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Tips to Control Overwhelm with Work

Being an in-house lawyer at a healthcare company is hard enough, let’s not make it even harder by failing to arrange our calendars for peak performance. Committing to daily time blocks dedicated to deep work, unexpected urgencies, and processing emails can help you go from feeling exhausted and overwhelmed to controlled and energized in less than a week when practiced consistently.

Quiet the noise.

Dedicating a time slot (ideally 90 minutes) and following through by working with no distractions on your most important complex problem-solving and creative work is essential to creating value in today’s world.

Expect the unexpected.

If emergencies hijack your schedule on a daily basis, why not set aside time to deal with them ahead of time? Otherwise, you’re simply compounding the stress for yourself and others by constantly having to miss or cancel meetings you committed to.

Email happens.

So, if you’re not setting aside a block of time to process your inbox, you’re likely multi-tasking during meetings and calls or doing it here and there in six-minute increments. Neither method allows you to show up at your best.

As Peter Drucker said (before email): “Small dribs and drabs of time will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours.”

Mary Kowenhoven, Carrie Fogliani and I discussed this and other habits of effectiveness this week with a group of top healthcare General Counsels who are committed to providing professional development for their teams at the International Performance Management Institute (IPMI) Healthcare Law & Compliance Institute at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills.