Mother in Law: Chronic inefficiency

I seem to be going through a phase, recently, of dealing with lots of lawyers (in my own firm, and elsewhere) who are chronically inefficient. I think there are lots of different reasons for this, and I’m definitely not judging. I’ve written at length in the past on procrastination and the reasons it’s a thing. Going back to last week’s chat with Scott Simmons, being able to charge more for spending more time on a file doesn’t help. A lack of confidence is another factor - not asking for guidance, not delegating and taking on more work to look good when you can’t manage what you’ve got. They are all possible reasons, and ones that I have seen demonstrated in the wild. 

I’ve been there myself. I’ve faffed around doing something non-urgent because I can’t face opening the file with the difficult client, as if it will be like a Howler from Mrs Weasley and the second I open it the client will start shouting at me. I’ve waited days, maybe weeks, to respond to a letter because I want to catch my boss in a good moment to discuss it before I do. I’ve not phoned a bank or a court because I know I’m going to waste an hour of my life on hold.

What I’ve been thinking recently, though, is that this is an incredibly stressful way to live. Knowing that the majority of your clients are unhappy with you, knowing that you are leaving your desk at the end of the day without having achieved much, not meeting your targets or not being able to look at yourself in the mirror, or your kids in the eye, and say 'Yep, I’m a sh*t hot lawyer'. 

Let’s talk about confidence first. When I wrote about confidence, a judge commented anonymously: 'I’ve been a judge for the last 10 years and am still wracked by lack of confidence on a daily basis. However, I have learned that it is an ingrained neural pathway in my brain which is triggered by any challenge or difficulty at work. It does not reflect the reality nor other people’s perception of my performance.' I have absolutely no doubt about the ingrained neural pathway. Whilst I’m not massively confident, I am lucky to have been brought up in a family that told me to always 'have a go' because no one is innately better than me. We are all a product of our upbringing and plenty of people won’t have had that experience. Their confidence will have been inhibited by their parents’ own lack of confidence or - heaven forbid - their parents’ lack of confidence in them. I hate it when I see people allowing a lack of confidence to inhibit their progress at work, or elsewhere. It is just your brain telling you that you can’t do something, and you are in control of your brain, so tell your brain to tell you that you can do it! I know it is not that simple, but you’ve only got a certain number of turns round the sun so don’t waste them please.

And if confidence isn’t the issue, maybe it is simply the fact that at any one moment you have a thousand things going round in your brain that you need to do but can’t necessarily do at that moment. I need a bag of compost, I need to research eco-friendly dental floss, I want to make something nice to eat on Fathers’ Day, I need to issue proceedings before a limitation date in a multi-million pound dispute, I need to choose which weeks to have off in the summer, there’s some polyfilla that needs sanding in Decepitvely Angelic Child no. 1’s room, the Enormous Puppy needs an allergy injection, I need to write my team’s business plan… the list goes on, and on, and on. And the tasks come from more directions than ever - various messaging apps, personal emails, work emails, post at work, post at home, phone, voicemail etc. I feel like a master of productivity since having children, but even so the chronic stress of all of the above is way too much. For one thing, I only ever remember the bag of compost when I’m in the bath. Or the dentist appointment I need to make on a Sunday when I can’t phone them.

My husband bought me 'How To Do Nothing' by Jenny Odell for my birthday. I told him to stop being so stupid and put the (complex fortnightly combination of) bins out. It was about as useful as that Wintering book. 

Instead, I bought myself 'Getting Things Done' by David Allen. It is one of those cringey self-help books with the author’s photo (with very white teeth) on the front, but I’m willing to give it a try. 

He starts by making the point that you, quite simply, have to offload all this stuff from your poor brain. This is a virtuous circle because once you have offloaded the task, you save yourself from having to think about it (and panic or be frustrated that you haven’t done it) every single time you have a bath or listen to your kids practise their musical instrument. Just imagine that optician appointment you keep forgetting - how many times have you thought 'must do that'? If there are a thousand tasks going round in my head, it makes sense to do my best to not think about each one fifteen times, right? I recommend the book, or at least the flowchart which is handily on Wikipedia, for how to get sh*t done and regularly have an empty inbox.

I’m not going to summarise the whole book here. For one thing, I’ve spent too long going on about compost and Mrs Weasley. But perhaps the following tips might help when something hits your 'inbox' (by which I’m including your letter box, your Facebook Messenger messages, voicemail, any digital task lists generated at work etc):

1. If it is rubbish, throw it in the bin straight away! I’m talking about those firm-wide emails from Accounts about unallocated funds that aren’t yours, and the actual letters Plumbs send me every couple of weeks because they recovered an armchair for me 15 years ago.
2. If it is actionable and can be done in less than two minutes, do it straight away.
3. If it will take longer, defer it (and make time in your diary) or delegate it.

Allen goes into detail on having 'project', 'someday/maybe', and 'reference' folders which are really useful ideas. Do you remember once every three months that you would quite like to go to Japan one day? Put it in your 'someday/maybe' folder.

You should try to streamline the way the tasks reach you, by not using (for example) direct messaging on Insta, Facebook, TikTok, Vinted and Snapchat as well as four different personal email addresses. 

The thing that I’m not sure about, and please do comment if you have a good system, is the best way to capture these tasks/reminders/thoughts as they come to you without looking too much like Alan Partridge dictating in his car. The book has lots of ideas, one of which is a notepad and pen (which I love), but I wonder if there is an app that works better? Do let me know.

Some facts and identities have been altered in the above article