Time Management Strategies for Projects

At a previous company, we had “Deep Work Wednesdays.” The concept was simple: no internal meetings allowed on Wednesdays. If a meeting showed up on your calendar, it had to be with an external partner or client. I don’t know exactly who started it, but it was probably the engineers. I could see them getting frustrated with being pulled into endless calls that disrupted their flow. Eventually, they must’ve put their foot down. Their demand? At least one day to focus. No phone calls. Just let them get into the zone. Whoever went to leadership about it, the company made it a rule. Wednesdays were for deep, uninterrupted work. The results were incredible. • Deeper focus: Instead of being in reactive mode, you could catch up on admin work, clear your inbox, or tackle your to-do list without being interrupted. • Thoughtful communication: Emails were no longer one-liners dashed off between calls. You could take the time to craft well-considered responses. • More meaningful work product: By eliminating constant task-switching, people could dive into work that required creative or strategic thinking. Task-switching is brutal, especially for roles that demand flow states, like engineering or strategic planning. Without the mental whiplash of jumping between tasks, the quality of work improved. Who benefited the most? Everyone. But especially the builders. Engineers, product teams, and developers finally had the space to get real work done. Meanwhile, executives and sales teams focused outward, using Wednesdays for external-facing calls to build relationships, close deals, and drive business. Honestly, I wish we could make every day a “Deep Work” day. If it were up to me, I’d do all internal comms via email. It’s efficient, clear, and lets people stay in their flow. But I know it’s not always possible. Still, one day a week made a huge difference. Deep Work Wednesdays may not be the answer for every team, but protecting time for meaningful work is. If you’ve tried something similar, I’d love to hear how it’s worked for you in the comments.

Your meetings don't make you productive. Your back-to-back calls won't build great products. While scaling Caisy from 0 to enterprise clients, I discovered something powerful: Deep focus beats shallow productivity. Here are 6 traits that high-performing teams exhibit: 👁️ Protected focus time -> No meetings. No Slack. Just pure creation. 💪 Async-first culture -> Default to written updates over meetings. 💥 Clear priorities -> One main goal per week, not 10 scattered tasks. 🤲 Trust in outcomes -> Judge results, not hours worked. 🗣️ Strategic Silence -> Normalise quiet time for deep work. 🤝 Intentional collaboration -> Every meeting must have clear action items. Want to elevate your team's output? These 4 proven methods are your starting point: 1. Deep Work Blocks ↳ 90-minute focused sessions ↳ No distractions, no exceptions 2. Meeting Detox ↳ Cut meetings by 50% ↳ Replace with async updates 3. Energy Management ↳ Match complex tasks to peak hours ↳ Save admin work for low-energy times 4. Output Metrics ↳ Track impact, not activity ↳ Celebrate meaningful progress Your calendar isn't a magic wand. It won't make you productive if you're not intentional. Put these methods into action, and watch your team's creativity soar. Which method resonates most with you? Let me know in the comments ⬇️ #Productivity #Leadership #DeepWork

If you run a large corporate legal department or have a small legal team, you need to make sure you give your lawyers time for "Deep Work". Too often I see legal teams running from one request to another, but lots of legal work requires deep thought. Whether they need to mash out a complex partnership agreement, conduct nuanced regulatory analysis, or iron out a litigation strategy... these are things best done with lots of time and little distraction. Make sure your lawyers know they can carve out 2-4 hours per day for no meetings, heads down work. Waiting for people to tell me I'm wrong or impractical.

A brilliant young litigator confessed he was stuffing his own mail just to keep up. One paralegal. Zero support. An entire litigation department resting on his shoulders. I recognized that look in his eyes immediately. Here's what I wish someone had told me when I was in his position: The legal profession glorifies martyrdom. We celebrate those who: • Work the longest hours • Take on impossible caseloads  • Sacrifice everything for clients But this mindset is destroying talented attorneys. This young lawyer—sole litigator at his firm—was drowning. Every new case landed on his desk. No control over volume. A paralegal who created more work than they solved. Sound familiar? I shared four shifts that saved me: 1. Your "no" is a professional obligation You have an ethical duty to assess whether you can competently handle more cases. Sometimes "not right now" is the most professional answer. 2. Advocate for yourself like you would a client When I presented my burnout as a business problem—not a personal complaint—my firm finally listened. 3. Own your energy, not just your time Being present for one important task beats frantically juggling ten. Stop doing low-value work better handled by support staff. 4. Remember your ultimate power Sometimes walking away creates the leverage needed for change. The right to build your own practice is always available. The legal profession tries to convince you that suffering is required. It's not. What I've learned: Your greatest asset isn't your legal mind—it's your wellbeing. Protect it accordingly. #LegalCareer #LawyerLife #Boundaries #TheFreeLawyer

