Time Management for Trial Lawyers with Special Guest Dina Cataldo [Ep 133]
Explore practical time management and mindset strategies tailored for trial lawyers with expert insights from lawyer coach Dina Cataldo. In this episode, Dina shares her journey from criminal prosecutor to coach, offering actionable advice to manage stress, prioritize tasks, and overcome negative thoughts. Discover how small habit changes can lead to significant improvements in your legal practice and personal life.
Elizabeth and Dina address the unique challenges female attorneys face, balancing demanding careers with personal responsibilities, and provide strategies to enhance daily productivity and instill confidence. Learn how structured planning and healthy routines can conserve energy and reduce stress, essential skills for the fast-paced world of trial law.
Dina reveals methods like “Sunday planning” and setting time limits for tasks to streamline workflow and improve efficiency. Understand the importance of addressing internal resistance and fostering a healthy relationship with time for professional growth.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Time management strategies tailored for trial lawyers.
- Importance of mindset in enhancing courtroom performance and managing stress.
- Techniques for optimizing energy levels and reducing daily frustrations.
- Structured planning methods, including “Sunday planning” and setting time limits for tasks.
- Addressing internal resistance and developing a healthy relationship with time.
- Emphasis on self-care and prioritizing personal goals alongside professional duties.
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Supporting Resources:
Learn more about Dina Cataldo: www.dinacataldo.com
Get Dina’s Free Workbook: 3 Sneaky Problems Stealing Your Time and Productivity (and How to Fix Them Now!)
Follow Dina’s Podcast Be a Better Lawyer
Learn more about how Elizabeth helps trial lawyer here.
Connect with Elizabeth on LinkedIn.
Join the Trial Lawyer Prep Newsletter to get quick tips and ideas for your case preparation and trial persuasion. Go here to join.
Episode Credits
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Episode Transcript
Elizabeth: Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and we have a treat today. We have a wonderful lawyer coach who’s going to talk us about time management. So Dina Cataldo,
Dina: thank you so much for joining. Thanks so much for having me on your [00:01:00] podcast, Elizabeth. I’m really excited for our conversation.
Elizabeth: I am too, because I know that I am going to learn some things about managing my time that I did not know, but you know, I. Here’s the thing, and I know that folks who are listening, our trial lawyers in the audience, like, we all want to be more productive with our time, and we all struggle with having too many things to do with our time.
Elizabeth: So I thought you would be an excellent person to come tell us about how we can be better. And, you know, just help us maybe solve some even small things that can make a big impact.
Dina: Oh my gosh, of course, and it’s my pleasure to do it. This is what I do all day, every day with lawyers. So I love talking about this topic.
Elizabeth: Awesome. Well, and let’s talk, I would love for folks to know just a little bit more about like, what does it mean to be a lawyer coach? Because I obviously totally love having an outside perspective. That’s one thing I love to do for my lawyers when I work with them with focus groups. But tell us a little bit about what does that really mean to be a lawyer
Dina: coach?
Dina: Well, I was a criminal [00:02:00] prosecutor for about 16 years. And what I discovered was that coaching was something that could change my entire outlook. It changed my entire experience of the work that I did. And for me, coaching is really understanding my mind at the highest level, at being able to self manage, at being able to self regulate so that I can not procrastinate on all of the things that my brain tells me I should be procrastinating on.
Dina: Or if I am doing things that aren’t serving me, that I recognize it and I change gears and I do something differently. And what I know as Myself, like I call myself a lawyer coach because I’m a lawyer and by trade, right, by training, and I only coach lawyers. Like I specifically just coach lawyers because I think that there’s a very specific type of person who enters the legal profession.
Dina: And [00:03:00] I can relate to that person because I am that person. And so, you know, the things that I have learned the hard way and the things that I teach my clients the easier way. Are things that I think that every single lawyer needs to know to really function at their highest level in the legal industry.
Dina: And I know that the people listening are high achievers. They would not be in trial practice unless they wanted to be amazing at the work that they did. And there’s no way for us to really be at our best unless we are managing ourselves, managing our time effectively.
Elizabeth: Absolutely. And there is an endless list.
Elizabeth: It never ends with the things that we have to take care of and the files that we have. But, you know, we always, it’s, you nailed it, like, especially, you know, personal injury lawyers, like, we have to keep that wheel going. And sometimes it’s just like, oh, wow. Things just fall through the cracks or by the [00:04:00] wayside.
Elizabeth: And so I’m really interested to hear, you know, a little bit more, but I’m curious before we go a little further, because there are some people who have coaches that it’s like a done for you. If you know what I mean? Like I’m going to do this for you. And some people are like consulting. Well, yeah, I mean, I think the line can get a little blurred where sometimes it is consulting.
Elizabeth: Sometimes it’s coaching. So some people, it’s like a done with you, somebody has it done for you. So tell us a little about like how you like to work with lawyers. Well, I don’t do the planning for them, right?
Dina: I mean, we’re really working at. I mean, let’s take it even a step back. Like, let’s really talk about what mindset is because we have about 60, 000 thoughts a day, and most of them are on repeat. And most of those thoughts are really crappy. There are thoughts like, I have so much to do. This is so hard. I don’t know where to start.
