Getting Control of Your Practice (and Your Life). Beat Burnout, Live Better.

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

Managing your law practice can be challenging. Marketing, time management, attracting clients, and all the things besides the cases that you need to do that aren’t billable. Welcome to this edition of the Unbillable Hour, the Law Practice Advisory Podcast. This is where you’ll get the information you need from expert guests and host Christopher Anderson here on Legal Talk Network.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Welcome to The Unbillable Hour. I am your host, Christopher Anderson. Our guest today is Wendy Meadows and today’s episode, well, it’s not about time management tactics and in fact not about the fallacy that you can actually manage time at all, but it’s about the reality that at scale, time problems at the end of the day are leadership problems. And if you’re a solo, they are problems with your leadership of yourself, perhaps. But growing firm owners don’t … We tend to lean on tools like a better calendar, like a better way of making sure that you will get the things done, lists and such. And these are all useful, but what we really need is better self-management, energy management, and decision clarity. And that’s what Wendy Meadows is here to talk to us about today. The conversation today will help the listener confront how you in the center of the triangle are driving burnout, bottlenecks, and misalignment for better or worse.

As you’ll remember in the triangle of what a law firm business owner must do, we have to acquire new clients all the time. We have to produce the results that we promise to those new clients and then achieve the business and professional results for the owner, for the business. But in the center of that triangle, and that’s what today’s episode’s going to be about, is you driving all of it.

And this probably touches a little bit on production, but burnout, energy mismanagement, quiet disengagement are all things that underline the outcomes that we’re looking to get from our businesses and from ourselves. And the firm, at the end of the day, the organization that you build will never be more focused or more sustainable or more humane than you are willing to be to yourself. So with that, Wendy Meadows is a seasoned family law attorney, so she knows where we’re all coming from. She’s a former litigator herself, certified life coach and mediator. She’s the author of Sparkle and Grit, which is a bestselling book that contains a framework for how high achieving women can break free from burnout and live on purpose. And for those dudes listening, you too. So no worries. Today, Wendy helps women who have checked all the boxes, but still feel stuck. She blends practical strategies with compassionate mindset work to help them reboot their habits, reignite their purpose, and build lives that actually fit.

And she works a lot with lawyers. So we’ll just bring Wendy into the show. Wendy, welcome. Thanks so much for being on The Unbillable Hour.

Wendy Meadows:

Thank you. I’m so excited to be here. I love the title of your show, and this just speaks to every part of my soul, everything you just mentioned in the intro. So when I say I’m excited to be here, I actually am really excited to be here.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Awesome. Well, yeah, we’re definitely excited to have you because … And it’s a great time of year for this, right? We’ve all made our resolutions and we’re trying to keep them and we may or may not have included some of these concepts when we considered what we wanted the year to be. Before we get started into the meat and potatoes of what we’ve got to talk about, I’m just curious myself, in your bio, you claim seasoned family law attorney and former litigator. How does someone who’s a seasoned family lawyer and former litigator get into helping people, primarily women for you, but to focus on avoiding burnout and overwhelm and getting away from feeling stuck? How did you get into the life coaching part of things?

Wendy Meadows:

So for me, I accidentally started coaching women about 10 years ago, kind of on a lark, but it was also at a time I knew litigation wasn’t for me long-term. And so now, while I still be in the courtroom, sometimes if I represent the child, I’ll be in the courtroom there. So I still touch the court system. I’m still in the court system in terms of litigating in that way. But something was growing inside me where I had a lot of unrest and unease in my body. And around that same time, I fell into a health and wellness business and I started a side hustle, if you will, where I started coaching women by the wee hours of the morning. And so the neat thing is all the people that gravitated towards me were what we called at the time, and we still call them lawyer moms.

So I had a whole bunch of lawyer moms I was working with across the country for about two years, and I loved that part of my life. That part of my life was fulfilling. It was joyful. It was goal setting in a way where we are creating positive goals and where I wanted women to be able to live their lives as opposed to my divorce world where more often than not, my clients were there. They did not want to be there. And they had a goal set, which I’m good at goal setting with somebody, but they had a set of goals that they never wanted a goal set in the first place. So the longer I started coaching women in this way, I got to thinking, I’m like, I bet I could do this in a different way and on my terms and on a way that I’m actually helping attorneys and helping attorneys run their practice as well.