The Capacity Myth New GCs almost always reach the same conclusion after their first workload review: "We need more lawyers." They are usually wrong. The real problem isn't capacity. It's how that capacity is being used. When you actually track where your team's time goes, the picture is consistently sobering. A significant portion of "legal work" doesn't require legal qualification at all. This isn't poor time management. It's poor resource strategy. The most effective legal functions operate like emergency departments - they triage ruthlessly. Routine matters get handled through standardised processes. Complex issues get escalated to appropriate expertise. They've trained their organisations to distinguish between legal issues and operational issues that happen to involve documents. Most importantly, they've protected legal capacity for work that genuinely requires legal judgement. The result? Teams that handle more strategic work without increasing headcount. Before you ask for more lawyers, audit how your existing lawyers actually spend their time. The answer might surprise you. How much of your team's capacity is being consumed by work that doesn't require legal expertise?

🕒 Find Efficiency in Your Calendar: Be Ruthless with Meetings 🕒 In legal ops, we’re always hunting for efficiencies—tech, outsourcing, process improvements. But what about the simplest fix of all: all these bloody meetings? 🤯 Meetings, particularly recurring ones, can entrench inefficiency and compound ineffectiveness if left unchecked. 📆 Year-end is a perfect time to scrutinize your recurring calendar commitments and make meaningful changes. ✅ Start Here: 👉 Is It Still Needed? Does the meeting have a clear purpose? Can it be replaced with an email or ad-hoc chat? 👉 Reduce Frequency or Length: Does it need to happen weekly? Can 60 minutes become 30? ⏳ 👉 Consolidate Content: Could this meeting be folded into another with the same attendees? Could some information be shared in a more succinct or effective way to reduce meeting time? 👉 Interrogate Senior-Level All-Hands: If it's only ever the same 3 people speaking and the rest don’t engage, 🎤 approach the organizer to streamline attendees. Create protocols to involve others only as needed. 👉 Reschedule for Impact: Is the timing right? Many Monday meetings depend on weekly events that haven’t occurred yet—move them to later in the week. 🗓️ 👉 Streamline Team Attendance: Do multiple team members need to attend the same meeting? Could you send one person with clear guardrails for sharing back? 🗂️ And leaders, take a hard look at your team meetings. Are they achieving their purpose? Ensure they foster information sharing, team culture, and support—not just 5 mins for each person to reel off the work they've got on. 💬 #legal #law #legalops #legaltech

I end almost every workday the same way: entering billables and mapping out tomorrow. This system has evolved with me from paper to digital, but its core remains unchanged and more valuable than ever in today's hybrid work environment. The Process: ✅ Write down daily action items ☑️ Monitor time continuously throughout the day ✅ Document follow-up obligations ☑️ Prioritize with asterisks and due dates ✅ Plan ahead with dated task sheets Although this system started on paper (template pictured below), I've since migrated to GoodNotes. The digital version lets me highlight, copy/paste, and reorganize tasks instantly. Whether you prefer paper, digital, or other tools like Notion or ClickUp, the key is consistency. At day's end, I: ☑️ Review pending items ✅ Enter billable time ☑️ Create tomorrow's sheet Sometimes life happens – I'll work until an evening commitment without completing this routine or just need to rush out the door. When that occurs, it's the first thing I do the next morning. This flexibility is crucial for long-term habit sustainability. Why It Works: ✅ Reduces mental load ☑️ Ensures nothing falls through cracks ✅ Makes time entry smoother ☑️ Creates a sustainable workflow ✅ Adapts to both office and remote work In demanding environments like #biglaw, success hinges on robust systems for time management and task tracking. While this specific approach works for me, the crucial part is finding and committing to a system that works for you. Remember: Organization isn't about perfection – it's about creating space for more meaningful work and reducing cognitive load. Build the system, establish the habit, and watch your productivity transform. 🔥✌🏻❤️ #mindfullyemily #lawyerwellbeing #professionalwomen #emilylitigates

