, delegated, automated, outsourced or ignored;” and

— focusing on one task at a time.

And if 10 simplification steps aren’t enough, check the expanded list of the Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life.  Any list of 72 items feels unwieldy to me, but it’s worth a skim.

Blog bankruptcy

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One of the fundamental tenents of work/life balance, work/life integration, or any other name one might choose to describe the relationship between time applied on professional and personal matters is simple: conscious decisions on what to do and what to forego are mandatory, because no one can do everything.  My husband has a photo in his office that I truly hate, but it’s apt here.  It’s a picture of a trout with its mouth gaping open and a line beneath it that says, “Only dead fish go with the flow.”  It’s a recipe for disaster to “go with the flow” and assume that your work and your life will come to an equilibrium that suits you.  Careful choices are necessary, if painful.

This morning, I’m making such a choice.  It doesn’t rival choosing between attending a child’s annual recital and speaking at a prestigious CLE meeting, but it’s painful to me just the same.  I am declaring blog-reading bankruptcy.

Lawrence Lessig prompted this idea, by declaring email bankruptcy when he discovered that he was so far behind on emails he’d never catch up.  (Email bankruptcy Lessig-style is described in this Wired article that also has some handy productivity tips.)

I have so many unread blog feeds that I will never get through them — unless I choose to ignore what’s current, which would be a no-win “solution.”  I’ve tried to catch up.  I find so much value in the blogs I read that it’s hard to make the decision to clear the backlog, and yet, that’s the only rational choice at this point.  So, with apologies to the bloggers who work so hard to produce such excellent content, I declare blog-reading bankruptcy.  I start fresh today.

Where do you need to declare “bankruptcy”?  Perhaps in old industry newsletters or magazines, bar magazines that are interesting but not informative on your area of law, or newspapers/magazines?  Perhaps personal email correspondence?  Consider what “stack of stuff” is tugging at you from a corner of your desk or office or home.  Can you eliminate any of it, through “bankruptcy” or concerted action?

Back to the real world: how do you return from vacation?

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By the time this posts, I will likely have landed back at the Atlanta airport, home from vacation and from the ABA annual meeting.  First, I’d like to thank Peter Vajda publicly for his posts.  Relationship is always an interesting topic, and I believe that in many ways our relationships shape and promote or inhibit professional success.  Especially since I’m a married lawyer as well as married to a lawyer, I’ve found Peter’s posts thought-provoking, and I hope others have as well.

Next, a plug for bar activities.  Most of my time at the annual meeting was engaged in business meetings, and I’ve been exposed to a variety of legal issues far outside my area of expertise — robotics and their legal issues, e-privacy issues, VOIP, so on and so forth.  And I had wonderful conversations about the future of the profession, the roles of maturing lawyers, and more.  If I’d had a realtime brain scan going, I’m sure my neurons would have been firing in neon colors!  It’s intellectually stimulating in a way that will enliven me for weeks to come.  Moreover, I met and reconnected with people from a wide variety of backgrounds, and it was a delightful time for both professional and social networking.  It’s a terrific way to spend some time, and it represents a marvelous opportunity for professional development and perhaps business development.

As I anticipate returning from my vacation, I’m thinking about what I can do to hit the ground running and maintain (at least to some degree) my relaxed state of mind.  Here are my favorite tips:

1.  Set a time to plan my “return to work” activities, and don’t anticipate that time.  I’ve found that one of the quickest vacation mood-killers is thinking and planning what I’ll do when I get back, which has the effect of accelerating my return.  I’ll spend about an hour tomorrow while I’m waiting to board my flight setting my “to do” list, but aside from that (and writing this post) I won’t do any work until I return to the office Monday morning.

2.  Plan a “vacation recall” signal.  Have you ever felt that the relaxation from vacation fades all too quickly?  I discovered that choosing something that reminds me of a pleasant time on vacation lets me hit a reset button and recall that pleasure.  I’ve set up a screensaver that will show some of my vacation photos, selected specifically to bring me back to a dusky moment, just past sunset, watching the last ray of the sun slip away from the California coast.  Bingo — I see it, and I’m there.  (The photo at the top of this post is one example.)

3.  Arrange my first few days back so I hit the most important, hardest tasks first.  This is a practice I follow on a regular basis, but I find it even more important when returning from vacation.  This lets me reap the full benefit of my energy on being back in the office, and I get quick rewards.

