Small Law Firms

How To Schedule Your Day

By structuring your workday in a way that allows you to focus on critical tasks for an extended period, you get more done.

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Raise your hand if you’ve read books like “The Miracle Morning,” where business gurus dispense productivity tips from on high. They recommend waking up at 5 a.m. to a quiet home with chanting, exercise, and complete control over your day. The gurus suggest a typical schedule should look like this:

  • Wake up at 5 a.m.
  • Silence (10 minutes)
  • Affirmations (5 minutes)
  • Visualizations (5 minutes)
  • Exercise (30 minutes)
  • Read (10 minutes)
  • Scribe (15 minutes)

What in the Goop indulgence is this?! That’s at least 1 hour and 15 minutes of focused time for yourself. There’s nothing wrong with this level of self-care, but, honestly, I would rather sleep undisturbed than wake up when raccoons, skunks, and possums roam around (hey, I live in Arkansas!).

I love these books in theory, but where is the practical application for the rest of us who don’t have the daily luxury of no interruptions at 5 a.m.? Full Disclosure: when I read “The Miracle Morning” — or was it “The 5 AM Club?” — I had a 4-month-old, three other kids under 6 years, and was running a law firm — in a global pandemic. It was an other-worldly sleep-deprived existence.

My actual schedule looked like this:

  • Woken up by one of three kids (2 a.m. and 4 a.m.)
  • Scream-crying (on and off for 45 minutes)
  • Accidents (blowout variety requiring a bath, 20 minutes)
  • Vocalizations aka loud babbles (15 minutes)
  • Eating (20 minutes)
  • Refusing to be left alone or put down (24/7, preferably)
  • Sheer joy when other siblings get up early too! (rinse and repeat)

That is endless torture and effort before meetings, substantive work, and existing. Did I mention this was 2020? Thankfully, with hiring a sleep consultant, I am no longer experiencing this type of torture.

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I love productivity self-help books in theory. (I do!) Still, I struggled with finding practical application for the rest of us who don’t have the daily luxury of an early, uninterrupted morning or a wife to take care of the kids as we head off to Orangetheory to get in an early workout and silent journaling.

During this period, I crowdsourced opinions on making time for myself while getting it all done. A version of this post is on my Instagram. For me, the best solution was blocking my schedule. No, not like the middle school block schedule. It is similar though. Block scheduling is the practice of assigning large chunks of time to specific tasks. It’s the opposite of multitasking, which studies show is not an effective way of working. By structuring your workday in a way that allows you to focus on critical tasks for an extended period, you get more done. Additionally, you can avoid the back and forth of checking email and switching from task to task, thus breaking your concentration.

My schedule today looks something like this:

  • Monday — Off
  • Tuesday — Staff meetings and client consultations
  • Wednesday — Mastermind call and substantive legal work
  • Thursday — Client consultations and substantive legal work
  • Friday — CEO day to work on the business, so no client meetings

Then within the day, I further break down the tasks into blocks of time for personal and professional activities on my calendar. Here is an example of a Friday (CEO day) in my life:

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  • 9 – 9:30 a.m.: Get ready (kids are at preschool and camp, thanks to my husband!)
  • 9:30 – 10 a.m..: Breakfast
  • 10 – 11 a.m.: Coffee During COVID (2 networking calls with financial planners)
  • 11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.: Podcast interview about estate planning
  • 12:15 – 1:15 p.m.: Break for lunch and a walk outside
  • 1:15 – 3:15 p.m.: Batch record eight five-minute videos for YouTube content
  • 3:15 – 3:30 p.m.: Break
  • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m.: Check and respond to emails
  • 4:30 p.m.: End of workday
  • 5:00 p.m.: Kickboxing
  • 5:45 p.m.: Pick up kids from preschool (a year at home during the pandemic was enough!)

My schedule is an example of what you can do to plan each week. I do my best to batch activities that go together. On this sample Friday, I spoke to people in the morning (networking calls and a podcast interview) and then worked on advertising content in the afternoon. I didn’t open up any emails until the end of my day, allowing me to delay sending nonurgent replies for the next week.

I go further by color coding each activity, so at a glance, I know what I am doing that day. For example:

  • Email: orange
  • Client consultation: pink
  • Health appointment: green
  • Mastermind meetings: light blue
  • Networking call: red
  • Staff related meetings: purple
  • Speaking: yellow

When you decide on a system that could work for you — one that you will follow, it’s worth giving it a try. How do you organize your day?

Do you agree or disagree? I’d love to hear your constructive comments or questions at iffywrites@ibekwelaw.com. I am always looking for topic suggestions! Did I mention that I signed with a literary agent for my upcoming estate planning book? You can read all about it here.

Iffy Ibekwe is the principal attorney and founder of Ibekwe Law, PLLC. She is an estate planning attorney evangelist for intergenerational wealth transfer with effective wills and trusts. Iffy is writing her first book on culturally competent estate planning, available in 2022 (prayers up!). She graduated from The University of Texas School of Law and has practiced law for over 14 years. Iffy can be reached by email at iffywrites@ibekwelaw.com, on her website, and on Instagram @thejustincaselawyer.

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