And so that’s the very short story of how I got to where I was, or where I am now.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, no, but it makes a lot of sense. And so thanks for sharing that. I think it helps people to relate to where you’re coming from. So let’s dive into it. And one of the things that you talk about in the work that you do is managing yourself and not managing time. So let’s just start with that framing. Because lawyers, man, everybody’s obsessed with time management. Why do you like to reframe that away from time management to managing yourself?

Wendy Meadows:

Well, the one thing that you did not mention in the beginning about all the things that solos have to do, right? The one thing that you didn’t mention was also and be a human being and remember how to be a human being.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Oh no, we don’t do that anymore.

Wendy Meadows:

Right, right. And it’s so important. And trust me, I forget it too. We all forget it. We have to continue to be reminded of it. But once we take care of ourselves first, and it doesn’t take a lot of time, that’s the funny thing about the whole time management thing. If we spend five minutes on ourself every morning, that completely changes the trajectory of our day, our cases, our clients, our career, and just by looking at something that simple. And it’s yes, of course I use time management, hacks and techniques as well, just like I have different things that help me, but those things are worthless and I ignore them and I cheat on them if I don’t first take time for myself in the morning in a very particular way.

Christopher T. Anderson:

So let’s just give folks kind of something to hang onto. So if they’re not thinking about … Because we talk about this stuff and all people are thinking about, okay, block calendars and, okay, oh, need to take care of myself. Let me put that little block in there and that’ll be the self-care moment. When you’re talking about managing yourself, can you give me maybe an example of how you help people reframe something practical? How do they nail that down?

Wendy Meadows:

100%. So the most practical piece of advice I have for anybody in terms of managing burnout and managing yourself is every morning to look both backwards and forwards. So when you wake up in the morning and you get up and you can do this in a journal or you can just do this in your head if you don’t feel like scrambling around and getting something, but you think back to yesterday and you ask yourself, what made yesterday great? And the reason why we want to do that is several pieces, but one, we want to look at yesterday and see why it was great. So we have that moment of gratitude and we go through our lives so freaking fast. We move on and move on and we go and we do this andda. We rarely take a moment to look back and reflect and think, what did make yesterday great?

Was it a win with a client? Was it you had a great meeting? Was it you signed someone new or is it that you had an amazing moment with your family? And again, it’s like that human being aspect. And looking backwards, remembering yesterday, remembering why it was great, you will immediately feel this sense of stress relief in your body. And I can tell you this is true because it’s something that I forgot to be doing for the last couple months. I just forgot. And I did it this morning. I woke up this morning with anxiety. I woke up this morning with that feeling of like bricks on my chest, nothing felt right in my body. I’m working out and I tell people, usually my answer to this question is, “Well, you have to be working out. Make time for yourself, make time for yoga, make time to run.” That’s my usual answer to the question.

I think that is important, but I forgot the main part, which is at the first part, it’s mindset and looking backwards and forward. So looking backwards and having the gratitude immediately floods your body with relief and it closes the loop of yesterday. So we’re not still worrying about yesterday, thinking about yesterday because even it might not be in our head, it’s in our body. We have now closed that loop. We succeeded in yesterday and something great. Now we can set the day ahead and setting the day ahead is thinking like scanning through your day, thinking about where your intention is going to be required the most and who you want to be in that moment. So let’s say, for example, you have trial that day and you have cross … And even more particular than that, you have trial, you have the cross-examination of the opposing party and there is a specific piece of evidence you want to get in.

And that is the most important part of your day because you know if you get in that specific piece of evidence, you have helped win your case, you have done what your client wanted to do, and then you are the lawyer that you want to be. So you take a moment and you think to yourself, okay, that is the most important part of my day. Who do I need to be in that moment? Well, I need to be unwavering, I need to be concise and I need to be prepared perhaps. Perhaps those are the adjectives. And you take a moment and you walk yourself around like a stage rehearsal. You walk yourself around the stage rehearsal, seeing you in the moment, in the courtroom, seeing the other side objecting, seeing the judge annoyed with you because like, why do you want this evidence in Ms. Meadows?