4.  Plan something to look forward to in the first few days back.  It’s easy to get sucked back into the flurry of work, to start feeling stressed, and to see the next few weeks or months as a long, grey tunnel with no escape until it’s vacation time again — or, worse yet, to think that taking time off was a mistake because of the necessary catching up that follows.  To counteract that, I plan something to look forward to no later than the first weekend back.

5.  Set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-based) goals.  The to-do list that I generate as a part of tip #1 above will set out precisely what I can realistically expect to accomplish, based on the urgent/important method of prioritization.  This level of specificity and realism gives me a concrete and feasible goal, and that keeps me on target; making sure that I’m attending to the important tasks first guarantees that my time will be well-spent.

I’ll share pre-vacation tips soon, too, because (as is surely no surprise) front-end planning facilitates the return as well.  Meanwhile, readers, any good tips that help you ensure a successful return from vacation?

The reset button

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One of the interesting things about coaching is that periodically, the topics on which I’m coaching someone will rise up and smack me in the face.  Pride may go before a fall, but working with someone else on an issue they’re facing seems highly likely in some bizarre cosmic way to raise the same issue for me.  Recently, it’s been around time management.  A client is known for being busy.  Frantically busy.  Ridiculously busy.  Productive, but busy beyond all measure of busy.  And he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t want it, and he’s ready to explore change.  Fortunately, after we explored some strategies that he created to meet his own needs and tendencies, things are improving for him.

Can you guess what my last week has been like?

I caught myself yesterday feeling as if I had so much to do that I’d never catch up (which may be true, but is hardly fatal) and bemoaning my lack of time.  Nope, can’t work out; I don’t have time.  Return calls to friends?  Not possible, there just isn’t time.  Post on the Life at the Bar blog on Monday morning as usual?  Not this week!

And then, two strategies came my way that have created a radically different experience for Tuesday than I had for Monday.  I’ll share them here in the hopes that they’ll help someone else.

First, eliminate the word “busy” from my repertoire.  I discovered that every time someone asked how things are going, I would reply “BUSY!” and immediately feel more stressed.  So, I’m practicing today with using other words: productive, effective, fruitful, joyful, full of accomplishments, etc.  (Thanks to Coach Kimberly for leading the way on this!)  Nothing has changed about my workload, of course, but my relationship with it has changed dramatically.

And second, at someone’s suggestion, when I felt that time was flying and I would never catch enough of it to get anything done, I stopped and watched the clock for one minute.  Have you ever noticed how long a minute takes when you’re just waiting and watching?  It was like being a kid waiting for summer break all over again, living in a state of seeming suspended animation.  Again, it didn’t change the items on my “to do” list, and it didn’t really even change the fact that I have more to do than I have day in which to do it, but that one-minute break helped me to realize that time isn’t really going so quickly, that just noticing it would make it slow down.

So, today I remain productive and cognizant that time isn’t actually flying by me.  I fully expect to hit “reset” again tomorrow by stopping myself from proclaiming my busyness and taking a one-minute break.  Will I get more done?  I don’t know.  But I will feel less pressured, which will make me less hurried, which will prime me to be less likely to make mistakes, which will make the day flow more easily.

Not bad for a small semantic change and a one-minute dance with time.  Would anyone else care to try it with me?

Recreation: a foundation of balance and productivity

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It occurred to me this week that there’s (at least) one activity that, perhaps counterintuitively, is a foundation of work/life balance and productivity: recreation.

While coaching a client this week and introducing Stephen Covey’s Urgent/Important quadrant system for prioritizing and completing tasks, I explained that true recreation — something that’s re-energizing, that “re-creates,” rather than passive activities like vegging out in front of the TV — is a Quadrant II activity: not urgent, but important.  It isn’t urgent because there will never be a requirement to enjoy recreation.  No one will ever request you to “recreate” on their time schedule, and no law firm partner will ever drop by late in the afternoon and apologize for asking you to put in a few hours of recreation that night.  (Absurd image, isn’t it?)  But it’s vitally important.

What “true recreation”?  It varies from person to person.  Perhaps it’s writing, gardening, skiing, going to or performing in the theater, playing with children, doing volunteer work… Whatever it is that takes a person from his ordinary self into a state of flow, where time passes without notice and the end result is production of energy, enthusiasm, a rounded person.  The key point is that true recreation creates balance and energy, both of which lead to increased productivity in the office.  And that’s what makes it important.

