the mind bend

Months ago, I agreed to be one of multiple authors in a serial fiction story.  I had totally forgotten about this commitment until my editor emailed to ask if I was still interesting in participating.  You see, since quitting law, I've been a little MIA in more areas than just this blog.  But "getting back into it" with a non-law piece that would still give me some great exposure?  Sure!  Sounds fun.  So I agreed and promptly forgot about it again until two days before it was due.  Shoot.  I ended up really liking the result, and I enjoyed the process of writing on a story line that wouldn't otherwise have been my first choice more than I thought I would.  But I did it at the last minute.  And, therefore, I was even more proud of myself for the end result because I delivered under pressure.

They say that aspiring writers should over commit themselves to unreasonable deadlines ("they" of course being writers that actually made it) and become masters at churning out respectable work product in an ungodly short amount of time.  That's how you get "good."  Lawyers are masters at this concept, and my two years of practicing law prepared me very well for this.  It's the fire drill philosophy - nothing gets done until it's on fire. 

I am learning a lot in my new non-legal career.  Like, A LOT a lot.  About business.  About treating your employees well.  And about time management.  I will first note the irony in my blog topic, given that my blogging will result in a fire drill tomorrow morning (so maybe I haven't learned everything I'm about to claim I have).  Anyway, there are a whole bunch of theories and schools of thought about managing people and projects, and I've only begun to scratch the surface.  It's fascinating... way more fascinating than reading the same contact for the 218th time and finding a misplaced comma.

There's a quadrant for time management that breaks activities and tasks up into 4 categories based on urgency and importance.  Some of you might be familiar with this concept, created by Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  See the chart. 

Tim recently asked me to divide up, by percentage, how much time each day should be spent in each quadrant.  I think I went with the common answer and said something like Urgent/Important = 75%, Urgent/Not Important = 15%, and the other two?  Eh, 5% (Does that add up to 100%?).  Whatever, you get the point.  I gave the fire drill response: I do the shit that absolutely positively MUST get done by the end of the day, so get out of my way and let me get it done. Oh, and by the way, I put out a lot of fires, so I'm totally important and an incredibly valuable addition to the company, thank you very much.

Wrong answer.  Well, not "wrong" because I was honest... but it's not the answer we should be striving for.  The majority of our time should be spent in the important and not urgent quadrant.  As we re-train ourselves to spend time planning and relationship building, the number of "fire drills" that end up in the Important/Urgent quadrant significantly decreases.  And when there are fire drills, we handle them much more competently because we're not simply reacting.

Law doesn't teach you this.  Lawyers are trained to react, to only react and to react well.  My head hurts just trying to fathom the concept that one day (hopefully in the near future), I could wake up and check my iPhone without the feeling of dread that I've forgotten about something hugely important that is going to consume my entire day with panic-stricken damage control.

So with that, back to my project plan.  I'll let y'all know when you can check out piece three of five in the serial fiction story.  I know you're waiting with bated breath, and I appreciate that about you.