Ever wonder how to reach your goals as an attorney? In this episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast, we explore actionable steps to stay in perpetual motion and avoid the mind prison. Learn the power of writing down goals and how daily to-do lists can skyrocket your success. 

Tune in to start achieving more, faster, and make your law practice both productive and enjoyable.

Scott Benton: Hey, everyone. It's Scott Benton here. I'm the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast. How are you? We are a podcast dedicated to law students and people who have recently passed the bar and probably looking for the first job as an attorney.

Sometimes you've worked out in the field for a couple years, 23 years, and you're still trying to figure out how to practice as an Attorney and that's what this podcast seeks to explore.

We're providing that gap that is not taught in law schools or in bar prep courses, of course, no one's really teaching you how to practice law, it's something you tend to pick up once you actually start practicing law. But what if you could show up on your first day at your new job as an Attorney and you already know how to practice law and that's what we are helping you achieve.

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Scott Benton: So today's question that we're going to look at is how do I make sure that I'm reaching my goals as an Attorney? How do I make sure that I'm reaching my goals?

Achieving goals whether they're big, giant goals that you set that might take a long time to complete or smaller goals, like I'm going to write that particular status report and send this to my client. Any of those will apply in terms of getting them done and all of them are certainly important to get done.

So one thing we want to look at now, you may already know this, you probably do, you've probably heard of Newton's first law of motion. It's one of those laws that everybody knows, it kind of comes up all the time but let's zero in on that for a minute. Newton's first law of motion is that a body in motion tends to stay in motion unless it's acted upon by an outside force.

And I'm sure you're saying, well, of I want to be acting. What else would I be doing? Well, what else you would be doing is nothing. You would be sitting there thinking you want to make sure that you're not getting trapped in that mind prison because for an Attorney that can be a very dangerous place for you to be.

If you find that you've been spending a little bit of time in that mind prison or you realize that you're there, you want to do everything you can to be that outside force so that you are no longer a body in rest, but a body in motion. You want to push yourself into motion and that's how you're going to achieve your goals.

Now, the other idea that you want to make sure that you're using and that it's a tool in your toolbox that you're using each and every day is you want to make sure that your goals are written down. This is very important, so you want to be in perpetual motion, completing goals, and you want to make sure your goals are in motion.

Now, most people, it turns out, don't write goals down. They never write down their goal, even their big sort of life goals, like buy a new car or buy a house or run a marathon or climb a mountain or something like that.

Those sort of bigger goals as challenges, we all have those challenges. We want to to see what we are capable of. But most people really don't write their goals down and so when they look at their lives, their achievements are kind of random. They're a little bit scattered and all over the place and there doesn't really seem to be any discernible pattern to them.

Again, most people never write their goals down. I'd say 90% of people are higher, never write their goals down. So do yourself a favor and try this out as an experiment and see what happens. You're going to want to take a piece of paper, you can even take a post it, you can do this with a post it. You don't need like a lot of writing space.

And you're simply going to write down 10 goals. And these can be big goals, they can be small goals, it doesn't really matter. You want to write down 10 goals. You then want to carry those goals with you. Now, these can be life goals, they can be work goals, they can be any sorts of goals.

You've written down your goals, you can carry those with you. Now you have a choice, you can never look at those again or just kind of forget about them or you can look at them everyday, all day long if you want to, it doesn't really matter.

What you're going to notice, however, is that after a period of time, and sometimes it's very quick. Sometimes you write down goals that you think are going to take you years or months to complete, but after a few weeks, you look at your goals you realize that you've completed a number of those goals. This happens with almost everybody that tries this exercise.

So write down your 10 goals, look at them a few weeks later, or whenever you get to it, and notice that you've completed a number of those goals. Let's say you've completed five of them. Check those off your list, and then come up with five more goals.

Now you have ten more goals and try it again. See what happens in a few weeks, you're going to notice that you're accomplishing your goals faster than you ever thought you could.

So there's really two components here in terms of making sure that you reach your goal. There's perpetual motion, you want to stay in motion. You don't want to get locked up in your mind. You don't want to be in that mind prison of thought. I'm going to get this done, this is what I have to do.

No. You just need to take steps to complete your goals, and you're going to see that you're going to get through those goals very quickly, and you want to make sure they're written down. So try that experiment, try the 10 goal experiment, see what happens. Prove it to yourself, don't believe me, don't listen to me, don't listen to anything I have to say.

So the success cycle that we use the three part success cycle, which the first part is essentially your to do list. Those items that go on your to do list that you're looking at are going to be the goals that you are putting yourself into a state of perpetual motion to complete. Okay?

So you want to make sure that to do list is always up to date. Now, having that to do list, there are a number of ways to make sure that you're always looking at that.

So let's go back to, maybe you want to complete three status reports and make 30 calls a day. And you want to make sure that you're doing that each and every day.

But one of the things that Attorneys will do, for instance, and something that you obviously can do, is you want to take a picture of those daily goals, those repetitive daily goals that you're going to complete, three status reports, 30 calls, and you want to make that the background screen on your phone, because if you're like me, you're looking at your phone all day long, and every time you turn your phone on, you're going to see those goals, three status reports, 30 phone calls, 30 case related phone calls, and whatever else you put on there.

He's already completed a number of those items. And so it just frees up more time for him to, I don't know, for instance, get through his phone calls. By the way, if you're getting through a number of phone calls, if you set your goal at say 30 phone calls a day, you are billing at two tenths of an hour 0.2 for each of those phone calls. That right there is six hours of billable time.

Now, you're not always going to have to make 30 phone calls a day because you're gonna put that ball into motion. Remember, perpetual motion, you're gonna have generated a certain amount of perpetual motion and those calls, and those people and those conversations are gonna start coming back to you.

So that's really how you get your goals completed. That's how you reach your goals every single day. It's a byproduct of putting yourself in a state of perpetual motion, staying out of the mind prison of thinking all the time and making sure you have your to do list. Now you can have your broad overreaching goals.

Try the experiment, write down your 10 goals and watch what happens. And you're going to see the value of a to do list and why it's so important that you're updating it and maintaining it, that you take a picture of it, that you're knocking stuff off that to do list, perpetual motion and to do list. That's the entire secret to reaching your goals. So I hope that's been helpful.

If you're enjoying this podcast, the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast, and you want to receive an alert, every time we put out new material, you can go to our website. Our website is Classroom2Courtroom.com.

And if you are enjoying this material, don't forget to share, like, and subscribe. We hope you'll join us on our next episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom Podcast.

And until then, we hope you'll join us in making the world a better place. One client at a time. Thank you so much and take care.

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