Note: This is a re-post of the January 2021 edition of Jess Birken's Hack Your Practice newsletter. I'm republishing it with Jess's permission in June 2024 to coincide with Jess's appearance, along with her wing-woman Meghan Heitkamp, on Episode 20 of the Agile Attorney Podcast. Enjoy!
Hi there, lawyer friends. Happy New Year!
'Tis the season for goal setting. Even if you're not into the whole new year's resolution thing (I'm not), I'm guessing you've been reflecting on 2020 and gearing up for the year ahead. This year feels sliiiiightly hard to plan for, but it sure feels good to set good intentions, right?
I know for me (and a lot of lawyers) it can be tempting to say "here's how I'm going to improve EVERY ASPECT of my personal and professional life in 2021!"
What can I say? We're an overachieving bunch.
And honestly, it feels good to have a reason to be optimistic and motivated.
But do you know what doesn't feel good? Getting to, like, October and seeing a big list of stuff you haven't done yet, but were supposed to, still staring you in the face. There is nothing more depressing than a failed goal to an overachiever, right?
Don't do that to yourself. Here's the one super simple word that will help you avoid the self-flagellation later:
REALLY
Yes. That's it. The word "really" has CHANGED the way I work (and live, tbh).
How, you ask?
Well, about a year ago, my wing woman Meghan and I were feeling despondent. It felt like no matter what we did, we just couldn't get to end of our to-do lists. We'd start the day with a list of TOP PRIORITIES, and we'd never get to the bottom of it.
Sound familiar?
So, we had a meeting with our law firm coach, the amazing John Grant of Agile Attorney Consulting. And as we talked, it became abundantly clear that the problem wasn't us – we were grinding away. It was the lists.
John taught us the "Really Check."
The "Really Check" is where you examine the to-do pile and think about the amount of effort it's going to take to accomplish the work. When we REALLY looked at the to-do list, we realized it would take like 13 hours to finish all the things on each of our lists for that day.
Why were we feeling bad about not finishing it in one workday?!?? We were setting impossible (or at least very unhealthy) standards for ourselves.
John suggested we implement a "really" check on a regular basis. After listing out the priorities for the day, we take a moment to say, "Really? Can I do all of this today? Are these the RIGHT things to be doing TODAY (or this week, or this month, etc)?"
And that little moment of reflection makes all the difference.
Because as humans we tend to be overly optimistic about what we can get done in a time window. Have you ever done a remodel project at home? Then you know this pain! It's not your fault, it's just human nature. Know that, and then plan for it.
We use really checks on a daily / weekly / monthly basis, but they are especially important on things like year-long goals.
Here's how this played out for me this year. I met with some HYP lawyer-friends to talk shop and set some long and short term goals back in November. It was epic goal-setting fun.
I came out of that meeting with a TON of goals. One of them is splitting my current podcast into two shows. I had brainstormed names for the new show and was ready to get recording. Woot!
Buuuuuut, then I sat down with my wing woman Meghan for my much needed Really Check.
Looking at the 2021 goals again, I realized a LOT of things needed to happen in Q1 and Q2. Was I REALLY going to be able to have the bandwidth to start the 2nd podcast in Q1? No. in Q2? No.
GET REAL, JESS!
Being honest with my capacity, given the other things that were actually more important, we pushed the "launch 2nd podcast" goal deadline to September 2021.
I AM going to do the 2nd podcast. But saying I'm going to do it in Q1 will just lead to me feeling like sh#t later when I have failed to magically do everything in Q1.
So, here's my challenge for you.
Do your own Really Check on your 2021 goals. Can you really accomplish them all this year? Is your timing realistic? If not, that's ok. Make those adjustments to the accomplishment schedule. Set yourself up to succeed. Because getting the realistic Q1 list DONE will feel awesome and propel you forward through the rest of the year.
If it's helpful, write me and tell me what's on your Q1 goals list, some external accountability can help!