Capacity vs. Flow

How do you perceive time?

Of course most of us look at time as a capacity problem. Fill the calendar, build a huge to-do list. Get it all done, tomorrow.

Then the day ends, we’re tired and exhausted and wonder what happened. We feel like we’re falling behind and wonder why we aren’t getting more done.

To make up for it, you decide to skip the morning breakfast or jog. You skip out on sleep.

This leads to burnout. It chronically leaves you dissatisfied with you work.

A better approach would be to look at time as a highway. You fill it with too many cars (tasks) at one time and you get a traffic jam. Pick up the next thing tomorrow, or next week instead of trying to do it simultaneously.

You have just the right amount of cars and you get flow on the roads. Flow is where the magic is. It’s when you feel a real sense of done. Flow is empowering.

How do you perceive time?

The Authentic Lawyer Manifesto

We are a different type of lawyer. We exist all over the world. We are at firms large and small. We are committed to building our practice on our terms.

We recognize that there are many parts of how things are done which are broken. But we are committed to changing it from the inside out.

Being authentic means bringing our full selves at work. It means giving ourselves the respect to ask ourselves what we want to create in our practice and in our lives.

It means embracing an abundance mindset. We hold in our minds a vision of what we want to create, and propel ourselves forward.

We believe that small droplets can carve mountains. We reject the dogma of the day that promises overnight success. We believe in creating small wins and successes everyday in the direction of our intentions.

But that is the joy of our work. We deal with others with honestly, fairly, and with integrity and ask others to do the same. We find opportunities for others and share generously. We are super-connectors.

We believe in sharing our stories. We believe in honing our edge and doing our best work.

We believe that (just like this manifesto), our career is a Work-in-Progress. But everyday, we get better incrementally and help others do the same.

What do you think belongs in this manifesto? Please share below in the comments!

The Start of Something New

Let’s face it. Building your book of business, and your career won’t happen overnight.

It’s through a constrant drip of ideas, actions, and inspiration that things start to change. At first, it’s barely perceptible. Then, it becomes a roar.

That’s what the Authentic Lawyer Project is all about. It’s an extension of Build Your Book, where we’ve been working with dozens of lawyers in small groups to create real meaningful transformations in their book of business, their practice, and their lives.

Now, we want to share our best ideas, voices, and inspiration with you. Little droplets of ideas, shared twice a week.

And we’re giving it away, for free. None of our posts will be under any copyright (unless noted). In fact, we’re writing with a Creative Commons BY 4.0 License, which means you’re free to re-use our emails/posts, even commercially.

We believe that generosity and abundance are the currency of the 21st century. We believe that authentic lawyers across the world lead with these traits. We’ve seen in our own life that when we give freely, we get back multi-fold in our contribution, in clients, opportunities, ideas, and happiness.

That’s why we are choosing to give away our best ideas to you for free. You can read more about our license here.

Starting Thursday, we will start sending these ideas your way.

The emails will be as short as this. Our first post: a work-in-progress manifesto for what we stand for as authentic lawyers.

What would you like to hear us write about? Feel free to click below and leave comments on our site.