But you see yourself getting it in and you see how you’re acting in that moment. And you’re not stressed, you’re not flustered, you’re not any of the things that you might be had you not taken time to prepare, but you give yourself particular adjectives that you will use in order to assign themself to you and then get done the thing you need to get done. Those two things, miraculous. If someone just does those two things every morning, they are off to the races.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And just so I’m clear on the looking forward one, that’s like you’re thinking about the critical moment of the day, would that be a fair … I don’t want it to say the most stressful because it might not be, right? But the critical moment of the day that you see, that you foresee coming up. Okay. I

Wendy Meadows:

Like that because I frame it usually as the big event and sometimes my clients are like, “Well, Wendy, I don’t have a big event.” But I like that reframe, the critical event, because sometimes it’s as simple as you being at your kid’s soccer game, right? Maybe that’s the critical event.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I was going to say, sometimes the critical event is how you show up when you get home.

Wendy Meadows:

Exactly.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Right?

Wendy Meadows:

Exactly.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Who do you show up as when you get home? If you don’t have another one, use that one.

Wendy Meadows:

Yeah. And it’s again, what kind of spouse do you want to be? What type of partner, what type of mom? And I used, again, and I used it this morning, okay, how am I plugging into my family today? Well, and I won’t see my kids for two days after today. So I’m like, I’m going to be the mom that I am taking care of them this morning. Even though they are independent, they’re 12 and 14, they can be independent. But if they ask me to do something this morning, I’m going to say yes, because I’m going to miss them like heck for the next two days and why not be the mom I want to be?

Christopher T. Anderson:

Outstanding. So in turning the page a little bit on that, you do encounter lawyers, since we talk about lawyers, we’ll talk about them who are already feeling like they come to you feeling burned out or overwhelmed. And sometimes I liked your explanation, maybe they’re not feeling or wouldn’t put the words burnt out or overwhelmed, but just like heavy, or you said a load of bricks on your chest, just put feeling heavy, not feeling joyful. How does this show up in their work and what are some of the things you start to talk to them about to both name it and then move on from that? Yeah.

Wendy Meadows:

How it shows up and how it shows up for lawyers, they just start yelling at everybody. They start yelling immediately opposing counsel, their clients, they come home, they’re yelling at their family, they’re in defense mode so hard and so fast, they don’t know how not to be in defense mode anymore or like cross-examination anymore.

And they start biting everybody’s heads off and nothing is right. So that’s an easy way you see it start to show up. The other way is they don’t want to do, they don’t do their work, they don’t want to do their work. They are not billing their billable hours, they’re not happening and they see a decrease in those. They are seeing their work pile up, pile up, pile up and they have this, even though they know they have work to do, even they know, oh my gosh, I might be about to commit malpractice. I just can’t. I just can’t. I am just going to spiral. I’m just going to sit … Because I hear all the dirty secrets, right? I hear attorneys are just sitting in their cars and just not going anywhere. I hear that they instead just grab their phone and they’re playing games or they’re watching a movie or they’re scrolling Instagram.

They’re not doing the work that needs to get done and they’re hurting their bottom line. So it’s yelling at people, hurting their bottom line. And I mean, the easy one is like their work quality just starts disintegrating. They start missing things that they never would’ve missed

Christopher T. Anderson:

Before. Yeah. If you don’t mind, let’s shift the perspective a second because I mean, that resonates so much with what I see. I also see it in myself, of course. I mean, I really do, but some of our listeners here are running firms with … We have some medium-sized law firm owners on here. And one of the things I often also see are the lawyers that are on my team that are failing and then you talk to them and you have a meeting and it’s just like they can’t get out. You talk to them and then the next day you’re like, “You totally didn’t return Bob Jones’ call.” I know. We just talked about this. How can we owners, we leaders in business, in our law firms, how can we help people who seem to just stay stuck even after we’ve called attention to that behavior?

