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Deep Dive
Some of the habits that make you most effective have nothing to do with legal work.
I started my first in-house job when my son was four months old and while I was still running a business with multiple brick-and-mortar locations. So I realized early on that if I was going to be valuable, I needed to do everything I could to make every hour count.
I assumed that meant work-focused behaviors like writing tighter emails, attending only those meetings that mattered most, and focusing on high-impact work.
That all helped. But over the years, I've collected a handful of habits that were less obvious.
Here are five that have made a difference.
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1. Where possible, put systems in place to deal with your personal admin.
You know what's a huge distraction in the middle of the workday? Remembering that camp signup is tomorrow and you have no plan, or that you have a doctor's appointment next week but you're not sure what day or time it is, or getting a text that your child has forgotten their racket for this afternoon's tennis lesson.
Are these things all part of being a human who works? Absolutely.
Are they important? Definitely.
Are they somewhat inevitable? Also yes.
And they are all things that have happened to me.
But each one costs more than the minute it takes to handle. It pulls you out of whatever you were reading, and getting back in takes longer than you'd expect. You can't eliminate these interruptions, but you can reduce both the disruption and the mental load.
Here are a few of the tactics that have worked for me at various points:
Shared Google calendar with me, my husband, and our son’s nanny, that has all the important dates, events, commitments, etc., on it so that she can help us carry some of the mental load (I don’t have to remember that tennis got moved to Tuesday one week because of the holiday—that went into the calendar as soon as we got the schedule, and now she knows).
A Claude scheduled task that scans my emails and personal calendar for the week on Sunday afternoon, and reminds me of key dates, deadlines, and differences from our regular schedule for the coming two weeks. I won’t be asking it for bullet points about what makes my son special, but I very much appreciate the reminder about the permission slip for his upcoming field trip.
Putting items we need consistently but have a longer lag time on scheduled order (our favorite protein bars, coffee, etc.) and buying non-food household items like paper towels and soap in bulk.
None of this is fancy. The point is to get the remembering out of your head, so your head is free for the work.