The first rule of building a legal practice is simple (but admittedly not easy to grapple with): no one is going to carve out time for you to do it other than yourself. Client and administrative work expands to fill every gap in your schedule. The minute a window opens, there's always another task waiting in the wings. If you wait to find time, you’ll be waiting forever. Charlie Munger figured this out early in his career. Long before Berkshire Hathaway, he was a lawyer billing hours like everyone else. What set him apart was how he treated himself as a client. He “sold” himself time each day to focus on long-term priorities. That’s the difference between finding time and making it. Making time requires intention and commitment. Every lawyer is capable of this. Lawyers are extremely productive. When a client calls with an urgent need, lawyers move mountains. They work late, drop everything, and make it happen. But when it comes to their own most important priorities—like business development—it’s easy to defer. Very easy, in fact. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because there’s no immediate consequence if you don’t act. No client gets upset. No deadline gets missed. Billable hours go up. And that’s the dilemma. The same habits that make you great at serving clients—responsiveness, reliability—can work against you when it comes to building a practice. You’re serving everyone else’s priorities, but not your own. It's important to think about it like this: If you’re willing to work through lunch for a client, you can block thirty minutes for yourself. Treat that time the same way you’d treat a meeting with your best client—scheduled, non-negotiable, and productive. Start small. Put one short block on your calendar. Use it to write content or reach out. Keep it sacred. That’s how you start building momentum. I know it sounds hard—and is hard—to block time and step away from the job that consumes you, which is solving problems for clients. But every lawyer who’s ever built a sustainable practice started from the same place—busy and stretched thin. The only difference is, at some point, they decided to protect a small piece of their day for their own priorities and refused to give it back. If you can sell a client an hour of your time, you can sell one to yourself.

3 steps to master productivity: There's a limit on what you can do in a single day. At least competently. Throughout my career as a lawyer I've noticed a clear correlation. The more I try to do in a shorter period of time, the more the quality of my work product suffers. Small mistakes emerge. The polish on my final product loses its shine and becomes smudged. Here's what to do instead: 1. Used focused blocks. Limit your work to 2 or 3 hour blocks on a single task. This practice stops your brain from wasting energy on constant task transitions. Each switch incurs a cognitive penalty, and you have to reboot your brain to download the context surrounding the task. Focused blocks avoid frequent mental transitions and promote deep work. They enhance your concentration, and improve the quality of your end work product. 2. Reduce daily priorities If you can, set a maximum of 3 priorities each day. This approach prevents you from overloading your schedule and stepping into counterproductive territory. Stop saying yes to every assignment. Don't be afraid to turn away potential clients. With fewer priorities, your focus sharpens, and you give each task the attention it deserves. 3. Segment your day Dedicate specific parts of your day to distinct activities, often called "chunking". In the context of productivity, "chunking" refers to the practice of breaking up the workday into distinct, manageable segments or chunks of time dedicated to specific tasks or types of work. For example, you can dedicate the first two hours of your workday solely to deep work, then chunking email responses and meetings into later, more fragmented parts of the day. Try just one of these strategies and see what kind of difference it makes with your productivity and quality of your work. Follow me, James Kamanski, for more insights on personal growth! ♻ if you found value 🙏

I recommend that solo and small firm lawyers track their time. Probably the biggest complaint I hear from lawyers running their own practices is that they don’t have enough time. Not enough time for admin tasks. Not enough time to train staff and associates. Not enough time to work ON rather than IN the practice. Not enough time for themselves, friends, and family. But WHY don’t they have enough time to do those things, if they feel they are important? The only way to know is to see how they are spending their time each day. Not for billing or profitability purposes. But to see what tasks they are handling that could be delegated, eliminated, or automated. (Did you know that in most jurisdictions there are only 3 things that a lawyer HAS to do that are considered the practice of law? Appearing in front of a court/tribunal, signing off on final documents, and giving legal advice.) You can guess as to what you spend your time on, but the best way that I’ve found to know what you’ve been doing is by tracking your time for a week or two. NOT by the 0.1. That is a waste of time and effort. But to the nearest 15 or 30 minutes. That is enough accuracy. I like to have lawyers put the tasks into a chart and then color-code each task by category. Client work is one color, admin is one color, business development is one color, personal is one color, etc. This lets you see exactly what kind of tasks you are doing, which is the first step towards reallocating your time around what is most important to you. Do you feel you have enough time for the things that are important? #LawPractice #NotEnoughTime #TimeTracking #DitchHourly #NML