Speaker 1: Welcome, Law Firm Owners, to another episode of the Wildly Successful Law Firm Podcast. We are continuing the productivity time management season with today's episode, which is all about a task manager. I want to talk to you about how important a task manager is for your law firm. I want to talk to you about all of the things that you need to know about choosing a task manager. Everything when it comes to task managers for your law firm, let's get into it now. Just a couple of precursor notes to make here. Your task manager is more than a to-do list. A to-do list is a piece of paper that says, call Sam, confirm deposition, return call to opposing counsel on the Smith matter. That's a to-do list. A task manager is way more than that, and we're going to talk exactly about what a task manager is. I'm going to share with you all the tips and all the details, so here we go. A task manager includes things that are programs, apps, software that you have definitely heard of. Things like Asana, Monday, Airtable, Notion, Trello, all of these things are task managers. They are apps that can be used as task managers. There are just a couple of examples of some very popular task managers. Number two, if you listen to the first episode from this season, I said to you that your email inbox is not your task manager. Email is not your task manager. Number three, calendar, your calendar that has your appointments, your court dates, all of the things that you need to do in your firm, that is not a task manager. Is a fucking calendar. Let's keep all of these things very separate. Number four, paper and pen is not a task manager. It might be how your brain thinks, but it is not the kind of task manager that I want you to use for your firm. Paper and pen, not a task manager. Next point, I've seen a lot of clients doing this where I'll say, okay, so where is your task manager? And they will pull up a Google doc. My heart breaks just a little bit. Every time I see this, Google is not your task manager. Okay. Next point, your practice management software is not your task manager. Clio, my case, all of them, they're trash. Here's the thing with legal practice management systems. They were built to do one thing, which was help you run your firm. Then over time, attorneys started saying, Hey, can you add on invoicing? Hey, can you add on subscription billing? Hey, can you add on email marketing? Hey, can you add on text messaging? So essentially what's happened is they've duct taped these solutions to a legal practice management software and it doesn't do any of those things very well, right? That is, as someone who uses technology and consults people on technology, I can tell you for a hundred percent certainty that it does not do a good job with any of those items. Okay. So your practice management software is not, not your task manager. Okay. Next point here, when you're choosing your task manager, whether it be Asana, Trello, QuickUp, Monday, whatever you're using, make sure that it's not too big for you. Too often, I see people using task managers that are so big for them. They signed up for it and now they're like, I don't know how to use this. And they still keep using pen and paper. They have no idea what they got themselves into. And it's almost like they're too far along to be able to pull back. I will tell you personally that when I was looking at my task managers, I looked very seriously at ClickUp. It's a very popular one out there. A lot of people like it. It does a lot. I see a lot of people using it. I have to be honest, it's too big for me. My brain does not think in the way that ClickUp is set up. And there's a lot of ClickUp templates out there. There are a lot of ClickUp specialists. My VA loves ClickUp. But for me, when she showed me her ClickUp set up and she was like, here's how it is and here's all the things you can do and da-da-da-da-da, I was like, yeah, that's really cool. But that's not right for me. So as you are going down the road of choosing your task manager, please make sure it's not too big for you. Please make sure that you're not going to spend, you're going to feel so overwhelmed going into it that you're not going to ever use it, right? You want to use something that's very clean, very simple and easy to use. I am going to share a video of how I use Notion as my task manager. Of course I am. And there will be a video that will be dedicated exclusively to that. And you'll see a link for that somewhere around here. And you'll be able to watch that video to really understand how I use a task manager and what really makes my task manager special. Okay, so let's talk about the next thing when it comes to task managers. So your task manager should be pretty. I know that sounds really superficial and you're like, well, Nermeen, I don't care. I just need it to function. But here's the thing, pretty for my brain is going to be prettier than what your brain might think versus what Rebecca's brain might think versus what James's brain might think, right? So what you want to keep in mind is that all of us view things very differently. Colors, how things are organized, is it organized by due date or by client? Is it organized by invoice date or the date that the work was done? How is information processed? And it's going to be different for everyone's brain because not all our brains think the same. So what I want you to do is I really want you to spend some time thinking about the task manager that you are choosing and make sure that visually the colors work for you. If it is too much of a visual assault, you will not use it. I will tell you that I love Airtable. I'm obsessed with it, but I do not like it for my task manager. Using Airtable as my