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Scott Benton: Hey, everyone. It’s Scott Benton here. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast. How are you? We are a podcast dedicated to law students and people who have recently passed the bar and probably looking for the first job as an attorney.
Sometimes you’ve worked out in the field for a couple years, 23 years, and you’re still trying to figure out how to practice as an Attorney and that’s what this podcast seeks to explore.
We’re providing that gap that is not taught in law schools or in bar prep courses, of course, no one’s really teaching you how to practice law, it’s something you tend to pick up once you actually start practicing law. But what if you could show up on your first day at your new job as an Attorney and you already know how to practice law and that’s what we are helping you achieve.
We’re making sure that law is also a fun practice and it can be if you’re utilizing the tools, a lot of times we talk about [00:01:00] something called the success cycle, a three part model to help you complete your work as an Attorney, which includes putting your, to do list together, something that we call G sheets, performing the legal tasks and then billing for your time and going back to step number one, those G sheets and putting together your to do list.
Scott Benton: So today’s question that we’re going to look at is how do I make sure that I’m reaching my goals as an Attorney? How do I make sure that I’m reaching my goals?
Now, let’s define what goals we’re talking about here. In fact, it can be any of them, it can be these more over arching sort of life goals that you want to reach. It can be maybe daily goals that you want to complete. So maybe you want to finish three status reports a day and you want 30 case related phone calls a day. Those are examples of daily goals that you might want to reach as an Attorney, or it could simply be knocking off items on your to do list [00:02:00] that you know that you have to get done for the day, whatever your goals are it really doesn’t matter.
Achieving goals whether they’re big, giant goals that you set that might take a long time to complete or smaller goals, like I’m going to write that particular status report and send this to my client. Any of those will apply in terms of getting them done and all of them are certainly important to get done.
So one thing we want to look at now, you may already know this, you probably do, you’ve probably heard of Newton’s first law of motion. It’s one of those laws that everybody knows, it kind of comes up all the time but let’s zero in on that for a minute. Newton’s first law of motion is that a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless it’s acted upon by an outside force.
So a body in motion will continue to be in motion unless something stops it. And by corollary, a body at rest will tend to stay at rest unless it’s acted upon by an outside [00:03:00] force. So you want to remember that as an Attorney because when it comes to reaching your goals, there’s a very important component to reaching your goals, which is you want to be in motion, you want to be acting.
And I’m sure you’re saying, well, of I want to be acting. What else would I be doing? Well, what else you would be doing is nothing. You would be sitting there thinking you want to make sure that you’re not getting trapped in that mind prison because for an Attorney that can be a very dangerous place for you to be.
If you find that you’ve been spending a little bit of time in that mind prison or you realize that you’re there, you want to do everything you can to be that outside force so that you are no longer a body in rest, but a body in motion. You want to push yourself into motion and that’s how you’re going to achieve your goals.
So make sure that you are in a state of perpetual motion that as you are working as an Attorney, you are constantly doing something towards the [00:04:00] achievement of those goals that you have set for yourself.
Now, the other idea that you want to make sure that you’re using and that it’s a tool in your toolbox that you’re using each and every day is you want to make sure that your goals are written down. This is very important, so you want to be in perpetual motion, completing goals, and you want to make sure your goals are in motion.
Now, most people, it turns out, don’t write goals down. They never write down their goal, even their big sort of life goals, like buy a new car or buy a house or run a marathon or climb a mountain or something like that.
Those sort of bigger goals as challenges, we all have those challenges. We want to to see what we are capable of. But most people really don’t write their goals down and so when they look at their lives, their achievements are kind of random. They’re a little bit scattered and all over the place and there doesn’t really seem to be any discernible pattern to them.
It’s almost as if they, [00:05:00] what their achievements that they’ve made have been a byproduct of just happenstance or luck or whatever but I challenge you to do this as an experiment and watch what happens. Because people that write goals down discover that there’s magic in simply having them written down.
Again, most people never write their goals down. I’d say 90% of people are higher, never write their goals down. So do yourself a favor and try this out as an experiment and see what happens. You’re going to want to take a piece of paper, you can even take a post it, you can do this with a post it. You don’t need like a lot of writing space.
And you’re simply going to write down 10 goals. And these can be big goals, they can be small goals, it doesn’t really matter. You want to write down 10 goals. You then want to carry those goals with you. Now, these can be life goals, they can be work goals, they can be any sorts of goals.
As long as they’re written down on a piece of paper, maybe number them 1 through 10, and carry that with you wherever you go. So, you might [00:06:00] carry it in your wallet, for instance. Now, here’s the thing about it, once you’ve written them down, you’ve done something that 90% of people just never do.
