Legal work requires deep thought and creativity, but when you have back-to-back client calls, non-stop meetings, and deliverables due in the morning, you don’t have the time (or the focus) you need.

A jam-packed calendar means you can’t process what you’ve learned in one meeting or prepare for the next, let alone think creatively about solving a client problem or improving your practice.

Welcome to Gimbal’s Tip of the Week, where you get practical, actionable advice you can use right away to start building a more productive and profitable legal practice.

One of the best approaches I've seen to the packed-calendar dilemma comes from Juliet Funt’s book, A Minute to Think. I can't recommend it enough. Her strategies have changed the way I use my calendar.

Here's one strategy you can implement right away. She calls it the “Wedge.” It’s a short break between tasks or meetings. It could be 5 minutes. It could be 2 minutes. It might even be 30 seconds. It just needs to be long enough to give you breathing space and stop you from mindlessly moving on to the next thing.

Juliet describes it this way:

The Wedge is a small portion of white space inserted between two activities. It’s used specifically to pry apart actions or events that without it would have been connected. The Wedge buys you a moment to think, plan, or compose yourself…and, when applied as a team, it dramatically lowers stress and improves communication and cohesion.

Between beginning work and checking email, we take a wedge of white space to plan our morning. Between receiving an unnecessary meeting invite and accepting it without thinking, we take a moment to realize we’re not needed and craft a cordial decline. Between receiving and responding to feedback that makes us feel defensive, we take a little pause to reconnect with our commitment to growth and then calmly ask for more detail.

—Juliet Funt (2021) A Minute to Think. Harper Business, Kindle Edition, pages 66-67.

Today’s tip is simple: Read A Minute to Think.

Your action item: There is a lot in the book, but I recommend you start with one thing: building wedges into the busiest parts of your day.

Try scheduling a 5-minute buffer between meetings. Many calendaring programs can be set to default to a meeting time of 45 minutes or 55 minutes, or configured to prevent meetings from being scheduled within 10 minutes of each other.

You may also want to try inserting a Wedge by taking a little strategic pause between activities. As Juliet describes explains, deciding what to work on next is a critical productivity choice. When you insert a Wedge after an activity, you can better assess which of the many things you need to do will yield the highest value, or prepare yourself mentally to deliver your best service.

So set aside a little time this weekend to read A Minute to Think (it’s an easy read) and try inserting Wedges into your day. You’ll be surprised what a little white space in your calendar will do for your productivity, and how it will help you deliver more value for yourself, your firm and your clients.

And that’s it. Join us next week for more on building a profitable and productive law practice.

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See you next week.