Wendy Meadows:

That’s a hard one because the person has to want to help themselves first. And I can give probably 10 different ways that we could help this person. And then we also have to ask ourselves, well, are we becoming a crutch or an enabler or right too? But I think the first thing we give to this person is empathy and grace at first. Now, if this is a persistent problem, then that’s a whole nother conversation we need to have. But empathy and grace and the explanation perhaps like, “Hey, maybe what you’re feeling right now is burnout.” And no, I’ve been there too and know burnout is not a personal failure. I think 60% of the legal profession has admitted to feeling burnt out in the last year. I believe that’s what the last study you showed that I looked at. And again, it’s not a personal failure.

It’s just, what is the world? The World Health Organization has a definition for it. I can’t grab it right now on my head, but I don’t like it either because, oh, it’s workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. I don’t like that. I don’t like that either. I think that’s not good. But just know it’s a symptom. It’s a symptom of all the things going around. It has nothing to do with them as an individual. It has nothing to do with them as a person. We just need to figure out how to help them climb out of it.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Cool. But I think, I mean, what I heard from you is first, do you want to? Do you want to do something about this? And then maybe, I mean, quite honestly, and I appreciate you not saying it out loud, but introduce them to someone like you. Listen, we’re owners of our businesses. We’re leaders in our firms. We might be a partner, we might be a department manager, whatever, but we don’t have training in this. Maybe sometimes that help isn’t in the organization.

Wendy Meadows:

That’s true. And how I talk about it to different firm owners that I just talk with, think of me, if I came in as a coach, and thank you, that didn’t even cross my mind when you asked the questions. I’m thinking, how would I help this person being their boss? Is sometimes you do need that outside person that can be the benevolent aunt, right? Because sometimes you can’t hear anything from your parent, right? Your mom or dad tells you something one million times, you don’t listen, but your aunt or uncle or that cool neighbor down the street says the exact same thing, but then you listen to them, or it resonates more when you hear it from somebody else. Same thing as a coach. If a coach comes in and maybe has a different way or a different approach, it’s easier to hear it from somebody else rather than your boss.

Because your boss, you think that they’re yelling at you or you’re in trouble and you’re in defense mode and, oh gosh, I’m going to screw this up again, as opposed to someone else outsider looking in who they truly believe has their back and wants to make them the best attorney they can be.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. And yeah, they can be a little bit less guarded with. All right, we are going to take a moment to hear from our sponsors, then we’ll come back. When we come back, I want to shift our conversation a little bit to the notion and introduce a new concept to our listeners of chronotypes and energy. But so when we come back, let’s talk about that. We are talking with Wendy Meadows. We’ve been talking about managing yourself, not managing time, and we’ll be back right after these words. We are back with Wendy Meadows. She is an author of Sparkle and Grit, which is a framework that helps high achieving women break free from burnout and live on purpose. And we’ve just been talking about how burnout shows up and what we can start to do about it. And so when we came back, I said I wanted to ask you about this notion of chronotypes and introduce that concept to our listeners and working with natural rhythm.

So tell us a little bit about these energy patterns about chronotypes and how understanding those can help lawyers with their productivity and effectiveness and happiness. So I

Wendy Meadows:

Love the topic of chronotypes so much because once you hear it and it’s in your brain, you give yourself this huge sigh of relief like, “Oh, I don’t have to be this way I thought I had to be anymore.” Okay. So what is a chronotype? There’s four of them and they are DNA driven. So we did not choose them. They chose us or our parents chose them for us and they predict when and how we show up in the world in terms of a 24 hour clock. So there’s four types and we’ve probably all have heard, “Oh, the early bird gets the worm or oh, she’s an early bird or what’s the other?” I can’t think of the other one, but we’ve heard that like, “Oh, everyone should be that way. Everybody should be a morning person. Everybody should be a part of the 5:00 AM club.” And it’s not true.

