Time Management for Lawyers

Lawyers Assistance Program Facilitated by Robert Bircher

How do we spend Our time?

• • • Using Stephen Covey’s classic Quadrants (see attached) we can divide our experience of time in to 4 quadrants Quadrants one and three are urgent-like a ringing phone; they demand attention and are often popular. They may or may not be important We

react

to urgent things. Important things that are not urgent require initiative and proactivity

What is Important?

• • • •

Importance

has to do with results-it contributes to your mission, your values, and your high priority goals If you are not clear about what is important in life you will be easily diverted to the urgent If you focus your life on Quadrant one it will overtake you-you will feel stressed, burnt-out, feel like you are a crises manager putting out fires.

Some people burn themselves out by spending a lot of time in Quadrant three wasting their lives in pursuit of trivia being very busy while not achieving much. They tend to be people pleasers since most of Q-3 activity is based on the priority of others

Effective people spend time in Q-2

• Highly effective people stay out of Quadrants 3 and 4 and spend more time in Q-2.They shrink Q-1 down to size • Q-2 is the heart of effective personal management-not urgent but critically important-things like building relationships, knowing your personal mission, long range planning, exercising, knowing and living by your values

Good Boundaries

• You can create time from Q-3 and Q-4 by setting good boundaries • To say yes to important Q-2 activities you must learn to say no to Q-3 and Q-4 activities-this is where good boundary setting skills come in • You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage and strength to say no to other things

A Great Q-2 activity

• One of the most useful Q-2 activity is knowing your values • If you are not aware of your core values how can you tell what is important in your life?

• Pursuing a life and a job that is congruent with your values is the ultimate stress buster • Clearly knowing your core values will help you to say no to Q-2 and Q-4 activities 6

What are Your Values?

• For the purposes of this workshop our definition of values is

priorities in life”

behavior • Success in life:

important to you-

values!!

“core psychological driving needs or

• All behavior is driven by values • Values tend to be fairly basic and simple and can usually be expressed in one or two words-if it is more than that it is usually a story or a description of a

Being in the process of creating that which is most

thus you can’t really be successful without knowing your 7

Values Clarification

• Most people are not very clear about their values even though they are usually obvious when we look at their behavior • Being clear about what our values are allows us to make good choices about important matters such as work and choice of partners etc.

• We typically have many values but it is most useful to be conscious of our top 5-7 values-We need to know them in some useful order of priority 8

Values

• Values tend to be formed fairly young and usually don’t change much over the course of our lives-what does change is the way these values are met or sometimes the priority can shift slightly as we age • For example a person that values prestige and attention will likely have the flashiest bike in grade three, the hottest BMW after becoming a partner in a prestigious firm, and the coolest scooter in the old folks home-nothing has changed except the form in which the value manifests itself 9

Values

 You will get your core values met positively or negatively and whether or not you are conscious of them or not-you are automatically programmed to seek them out  If you need stimulation, excitement and variety in your life you will create them-these can be created constructively(being a prosecutor) or destructively(robbing banks) 1 0

Values

• Values can manifest in what appear, on the surface level, to be quite different behaviors • I value a sense of

freedom

and so bought a large boat and enjoyed the openness of the ocean on weekends-after a number of years the work of cleaning the bottom, endless repairs and cost and boredom with boating I sold the boat to regain my sense of

freedom!!

1 1

Values

• People tend to have trouble knowing their values for a number of reasons • They confuse “ideal self” values with their “authentic self” values your “ideal self” adopts the values of your family and culture as you grow up usually without questioning them much-I call these values “should values” People are all unique and may or may not actually have these as values 1 2

Values

• Simply asking people about their values usually doesn’t work since you will always get “should” values mixed in with authentic values • An easy way to tell is how that person actually behaves in life if they say “I value my health” but they are overweight, smoke and out of shape this is a “should or ideal self” value not a real one for them-or it simply isn’t one of sufficient importance for them to act on 1 3

Congruence

• Living your life congruent with your values results in happiness-actually it is a byproduct of this congruence!!

• My top 5 values are beauty, compassion, teaching and learning, inner peace and personal and spiritual growth-almost everything I do involves these values-my job at LAP is very consistent with these values as well as my friendships and social activities-this results in a stress free happy life • Once you are aware of your top values you can use this information for decision making 1 4

Figuring out your Values

• We are going to do an exercise based on your life experiences or stories and from that deduce your own values-this involves a boiling down or a questioning of why you do what you do-it can be tricky • Money is not a value-what value to you is the money? Being happy is not a value-it is a byproduct of the way you live your life 1 5

Manifesting Values

• Your values will manifest or show up in your life consciously or unconsciously and interestingly productively or unproductively • For example if you value excitement in your life this can be created by doing trials or prosecuting or by naked bungee jumping • I have some need for excitement and if it is not met I create it unconsciously usually by locking my keys in my car often while running at a gas station 1 6

Manifesting Values

• The most common problem is living your life according to someone else's values (i.e. parents or family) Another common problem is not being clear about the importance of core values to you-you will always have a sense of un-fulfillment or that something is “missing in your life” • If you are out of touch with your values what is missing from your life is you!!

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Living your life according to your values

• Once you are aware of your values the question is:

Are you living your life in accordance with those values?

If you value friendships and physical activity how much of your time do you actually do those things? Are you pursuing money and prestige when these things really don’t mean that much to you?

• Almost all lawyers want to be helpers Do you value helping poor people get justice but actually work in a firm that helps rich people get richer? You can create ethical incongruence and it will manifest as unhappiness 1 8

Values Indicators

• Most people have lots of values and various tests can raise your awareness of your own values • One way is to simply rate the importance on a list of values, in other words scaling from 1 10-the problem with this method is that “ideal self” or “should have" values can creep in • Another way is to look at your life and try and deduce values from your behaviors-this tends to be more accurate but involves some detective work since it is not often easy to deduce why you did what you did -i.e. what values were in play when you went to law school?-accomplishment, intellectual challenge, curiosity, sense of achieving something difficult, prestige, power, wanting to help others etc.

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Values Indicators

• After doing these tests we are trying to get to our top 5 values-this is a tough process and may take several attempts • Share your vignettes and see what other people see as your values-did you miss some?

• Don’t fret about getting anything perfectly right-we are looking for your best effort not the right answer (park your desire for perfection) • Stand up and recite your core values to the group 2 0