For those of you who are inclined to try an experiment, give this a shot: if you typically eat lunch at your desk, try going out instead.  Spend 30 or 45 minutes at a museum, in a park, talking with a friend, whatever you enjoy.  And then see whether you’re more productive than usual when you get back to your desk in the afternoon.    Or take several hours over the weekend to engage in recreation, and notice the effects when you get back to work.

Addressing burnout: your productivity depends on it

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Because of the stress of practice, burnout is a real issue for lawyers.  Just about every lawyer has at least an occasional period in which it seems that work is pressing 18-20 hours a day, and most of us know intuitively that it’s important to recover following that kind of exertion.

But what about the kind of day-to-day grind that can cause low-level burnout?

As an analogy only (and not as a diagnosis) compare major clinical depression with feeling down.  According to mental health professionals, the symptoms of the two are similar, but minor depression (feeling blue, dysthymia, etc.) tends to last longer and be more mild than major depression.  Where major depression is marked by an inability to function, someone who’s feeling down often sees the world in shades of grey, doesn’t enjoy life like he used to, and has reduced energy, but he’s still able to function.

Chuck Newton has recently posted on the “Cure for Lazy Lawyer Syndrome.”  It’s a terrific article that describes with a visceral clarity what it’s like to struggle with low-grade burnout:

You know something is wrong. You intend to get into work early to catch up, but fail to do so. You just cannot seem to make yourself finish that brief that is due in a week. You avoid phone calls you know you should take. You take a phone call and you know should make a note, but you just cannot make yourself get around to it. Then you forget the necessary details. You know you should call your client, but it is so-o-o-o inconvenient. You start to feel overwhelmed and you cannot find a starting place from which to even begin to catch up. You are just feeling tired, depressed and rundown. Vitamins do not seem to help much.

Does that sound all too familiar to anyone else?  I’ve certainly been there, and I’ve talked with enough clients to know that it isn’t an isolated feeling — though lawyers who are feeling this way do tend to isolate themselves.  And that tends to add self-condemnation to the mix, and the result is not pretty.

But Chuck has a solution, and he’s hit the nail right on the head:

My suggestion is that you will feel better about yourself, your practice and your competence if you will concentrate harder on the practice of law for shorter periods of time.  When you are in the zone, be in the zone.  Focus, but not so long that you get eye strain.

***

Short times away from your work (and I mean absolutely disconnecting from your work) will help you to be more productive and energetic back at your work.

Chuck’s post appears on the Solo Lawyer blog, and he even emphasizes that this advice is especially important for “home office lawyers, connected lawyers and Third Wave lawyers.”  To my mind, it’s critical for all lawyers, especially since most of us are now “connected” most of the time.  Although some of the suggestions that Chuck makes are difficult or inappropriate for lawyers who work in a traditional law firm (i.e., working 4-day weeks on a regular basis, absent a part-time schedule), the idea of short periods of intense focus alternating with period of complete disengagement can be applied in any practice setting.  I’ve referenced the book The Power of Full Engagement before, but I’ll mention it again now because it stands for the proposition that “full engagement” requires selective disengagement from work — which is, after all, exactly what Chuck espouses.

The risk of low-level burnout is that it makes everything less pleasant; it leads to reduced energy, reduced efficiency, and reduced productivity; and if left “untreated,” it can lead to major burnout.  My father, who’s practiced law since the mid-1960s, has given me much good advice, but one piece is especially relevant here.  Make it a habit — an occasional habit, but a habit nonetheless — to escape from the office midday, whether it’s to see a movie, to visit a bookstore or museum, or to take a walk somewhere.  Although the escape is great therapy to cure burnout, it’s even better applied to avoid it.

What’s your plan to address burnout?

Monday’s efficiency/productivity tip

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Most of us start each day with a “to do” list, or at least a good idea of what must be accomplished.  Time management experts often suggest starting by knocking off the easiest tasks, and overachievers often attack the toughest item first.  However, each of these approaches misses the mark and may facilitate being busy at the expense of being productive.

Instead, I suggest starting each day with the most important task.  It may be a phone call that takes 5 minutes or a drafting project that requires 5 hours; once that task is accomplished, though, the day has by definition been productive despite any crises that may pop up.  The next step is, of course, to hit the second most important task.

*****

I’m headed back to Atlanta today, following almost a week in Dallas for a conference.  Carly Fiorina spoke yesterday and had some interesting points on leadership that I’ll share in a future post.  The question I’m left mulling is, how can lawyers in private practice show up as leaders?  And how do lawyers in private practice show up as leaders?