There’s only one chronotype that it fits that and it’s the lion. And I think that’s 25% of the population. So the lion is your typical, they wake up early, getting up early is absolutely no problem for them. Roll out of bed, can’t wait to start the day, can’t wait. They’ll be rocking and rolling and off to the races without even coffee and good to go at 50. Again, 25% of the population. The next chronotype, as I’ll talk in terms of waking up, is kind of like the bear. The bear is more rambling, right? We’re rambling, kind of go with the flow. That’s 50% of the population. Most of the population is a bear. The bear wakes up probably 8:00 AM and is still, they’re kind of sleepy, kind of slow. Their brain’s really not in their head until like 10:00 AM and they can come home, have dinner, still hang out after dinner.

They’re not falling asleep on the couch. The lion’s falling asleep on the couch. The lion is done. The lion is done by 70, 80 PM. The bear can probably stay up till 10, 11, still be sort of productive-ish, but can still be social. Most of the population’s a bear. So most of the population is being told, “You are not waking up on time what’s wrong with you when their body doesn’t want to wake up anyway until 8:00, 9:00.” The other two, we’ve also heard of the night owl. So the night owl is what we call here the wolf, because they’re each an animal type. The night owl is the wolf. The wolves don’t wake up probably till 10:00, 11:00 AM naturally and their brain really comes online probably four or five, 6:00 PM. And then they have that other surge at night of creativity when everybody else is asleep, like 11:00 PM.

And then we have the dolphin. And

Christopher T. Anderson:

You gave percentages to the other ones. How many percentage of wolf? I’m kind

Wendy Meadows:

Of getting this wrong. So it’s 50% there and I’m going to attribute the next 50% equally amongst the other three. I can’t do that math right now. Okay. So it’s like rough estimations. But I will tell you there are more, there’s probably slightly more lions and less dolphins and less wolves if I had to do it in a

Christopher T. Anderson:

Chart

Wendy Meadows:

Mode. All right. So the dolphin is your anxious insomniac. And the reason why it’s called a dolphin, dolphins always sleep with half their brain still working. So half their brain is still looking for danger and the other half of their brain can actually fall asleep. So the dolphins are the worrywarts and they have a hard time falling asleep. They have a hard time waking up and they wake up, wake up, wake, wake up all night. Here’s what I tell people where they’re diving into their chronotypes. Number one, they might be the lion and that’s great, but you don’t have to be a lion anymore. You don’t have to. It’s okay. Let’s work with your chronotype not against it. If you’re a wolf and you want to do all your big case research and all your big drafting at 10 o’clock at night, but someone’s telling you no, oh, that’s not a good time.

It’s 10 o’clock at night. If that works for you, don’t fight it. If that works for you, go for it and do it and stop trying to fight the mold that was never built for you. The other important thing to remember is that there is no chronotype that is better than the other. So knowing that and knowing how to lean into your chronotype and when to be productive and when to work out, when to be productive, when to get the bulk of your work done and when to have a client meeting, the more you can dig into that, the better.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Interesting.That’s fascinating. And also giving yourself permission to lean into who you are. Now, sorry, wolves, you can’t just come in at one o’clock. I mean, the world isn’t going to change, or you could change a little, but knowing your energy I think is the key here. So don’t tackle big things in the morning, wolves, right? Figure out what to do in the mornings. I think I’m a lion based on your thing. I’ve learned in my life not to have caffeine before lunch because it’s already there. And so that’s that lion thing. But man, and it frustrates my family, like seven o’clock movie, done, gone. Bye-bye, dad. Do you know

Wendy Meadows:

How many movies I have not seen the ending to? So many. So probably 80% of the movies I’ve watched, so I’ve not actually seen the ending, but yes.

Christopher T. Anderson:

So yeah, I love tackling a big project early because by the end of the day, I can do ministerial stuff, but big thinking’s done by then. And so leaning into that, what concerns me, and I bet it leads into burnout or overwhelm or some of the negative things we were talking about is people who are one thing, but have been taught that thing is bad or wrong. So they’ve taught themselves to be a different chronotype or at least to think of themselves as a different chronotype. How do you help people discover their natural chronotype?

