The Productive Lawyer Redux

“Life is too complicated not to be orderly.” – Martha Stewart

I’ve written about productivity a few times, like here. It’s an eternal struggle for many of us lawyers (I know it is for me). Perhaps the worst of it is that after you’ve had a very un-productive day, you blame yourself. You feel like you could have gotten more done if you just powered through those weak moments. Those times you let yourself click on that twitter feed. Or simply gave up after hours in front of a screen. 

The more I’ve worked on this problem with others–the more I’m convinced that forcing yourself to power through isn’t the answer. The whole concept is wrong. All the science agrees that your will power isn’t all that, well, powerful. Instead of beating yourself up over small distractions, you’re much better off taking the time to work on your overall process for finishing tasks. In other words: work on your system; don’t punish yourself for the one-off times you aren’t perfect. 

The good news is that the interwebs is full of good advice for honing your work system. And with the growing number of apps and platforms built to help you on this very point, it’s even easier.

So I thought I’d share a handful of tools that I’ve come across recently. But unlike my prior posts, I’m going to share some unusual ones. One of the best things about technology is its ability to help you change perspective or try something new. And I think these are examples of that principle. 

Not only might you try them, but share them with folks who seem to struggle in the productivity department. I use tools like these with my students all the time. 

Focus tools

The first could be the most fun productivity app out there. It’s called Forest. It’s similar to the Pomodoro Technique, which has you work for short bits of time without distraction, then take a break. What makes Forest amazing is that it creates a beautiful, cooperative game out of it. You start the timer in the app, work for a set period, and when you’re done you get rewards–usually in the form of seeds to plant in your virtual garden. As you plant more trees and earn more rewards, you get to watch your garden grow. You unlock new fauna. And perhaps coolest of all: You can create gardens cooperatively. It’s a lot of fun and, weirdly enough, works. It takes our human proclivity for distracting ourselves with silly games and turns it into a productivity weapon. 

Another great app in this group is Freedom. It’s an oldie but goodie. Freedom will automatically cut off your digital distractions–even your internet altogether–to help you focus more on discrete tasks. 

Habit-building tools 

Habitify is an example of a class of tools that help you build better habits and keep track of them. You can monitor your progress over time and get a big-picture view of the habits you’re trying to adopt. 

But if you really want to have fun with habits, try Habitica. Habitica, like Forest, turns habit-building into a game. But Habitica takes it up several notches, creating a deep and interactive experience out of your habits, including the ability to level up characters, purchase game items, and go on quests. And the social accountability works wonders. Pretty darn cool.

Ok, if you are really serious about building better productivity habits, check out Stickk. This app has you wager money on whether you will hit your goals or stick to good habits. If you don’t follow through, you can set Stickk to donate your money to a charity–or an anticharity (a charity supporting a cause you disagree with). If money isn’t a good motivator, what is? 

Juggling all your tasks in the air 

I love a couple of scheduling apps right now. 

Todoist remains the number one rated task app out there. And for good reason. I use it constantly. It organizes all your tasks, both short term and long term. It’s easy to integrate with others in your life, both personal and professional. And it offers tons of tagging and other intuitive management tools to make task management and scheduling a  breeze. 

X.ai is an auto-scheduler that will, literally, give you a robot to handle all your scheduling. The program listens in to your emails and will automatically find the right time for a meeting (including across multiple users) and proceed to schedule it for all involved. Pretty amazing if you ask me. 

Organizing information 

Notion has blown my mind lately. It can do so much to organize, schedule, and simply manage your information–I may be leaving my next-favorite app (Airtable) behind. If you are an Evernote fan, I think Notion leaves it in the dust. There is so much I could cover here. Like how Notion lets you instantly drag and drop tons of pre-made note and organizational templates–from calendars, embedded PDFs, and note boxes to goal charts and interactive trackers. Or like how Notion gives you tagging and cooperative abilities to organize information with others. I think you just have to try it out (or watch this longer video introducing some of the features). 

Some fun bonus tools

To round this list out, a couple of fun but useful apps. 

MyNoise. A free app (also browser-based) that let’s you play all sorts of background noise. Not only is the selection of background noise varied and high quality, but you can control the individual tracks. So if you’re like me and that seagull annoys you in the ocean track–you can quiet him. 

1Password. In my experience, the best password management app out there. Keeping track of all my passwords is a nightmare. 1Password automatically generates, stores, and plugs in every password in your life. All you have to do is remember a single master key. If you haven’t invested in a tool like this yet, it’s time. 

Ok, that’s probably more than enough apps for one day. But my list of favorites still has a lot left on it (and let’s be honest, it grows all the time). So future posts on this topic are coming! 

Joe Regalia is a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law and regularly leads workshops on legal writing and technology. The views he expresses here are solely his own and not intended to be legal advice. Check out his other articles and writing tips here.