Make the Most of Your Day: How to Use Spare Time to Tackle Your Tasks + Goals

Do you find yourself wasting time between meetings? In this episode, Tyson shares a time management technique called "attacking the open space" that he learned from his friend Jason Selk & Tom Bartow. 

Lawyers are very busy people who usually never have any time. With juggling client meetings, research for cases and court prep, there are many tips to use to maximize the time you have.Tyson shares the technique “attacking the open space” which means using the leftover time you have in your calendar to complete a task on your to-do list. For example, if you have a 60 minute client call and you finish early with 15 minutes left to spare, use that time to tackle a quick task.

“Attacking that time” allows attorneys to get a lot of things done. The amount of time could vary from 2 minutes to 30 minutes, depending on how busy a schedule is. Tackle that time by responding to an email from a client, setting up a meeting to follow up with a partner or conducting some quick research for a case.

It is all about maximizing your productivity!

Take a listen.

Episode Highlights:

• 1:19 How to identify and utilize the open spaces in your calendar
• 2:25 The technique of attacking the open space in your calendar
• 4:13 Understanding how different salary ranges view time in varying units

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Transcripts: Make the Most of Your Day: How to Use Spare Time to Tackle Your Tasks + Goals

Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the Maximum lawyer podcast. Podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Metrics. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:00:24) - Hey, it's Tyson and I'm back for another Saturday episode, and today I'm really excited about this episode. I'm going to give you a technique that is going to change the way that you view your time and your calendar. It's something that my good friend Jason Silk taught me in one of our sessions, and I'm going to pass it on to you. I texted him to make sure he was cool with it, and he was. And so I'm going to pass this on to you. It's something that is just so wonderful. Before I get into that, though, if you want access to maximum lawyer minimum time, which is a course that Jim and I have put together, that it's the roadmap to success for your firm. If you want stage one of that course for free for doing nothing other than being an amazing listener, all you have to do is text the words stage 1 to 3 14501 9 to 260 and it's all yours, so text it if you want it.

Speaker 2 (00:01:19) - I hope hopefully you will get access to that because it is one of those things that can really change your career in your law practice. So check it out. All right. So let's get into this technique. So I'm assuming that most of you have felt that 24 hours is just not enough time in a day. And so you feel like you're just spinning your wheels, you're going from meeting to meeting and you're just not getting everything done. And I'll tell you, you're not alone. We're all that way. You're normal. And so most professionals, I'd say, feel themselves being stressed for time, right? Their time is stretched, so they find themselves stretched for time. And what you have to do is find and this is the magic part of this, you've got to find the open space in your calendars. So imagine where you're in a meeting or court appearance, you name it, and or you've got a task, you complete some big task and then you get done early. It happens all the time, right, where you've got a client meeting scheduled for 60 minutes on your calendar, but you get done 15 minutes early.

Speaker 2 (00:02:25) - So what do you do with that space? And this is where most people screw up. They waste that time, they waste that 15 minutes. And so instead of doing that, you're going to do a technique that Jason calls attacking the open space. For the longest time I was calling attacking the white space because I was looking at the white space on my calendar. But it's called attacking the open space. And what you do is when you have that time and we'll figure out what those times should be and how much and a second. But when you have that time, you say, okay, what can I get done that's on my list, on my to do list. Now I call it my attack list. I like that more than a to do list. But I do have a list of items that are on a list that if I've got time, I go to that list. Okay. And have your list. And it's you can have your list in any other form. You can have it on a can be born, whatever.

Speaker 2 (00:03:16) - But we talk about how to organize your list. And in another episode, I'm not going to talk about that today. Right now, what I want to talk about, though, is just find a place to put it and then take action. Right now, here's here's a really interesting part of this. So Jason has this he actually wrote this article about this. And by the way, if you're not a Jason fan, if you don't know about him, check him out. Go to Jason. Welcome. Get his book, Relentless Solution, Focus. He's amazing. I've been using him for several years now. He's my coach. I meet with him on a regular basis. He's he's great. But he wrote this article. I think it's in Forbes. But it was he listed out generally how people base different salaries view time. So if you're in the 50 to $100,000 range, you usually view think of time in 30 minute units, right? But when you're at the higher levels, like you're making 2 to $3 Million or more, you're usually thinking in about three minute units.

Speaker 2 (00:04:13) - And he's got it kind of varies between there, but those are the big ones like for example, between 350 and 500 think in ten minute units. But what you want to do is so if you have let's say you've got you get done with your meeting and you have a spare 2 to 3 minutes, you attack the time. So that's at the higher level. If you're at the lower level, right? So you've got that 50 to $100,000 range. So if you have an extra 30, you need an extra 30 minutes, right? So if I'm in a meeting, right, and you want to, I'm getting done. If I have five minutes, guess what? Boom, Take that list. Right? So what we've done is we've identified the time for me. He's he has me at three. And so at three minutes, if I have if I have at least three minutes. So it could be it could be three minutes and 30s boom, attack the list, attack the list, attack the list.

Speaker 2 (00:05:01) - And by doing that, that allows you to get so much more done. Now, are you going to get all your tasks done in those times? No, not necessarily. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to attack the list once the time is up. So I'll move on to the next item that's on my calendar. But in that middle time, boom, attack the list. It's a great way of being able to view your calendar and what to do with that extra time. Write down what your ideal time unit is and then put it on your computer, put it on your wall as a reminder to you that whenever your time is up on and you get done early with something, go back to your list. Go back to your attack list. All right. So when you find that that unexpected gap in your calendar, in your schedule, seize that moment, attack your list and ask yourself, what can I get done in the next X number of minutes? And doing this consistently will not only maximize your productivity, but it's also going to help you get closer to achieving your goals.

Speaker 2 (00:05:52) - And remember, consistent action is the blueprint that turns your goals into reality. So be consistent. Take action and listen to our next episode. It will be coming out in another week, so I'll see you next Saturday. If you're not yet subscribed to our episodes, make sure you do that as well. Until then, take care.

Speaker 1 (00:06:12) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. Stay in contact with your host and to access more content. Go to maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.