Wendy Meadows:

So that is through coaching. I would say that’s through coaching, that’s through me asking a boatload of questions, and that’s through me doing experiments with them in trial and error and seeing what works best for them.That’s through a lot of one-on-one company. There’s a great book too called The Power of Now. The Power of Now is where I really learned about chronotypes and dove into it. And the author gives us all these different calendars to try for ourselves, but that’s a lot of questions and answers and experimentation.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And can you, I mean, I guess because this is not just this podcast, I think this topic is very interesting for the individuals who could be helped with this, but also the leaders, right? So are you able to, or are you able to recommend anything to also help leaders start to identify this on their team and A, not try to force a wolf to be a lion or a bear to be a dolphin? Or how can these leaders kind of start to use this knowledge to help their team be more productive and more successful?

Wendy Meadows:

So one thing I would say is if the leader has the knowledge of this and they can look at all the chronotypes and put it together and see where the overlap is, where different chronotypes will do well at the same time, it might be like when we focus our firm meetings. So our firm meetings should probably be at times that people aren’t needing to be in super duper productive mode because then we’re taking them out of productive mode and what we need them to actually be billing the hours and getting the thing done, but maybe finding a time in the day that is great for everybody. So that could be, just thinking off the top of my head, let’s say rather than starting a firm meeting from my meeting at 9:00 AM, that’s going to piss off the lions. The lions are like, “I’m getting my work done.

Why are you doing this? ” And the wolves might still be barely waking up. The bears might be sort of fine with it.

The dolphins, it’s going to be a free for all with the dolphins, right? But maybe your firm meeting should be at 11 that way the lions have gotten their stuff done. The wolves haven’t quite gotten there yet. The bears are pretty easy going. The bears, they have this nice sustainable energy source and they’re going to be relatively okay. But if we’re really trying to balance the wolves and the dolphins, but then also, again, it’s exactly what you said, it’s taking off the guilt. So rather than somebody being chastised for working at something late at night and rather than a leader saying, “Well, I’m in the office at 6:00 AM. Why aren’t you like me? Why don’t you want to do your trial prep at this time? Why don’t you do it at this time?” It’s taking the guilt out of it. That’s the number one thing I think leaders can do.

Say, “Okay, this might be when you work the best. Cool, great. I don’t care. So long as it’s done by a certain time, I’m not going to micromanage you and tell you when it needs to be done.”

Christopher T. Anderson:

All right. So you know what we’re going to do because I don’t know if there are lions, bears or-

Wendy Meadows:

Tires. …

Christopher T. Anderson:

Wolves or tigers. Oh my, but the sponsors, they get one more chance to say their words and we’d love to hear from them because they make this show possible. So we’re going to go to the sponsors. Then when we come back, I want to talk to you about systems because I think it’s one of the things that you’ve said that really resonates with me, which is that a system won’t change you, right? Systems won’t save a business when the owners won’t save themselves. And so I just want to lean into that a little bit because I think a lot of people are looking for that magic bullet. I even see people saying, “Oh, let me, you’ve written all these SOPs, can you give them to me? ” And like their magic potion that can cure the ills. So we’re going to come back and talk about that right after this message.

We are back with Wendy Meadows. We’ve been talking to Wendy about how law firm leaders and attorneys in their firms can be more cognizant of their chronotype and their energy level and to lean into that to when they should be working when they shouldn’t. And we also talked a bit about overwhelm and burnout and some of the ways to both recognize it and work with it. Wanted to shift the conversation with you, Wendy, to talk about systems because one of the things, particularly the unbillable hour, we have a lot of folks coming on here, we talk about systems, a lot of lawyers whose businesses are growing know, and correctly, I’m not dismissing it, that systems are really important to successfully scale. I’m a business, so I don’t want the listeners to hear, “Oh no, now systems aren’t important.” They’re really important, but we also see owners and lawyers who are in leadership expecting the systems to fix what is requiring a personal shift first.

So where do you see that and how do you work with people on that?