task manager feels too big. It feels like my brain doesn't think in that format and the colors don't feel right. And I don't ever want to log in to Airtable to look at my day-to-day tasks. For me, it's so much easier to just keep my Notion task manager up and just check things off very quickly, very easily. So keep in mind what works for you, what works for your brain. Everyone's brain is going to be different. If someone else suggests, go get on Trello and you get on it and you're like, I do not like this. Then guess what? Trello is not for you. Don't force yourself to love it. Go check out Asana. Go check out Notion. Go check out Airtable. I might have said I don't like it, but you might love it, right? So just keep in mind that it is going to be super hyper personalized to you and make sure that it works for you. Okay, this is hyper important if you have a team. Your task manager should communicate with your team. Okay, what does that mean? All right, so your task manager should have the ability to tag someone on a task. Okay, this is because we're not living in like 2017 and forwarding emails to our team. No, no, no. Instead, what we are doing is we are using the task manager to share that information with our team. So let's say you open up a document and says, ask for interrogatories for so-and-so client. And then you're reviewing it and you're like, oh, you know what? I'm still missing this one document. I need to go and get it at whatever your paralegal's name is. Let's say it's John at John. Please go back and ask client for these documents. Then John gets notified. Oh, I need to get these documents on the Smith case. And here's exactly what's needed. And then when John does it, he can check off that he's done it. So you don't have to email John at 9 p.m. and say, John, did that get done? No, you can just go into your task manager and see if the thing got done or not. It really is supremely effective for teams. And again, Google Docs is not enough, right? You can't use a Google Doc to manage your team's tasks. It's just not built that way. Okay, next thing about task managers is that every single task manager offers a free trial period. So what I want you to do is I literally want you to Google search best task manager 2022. I want you to download four of them, five of them. Don't go more than five. That's really the max here because then you're going to be in analysis paralysis and you're never going to choose one, right? So choose one. And then once you choose it, what I want you to do is I want you to go ahead and actually use it. Watch this set of videos. Watch the how-to videos. What's really interesting is just listen to how your body responds to it. If you're in that task manager for two seconds and you're like, that is not the task manager for you then. Let it go and move on, okay? You don't have to force yourself to use it. There's three others. They all have templates. Listen, when I first started using my task manager, I didn't even know what I was getting myself into. I just knew I really liked the way that Notion looked. I didn't know all the capabilities that it had. But as I started using it, I started to see that there were so many templates out there. So if all you did was a Google search for Notion task manager template, you would see so many come up. If you did the same for Asana task manager template, you would see so many come up. Yes, sometimes people charge for them and they should. They're good templates. They help keep you productive. So keep in mind that you want to try out a bunch, listen to yourself. If you are in it for less than two minutes, then that means it's not the one for you. But if you find yourself going back to one, if you find yourself getting pulled in by one, then you should probably choose that one. And keep in mind that if all you do is a Google search for that platform plus a template, you will see a whole lot of templates out there for that platform. And then you can choose the one that's right for you. I like templates. I like using them for a lot of these platforms because it's made by an expert. That person is an expert in that particular software and they know it better than I do. And there are things that that software does that I don't even know that it does, that this person is going to show me that it does when I purchase their templates. So really, honestly, go check them out. Play with them. Have fun with them. Make sure you set aside time to play with them, but also give yourself a deadline. Three days, four days, a week. The free trial is literally going to be your first deadline, but you want to make sure that you've played with it before the deadline happens. Okay, now final thing I want to say here about task managers is sometimes it can be really overwhelming, but that's what my team and I are here to do. We're here to help you choose the right task manager, build it out specific to you and your practice. And having a really good functioning task manager literally solves so many problems in your firm. And not only just with the adoption of the task manager, but also the training on it, it goes a really, really long way. So if you haven't already reached out to me about automating your law firm and getting the client before they even hire you and going through and working with your team and making sure that you're all on the same page, no deadlines are missed and none of that happens, then what I want you to do is to go ahead and schedule that consult with me. Automate Your Law Firm. The link is below. And I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. And if you have any questions, reach out to me. I'm here for you. And good luck choosing your task manager. Okay, bye law firm owners.