Nanci Crotti, The Daily Record Newswire
Is your work never done? Are your clients feeling neglected? A few lessons in time management can reduce that frazzled feeling.
That’s what attorney Sarah Sicheneder has been learning from business coach Julie Keyes. An associate at Johnson & Turner Law, Sicheneder divides her time between municipal prosecution and estate planning practices.
She spends one to four days a week in court and shuttles among the firm’s three offices in Forest Lake, Woodbury and Lake Elmo to meet with clients. Sicheneder said she was trying to “put out every fire before it spread,” which meant leaving one task unfinished before starting on another.
“I was devoting a whole weekend day to catching up and making sure I was on top of things,” she said. “It was overwhelming, just not being able to identify what I could do differently and just sort of resigned to the fact that this is the way it is.”
Her firm hired Keyes, who operates Minneapolis-based KeyeStrategies LLC under the AdviCoach franchise system, to help everyone at the firm with time management. Since December, Keyes has been working one-on-one with the partners and associates and in groups with the paralegal staff, according to the firm’s managing partner, Erin Turner.
“We came to a recognition that lawyers traditionally have very little professional development offered to them at law firms, so we tried to bridge that gap,” Turner said. “It’s all about figuring out how to get all these things done within the time you have, while also not having it run your life.”
For Sicheneder, that meant abandoning multitasking, committing to answering email the day she receives it and returning phone calls within 24 hours. She also opted to turn off those distracting email alerts that pop up at the bottom of her computer screen.
“I think one of the best things with Julie is that she hasn’t ever suggested sacrificing one practice area for the other,” Sicheneder said. “She said, ‘You want to do these two practice areas, you want to do them well, and let’s work on ways to make that happen.’ I love both practice areas, so giving one up would be really hard for me.”
Keyes brings her experience as the former owner of two title companies, a property-management company and a mortgage company to her job as a business coach.
“There’s no way I could do what I do without that background and experience,” she said.
Keyes advised Sicheneder to keep a notepad next to her computer to write down everything she does and how much time she spends on each task.
“It can help them to see what their patterns are,” Keyes said. “It can also tell them what time of day is when they accomplish the most. It may tell them, ‘Maybe I’m working too much and I need to get up and away from my computer.’ Your brain really does need a break.”
Identifying the times of highest revenue production — billable hours in legal parlance — can help a business owner decide when to do tasks that do not immediately generate revenue, such as business development and networking.
Keeping those notes also shows how much time is spent multitasking — a waste of time, in Keyes’ opinion. Every time someone switches to a different task, it takes five to seven minutes to mentally switch back, she explained. Research by the American Psychological Association bears this out.
Keyes advises some business owners to check and answer email at specified times twice a day and to add those times to their email signatures so clients know when to expect responses. She also counsels owners to delegate tasks that don’t generate revenue, such as bookkeeping.
“How much time are they spending on doing books when they could pay somebody $20 to $25 an hour and they can go out and make $200 an hour?” Keyes said.
People in the construction industry are constantly running and multitasking, Keyes observed. She recommended composing a task list of seven to 10 items in the morning and sticking to that list.
“That’s what you focus on,” Keyes said. “The rest can go to tomorrow.”
Here are some other time-management ideas Keyes offered:
• Limit phone calls to one or two minutes. Don’t use business calls to ask about a client’s family or pets.
• Set up a separate email address for the business, starting with “info@” rather than directing emails to individuals, especially the owners.
• Schedule time for business development.
• Limit time spent on research and on social media.
• Devise a social media plan.
Paying attention to time management can help all kinds of businesses, according to Keyes. She believes real estate agents in particular spend too much time on self-promotion through social media.
“I think that people get turned off by it, and pretty soon nobody’s paying any attention to what you’re saying,” she said.
Taking the time for time management has paid off for Sicheneder and the rest of the attorneys and support staff at Johnson & Turner.
Sicheneder said her clients have noticed that she is more available to them. She still works some Sundays to prepare for trials, but not all day. Attorneys and paralegals at the firm are working more efficiently now and internal communications have improved, according to Turner.
“It’s been very, very positive,” she said.