Wendy Meadows:

Oh, goodness gracious. The systems I like the best and that I know I will implement as Wendy Meadows, who is a lawyer and a coach. So the ones I like the best are ones I can do with repetition and regularity. So what does that mean? So for me, it’s making sure, again, that I can do them every day. I looked at time blocking so many times. I have tried time blocking so many times. I freaking hate it. I don’t do it. It doesn’t. It makes me feel like I’m a caged person and suffocating and I can’t. And I know it works for some. It is not a system that works for me. So again, so I have to find 6SMs that are regular, that I do, repetitive, and that I don’t cheat on. So some systems that I know work well for me and I’ve seen work well for other attorneys lately, I don’t plan anything on Tuesdays unless it’s an absolute must.

So my systems are simple. So Tuesdays, I don’t take meetings, I don’t take mediations, and Tuesdays are my day to draft because I’m constantly in meeting mode, like meeting, meeting, meeting on a Zoom all freaking day long, pretty much every day. Tuesdays are my days to make sure I’m actually advancing the ball and all of those meetings I’ve done for the last week. So that is a system that works for me and it’s time blocking in a way in just as much as I’m not working at all, like I’m working on Tuesday, but I’m not meeting people on Tuesday.

The other piece to that, and do I cheat on that sometimes? Yes, of course, because we all cheat on everything, but it’s very different on how I cheat on it. I’m like, okay, if I have to cheat on it, Yes. I go backwards up or I go down to up. So if I have to cheat on it and I need to put someone on my calendar, I’ve instructed my assistant Nicole to put them at the very last part of my calendar. So if I have to be done with my day at 4:00 to pick up my kids, then I’ll schedule at 3:30, 3:00, 2:30, 2:00. So I’m still using the juicy part of the first part of my day for me.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Because you’re a lion.

Wendy Meadows:

Because I’m a lion. I am a lion. That’s system one. System two is, like I just mentioned, I have Nicole, my assistant. I don’t touch my … I rarely touch my calendar. Every time I do touch my calendar, I screw it up. So I am not involved in calendaring. I am not involved in my appointments. People try and get me. I say, Nicole is my person. Talk to her. Don’t even include me in on it. I just take it out of my head and I trust her. And she’s amazing. But I have an amazing assistant who does my calendaring for me. And I also use Calendly for some other things that people need to jump on my calendar. I have taken myself out of the equation. System two. System three, this is probably more for people who are solos or need to make sure they are on their finances.

And I use this in my personal life too before I was running a firm, but I have something called Finance Fridays. So again, so that’s repetitious. Repetitious, is that a word? It’s repetitive. It’s repetitive and regular. Every Friday, I’m touching my books. Every Friday, I am looking at my QuickBooks. I’m looking at my Clio payment. I’m looking at my iota. I’m looking at my escrow. I am reconciling everything. I do it first in my two businesses. I do it at my law firm. I’m doing my coaching business, and then I do it in my personal life. So every Friday, first thing when I wake up, that happens without fail. Same thing with billing. I’m in charge of billing if my solo firm. The first of every month, I’m running my bills and sending them out without fail. So again, repetitive, regular. I don’t cheat on them because they are simple and easy in my brain to do.

Oh, Friday, financial Friday, it’s what you do first. The first month. I love

Christopher T. Anderson:

It. Financial Friday.

Wendy Meadows:

You bill first, right? Tuesday’s that way. And then the systems I’m relying on now to organize myself in terms of being an attorney. I love Clio. I love Clio in terms of my time management. I love it and the way … So another system we have is every Monday, Nicole and I also do something we call run the list. And run the list means we go through every single case by case type. And Clio helps us do that by using the Clio Matter stages. If your clients are familiar with … Love that feature because I can look at each bucket of cases and say, okay, where are we? What do we need to do? Where do we need to advance the ball? Can we close this case or what needs to be done? And Nicole and I have this hour meeting every Monday. Run the list.