You’ve written down your goals, you can carry those with you. Now you have a choice, you can never look at those again or just kind of forget about them or you can look at them everyday, all day long if you want to, it doesn’t really matter.
What you’re going to notice, however, is that after a period of time, and sometimes it’s very quick. Sometimes you write down goals that you think are going to take you years or months to complete, but after a few weeks, you look at your goals you realize that you’ve completed a number of those goals. This happens with almost everybody that tries this exercise.
I’ve done it myself several times, I never think it’s going to work. I always think it’s just sort of hogwash and baloney and just nonsense. But when I write down my 10 goals and stick it in my wallet and carry it with me, you know, lo and behold, when I look at it later on, I have actually completed a number of goals [00:07:00] and that’s what’s going to happen to you as well. That’s what happens to everybody in fact, who tries this exercise out.
So write down your 10 goals, look at them a few weeks later, or whenever you get to it, and notice that you’ve completed a number of those goals. Let’s say you’ve completed five of them. Check those off your list, and then come up with five more goals.
Now you have ten more goals and try it again. See what happens in a few weeks, you’re going to notice that you’re accomplishing your goals faster than you ever thought you could.
So there’s really two components here in terms of making sure that you reach your goal. There’s perpetual motion, you want to stay in motion. You don’t want to get locked up in your mind. You don’t want to be in that mind prison of thought. I’m going to get this done, this is what I have to do.
No. You just need to take steps to complete your goals, and you’re going to see that you’re going to get through those goals very quickly, and you want to make sure they’re written down. So try that experiment, try the 10 goal experiment, see what happens. Prove it to yourself, don’t believe me, don’t listen to me, don’t listen to anything I have to say.
Try it for yourself [00:08:00] and see what happens. It’s going to be astonishing the results that you’re going to get and just recognize that as an Attorney in your job, it is your responsibility to keep yourself in perpetual motion and to make sure that your goals are written down. Now, those goals are going to translate into your to do list.
So the success cycle that we use the three part success cycle, which the first part is essentially your to do list. Those items that go on your to do list that you’re looking at are going to be the goals that you are putting yourself into a state of perpetual motion to complete. Okay?
So you want to make sure that to do list is always up to date. Now, having that to do list, there are a number of ways to make sure that you’re always looking at that.
So let’s go back to, maybe you want to complete three status reports and make 30 calls a day. And you want to make sure that you’re doing that each and every day.
Now those aren’t case specific goals and they’re not maybe goals that are necessarily on your to do list, although they certainly can be. [00:09:00] They might be on your to do list in much sort of a smaller format. So instead of saying, I want to complete three status reports, it might be the actual status reports that you that are on your to do list that you’re going to complete.
But one of the things that Attorneys will do, for instance, and something that you obviously can do, is you want to take a picture of those daily goals, those repetitive daily goals that you’re going to complete, three status reports, 30 calls, and you want to make that the background screen on your phone, because if you’re like me, you’re looking at your phone all day long, and every time you turn your phone on, you’re going to see those goals, three status reports, 30 phone calls, 30 case related phone calls, and whatever else you put on there.
Another thing that you can do that’s really helpful, we have an Attorney in our firm that I work at, we’re a probate law firm. Every night before he leaves, he takes out his, phone and he takes a picture of his to do list that he now has and takes home with him. And if he can knock through a few of those items, then when he goes to work the next day, he’s already ahead of the [00:10:00] game.
He’s already completed a number of those items. And so it just frees up more time for him to, I don’t know, for instance, get through his phone calls. By the way, if you’re getting through a number of phone calls, if you set your goal at say 30 phone calls a day, you are billing at two tenths of an hour 0.2 for each of those phone calls. That right there is six hours of billable time.
Now, you’re not always going to have to make 30 phone calls a day because you’re gonna put that ball into motion. Remember, perpetual motion, you’re gonna have generated a certain amount of perpetual motion and those calls, and those people and those conversations are gonna start coming back to you.
So after a while, making 30 calls is just going to become irrelevant because you have so much business now that’s coming your way that having made 30 phone calls a day is going to eventually result in several items on your to do list then at night you’ll take a picture of and carry with you [00:11:00] and try and knock a few of those out if you can and come in the next day already ahead of the game.
So that’s really how you get your goals completed. That’s how you reach your goals every single day. It’s a byproduct of putting yourself in a state of perpetual motion, staying out of the mind prison of thinking all the time and making sure you have your to do list. Now you can have your broad overreaching goals.
Try the experiment, write down your 10 goals and watch what happens. And you’re going to see the value of a to do list and why it’s so important that you’re updating it and maintaining it, that you take a picture of it, that you’re knocking stuff off that to do list, perpetual motion and to do list. That’s the entire secret to reaching your goals. So I hope that’s been helpful.
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