TIPS FOR LAWYERS: Creating Effective Habits in the New Year.
It's that time of year where we all feel enormous pressure to
make resolutions for personal and professional improvement.
Lawyers are no exception! The problem is too often we set the
new goals without a real plan of how we're going to avoid
reverting to our old habits!
Habits can be a friend or foe. Think of a habit as a pattern of
behavior. Successful habits can help us to achieve success,
while other habits undermine our efforts to achieve.
Here is a great exercise for getting rid of old habits and
replacing them with habits designed to help you to more
effectively achieve your objectives.
STEP ONE: List 3 or more habits that are currently holding you
back from achieving your goals and describe how these habits
negatively impact your life. EXAMPLE:
Habit: Spend too much time on socializing during the work day.
Impact: Always playing catch up in order to meet deadlines
causing everyone to stress out. Makes me seem unprofessional and
unfocused.
STEP TWO List successful habits you will choose to adopt in
place of the "bad" habits and the benefits of adopting the new
habit
EXAMPLE:
Successful New Habit: Develop effective time management strategy
that includes limit socializing with other lawyers in the office.
Benefits: Increase productivity, meet or exceed billables,
decrease stress.
STEP THREE
Create a 3 step action plan to jumpstart each new habit. Be
specific, pick a start date, a completion date and begin.
EXAMPLE:
Action Plan
1) Develop Time Management System that fits my work-style. 2)
Create blocks in the day where I close my door and work for 2
hours without interruption. 3) To satisfy my desire to
socialize, schedule lunches and after-hour meetings with
colleagues so I stay connected. 4) Keep conversations to 3
minutes or less.
Start Date: January 7 Completion date: January 17th
Implementing new habits, new patterns of behavior, will take
time. Stay committed to the process and you