We have touched every file relatively easily. And we also take that time and we look at my calendar for the month ahead because inevitably, even though we’re both … She’s great at my calendar. I might still screw things up because we do these things. So we look at my calendar the month ahead to foresee what issues we might have or what we do need to book or, “Hey, I have this time block here. Can we put a mediation?” Or, “Hey, I know I say I normally don’t work on Tuesdays, but I’m going on vacation the previous Friday and Monday. I need to make money. Let’s make sure that let’s take Tuesday off of a not working day. Let’s actually schedule mediation so I can continue to earn income to then feed my family.” So those are the systems I use

Christopher T. Anderson:

That work. So some flexibility in the system’s also important, but keeping the underlying reason and rationale behind it. Exactly. It makes a lot of sense. We are coming up against the end of the show and there’s so much more I want to talk about. So I hope that we’ll figure out a time for you to come back to the unbillable hour and continue the conversation with folks because I think a lot of this information is going to be really helpful for our listeners. But so as we close up, let me just ask you this. If a lawyer who’s listening right now is feeling overwhelmed, disorganized, behind, or is recognizing some of the behavior you talked about, like knowing you got a lot to do, but you’re sitting doomscrolling TikTok or Facebook or Instagram or something, what is the first internal decision, not a task, but a decision that you’d recommend they make to start on the path to feeling better about things?

Wendy Meadows:

Well, I want them to wake up tomorrow feeling great. I want tomorrow to be a new good day for them. So the first thing I would say to them is that, okay, tonight when you go home, not turn on Netflix, do not pour a glass of wine, do not pour the old fashioned that you’ve been thinking about all day, like no alcohol, no sugar, get yourself into bed,

Go to bed, like hydrate and wake up tomorrow and what are the first three things you’re going to do? But they can’t start an amazing tomorrow unless they close out today good. And again, we haven’t really talked about this yet in the burnout piece, but the number, I don’t want to say the number one culprit, but the thing that I can tell you will not help is alcohol, sugar and binging, Netflix. And attorneys, we get into this cycle where we think we need to self-soothe with those things and instead it just makes the beast worse and worse and worse and worse. So that’s the first thing. I’m like, cut that out for tonight and then tomorrow wake up feeling great. And if someone’s like, Wendy, I’m not going to do that, because they might fight me, people fight me on this, it’s okay. And I need something right this minute.

I don’t want to wait till tomorrow. I’m like, okay, turn off your phone, chuck it across the room, chuck it, chuck it, make it go away, get out a piece of regular legal pad and write down, just write down everything in your head and write it and write and write until you are done. And then we start tomorrow.

Christopher T. Anderson:

That is so awesome because also that we’ve lost that with our … People can’t see because this is a podcast, but I’m moving my thumbs. But we write with our thumbs and our keyboards and that physical act of writing on paper, it’s an entirely different animal. So I love that you said write it out, put your phone away, put your laptop away. Because some people go, “Oh, phone’s away. Great. I’ll just do it on a laptop.” But no, put it all away. Get out a piece of paper. I think that’s wonderful advice. Wendy, thanks so much for being on.

Wendy Meadows:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Christopher T. Anderson:

You betcha. So listeners, if you’re the owner of, whether you’re a solo or you have a firm and you’re the owner in the center of the triangle, here’s the uncomfortable truth that we’ve been talking about today. You can’t outsystem exhaustion and you can’t delegate your clarity. Managing yourself, knowing about these chronotypes, knowing about your energy and managing yourself, it’s not a luxury. The stuff that Wendy’s talking about, it’s not a luxury. It’s the work for yourself that makes everything else in your firm and in your life and as a human, as Wendy reminded us, possible. And with that, we wrap up this edition of The Inbillable Hour. I thank you all for listening. Our guest today one more time has been Wendy Meadows. Wendy is an attorney, family lawyer. I’m a former litigator, certified life coach. She’s the author of Sparkle and Grit, a framework that helps high achieving women break free from burnout and live on purpose.

And we’ve been thrilled to have her on the show. Wendy, just real quick, if people want to reach out to you, how can they do that?

Wendy Meadows:

Easiest way, I say LinkedIn. LinkedIn, find me Wendy S.Matos, send me a message and I would love to connect with you.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Awesome. And of course, this is Christopher T. Anderson. I look forward to seeing you next month with another great guest as we learn more about topics that help us build a law firm business that works for you. And remember, you can also subscribe to all the editions of this podcast at legaltalknetwork.com or on iTunes. Thanks for joining us. We’ll speak again soon.

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