Planning for the New Year – In Writing

It’s nearing the end of December, and for many lawyers, things are starting to slow down.  Whether you’re planning to take some time off or just try to catch up over the next few weeks until the new year begins, give some thought to what you want from your practice in 2006.  But do yourself and your practice a favor, and write it down.

Why?  Because writing something down makes it much more concrete – you can see it and refer to it.  Putting your plans on paper helps you to make them clearer.  It’s harder to ‘fudge’ what we think we want when we write it down.  Writing helps focus, and provides a means for sharing our plans with others – for feedback, support, and to ensure that others in the practice are working toward the same goals and plans.

The act of writing is the beginning of a process to take action on what we want.  In fact, Henriette Klauser wrote a book about it, called Write it Down, Make it Happen.  Ms. Klauser and others contend that writing something down gets the ball rolling, by putting the goal in existence in a tangible way.  Writing down your goals for the coming year, and your plans for the future of your practice, is the first step in causing the change that you want.

Writing down your goals not only makes them more concrete, but it triggers your mind into thinking about them, and working toward them even when you don’t realize you’re doing it consciously.  Have you ever purchased something new (like a car) and then suddenly started noticing that very car everywhere you looked, when you hadn’t noticed it before?  Your brain became attuned to that kind of car, so you noticed it, where you may not have noticed it before.

Writing down your goals may make you more attuned to opportunities that you would have passed by before.  For example, if you want to step up marketing efforts for your practice and one of your goals is to write articles, writing down that intention makes it more likely that you’ll see opportunities to write when they arise – you’ll be attuned to the conversation at an event when someone mentions they’re seeking articles for their publication, or take note of the contact information for the articles editor of the trade publication you’re reading.

So make some plans for your practice in 2006 — but make sure they’re not just all in your head.