Three resources you should check out

A few resources to bring to your attention this week…

1. Always looking for a better way to manage your time? Check out the Storyline Productivity Schedule. Designed to help you focus on what matters most (no brownie points for clearing your in-box of e-mail you didn’t need to read) and to arrange your days in accord with your mental energy, the schedule also helps to limit what you might attempt in a day and to remind you of good stuff to come when your work is done, thus decreasing the tendency to procrastinate. If the streamlined 1-3-5 list doesn’t work for you, give the Productivity Schedule a try.
   
2. The purpose of business is to make a profit. That’s the key lesson in a recent ABA Legal Rebels article titled, What lawyers can learn from a dollar-store model.This is an obvious statement, but keeping it in mind leads to a number of less-obvious (or more easily overlooked) truths. My favorite is that “[i]nnovation in the legal sector needs to be profit-driven.” In other words, don’t innovate for the sake of innovation; focus on what will bring meaningful benefit to your clients, identify the problems they’re facing, and innovate accordingly. The article, of course, deals in oversimplification (it’s impossible to address anything as complex as the business aspects of a legal practice and the changes that may be necessary as other aspects of business change in the 12 paragraphs this author allotted) but it will get you thinking.
   
3. A couple of week ago, I encouraged you to reach out to strategically-identified contacts without the expectation of getting immediate results. Seth Godin recently wrote a blog post on what prompts people to show up. The whole post is only 47 words, and it just might change how you think about your relationships.

That’s it for this time—hope at least one of these resources is useful for you.