Parkinson’s law is the universally accepted phenomenon that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. It’s easy to become bogged down with too many deliverables and not enough time to deliver, and we all know how stressful it can be to run a practice when you’re under constant pressure.

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Welcome to Gimbal’s Tip of the Week, where you get practical, actionable advice you can use right away to start building a more productive and profitable legal practice.

Pressure is generally a function of the volume of your workload over the time you have available to do the work. We call this the Pressure Equation. 

When your workload goes up, so does the pressure. There are only 2 ways you can reduce the pressure:

• Reduce your workload
• Increase your time

Reducing the overall volume of work coming into your practice isn’t desirable, but even small changes that decrease your personal workload or increase the time you have available can decrease the pressure you feel.

So this week’s tip is to take tiny steps to reduce the pressure that comes with a heavy workload.

Here are your action items:

1. Look for the things you do every day that are taking longer than they should, or seem harder than necessary.
2. Pick one task and ask yourself:

Can I delegate that task?

Can I do it differently, so that it takes less time or effort?

3. Make a small change – either delegate a small task or change the way you do it – and enjoy the reduction in pressure.

You’ll be surprised at the cumulative effect of reducing multiple small sources of friction and frustration. Little by little, you’ll reduce the stress and pressure in a really big way.

Legal professionals who understand the pressure equation can deliver more value for themselves, for their firm and, most importantly, for their clients. Put simply, they’re much more likely to be recognized as true value-driven legal professionals.

You can ease some pressure right now by downloading our FREE guide with 8 actionable ways to reduce the friction that’s wasting time and money in your practice.

See you all next week.