Dina: This is just the worst. And when we’re [00:05:00] thinking in that kind of a mindset, even if it’s unconscious, Especially if it’s unconscious, it is going to have a negative impact on our practice. We’re going to feel lots of overwhelm. We’re going to feel a lot of pressure and anxiety. And what ends up happening is we start to act at the effect of the world around us.
Dina: So we think the reason that we feel bad is because there’s a dozen cases in our inbox. We think the reason that we feel bad is because there’s a million emails in the inbox. We think the reason that we feel bad is because our assistant isn’t doing what we told them to do for a millionth time, right?
Dina: Yeah, but what’s really happening is that we’re not managing ourselves to see how we’re impacting what’s going on, whether it is the negative performance of an employee, which may surprise people listening that if you’re not training your assistant and telling them exactly what you want and having it in writing and giving them something like an S.
Dina: O. P. In order to follow it, probably not going to do it the way you want them to. Right. And that’s something that, you know, [00:06:00] so many of us put to the wayside because we’re in this hurry, this constant rush to get things done. Okay. I got to jump into the work. I’ve got to answer this email. I’ve got to answer this call.
Dina: I’ve got to do these things. So we’re constantly, if we’re at the mercy of these unconscious thoughts, most of them that are running through our brain. We’re just reactive all day long. We’re just jumping from phone call to email to person walking in the door. And we’re feeling hectic inside. We’re not managing ourselves and we’re unable to manage ourselves simply because we don’t have the awareness of what’s going on in our brain.
Dina: Right? So a lot of the work I talk about is time management, right? So I work with. you know, people privately. And then I also have a program specifically around time piece and helping lawyers like really calm their overwhelm and plan and all that. But we’re talking mindset all the time because it’s not about the calendar.
Dina: It’s not even about your work that you put on the [00:07:00] calendar. It’s about how you are thinking about your work. It’s about how you’re thinking about your ability to manage the work. It’s how you’re thinking about yourself and what you’re making it mean. If you don’t do the work, if you don’t enter your billing, if you don’t do those kinds of things, right?
Dina: And that has a tremendous impact, negative impact. If you’re thinking a lot of the thoughts that a lot of lawyers I work with initially come to me thinking, right? So I have this. analogy of, think about a firefighter, right? They go up to a house and it’s on fire, right? And there’s a lot of options of thoughts they could be thinking about this house on fire, right?
Dina: One set of thoughts is, oh my gosh, the house is on fire. Another is, this is so bad. Or another is, oh my gosh, if I go inside, I could get hurt. I could die, right? And if they focus on those thoughts, that mindset, They’re going to run in the opposite direction.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Dina: But a firefighter is [00:08:00] really trained to have a different kind of mindset and it takes practice, right?
Dina: We can’t just like. Think there’s no place like home and suddenly we’re in Kansas. We actually have to practice this. And so a firefighter, they go through specialized training to get experience going into these high stress environments. And so when they look at a fire, it’s not that they’re not thinking, Oh, the house is on fire.
Dina: They’re not, they’re thinking that, but they’re also thinking I can do this. I can figure this out. I can help them. Let’s take this one step at a time. And so they are consciously using mindset to calm their nervous system down. So they’re not feeling overwhelmed. They’re not feeling anxiety or pressure or stress going into a situation.
Dina: A lot of people would just call is innately high stress, kind of like a trial. So if this firefighter is not consciously managing [00:09:00] their mind, they are going to be in a high stress position. They’re going to have this heightened state and they are not going to think clearly. They’re not going to be able to perform.
Dina: There’s a higher likelihood that they’re going to get hurt. There’s a higher likelihood that the person inside if there’s someone inside is not going to make it. Right. So if you are going into trial thinking that a trial is just an innately hard thing that is just got to be stressful and it’s got to be really tough and you don’t really want to go, I don’t want to go and all the things right.
Dina: It’s going to be harder and it’s going to increase problems that are going to happen in a trial regardless, like if you’re not paying attention, there’s going to be evidentiary issues. There’s going to be all kinds of things. And if you’re not managing your mind, you’re not going to see them. And if they happen, you’re going to be more reactionary and you’re not going to think about the consequences of whatever decision you make in the moment.
Elizabeth: So it’s obviously, I mean, you know, very [00:10:00] much a building block of, we’ve got to figure out from the very start, get go, get thinking on the right track. It’s not just, Hey, here’s a calendar, fill it up blocks in time. Like not how it works, you’ll just go back and make the same mistake again. It’s like, I’m sure you’ve read somewhere where people tell you, you know, Dina, I’ve bought all these planners and none of them work.
Dina: Oh, yeah. And now they have these things where there’s AI and you can, if you just type your work in, it’ll pop out a schedule for you. And I’m like, yeah, whatever. So those kinds of things are out there and we’re so desperate in our society to feel some control around our time. But the interesting thing is that we’re looking for something outside of us to control the time for us.
Dina: I’ve had so many lawyers tell me, I wish I just had a secretary who just would tell me what to do. I’m like, that is the opposite of control. That is the opposite of taking charge of your practice. And it’s just so fascinating that when we don’t have the tools that we just hope [00:11:00] somebody else will take care of it for us.
Elizabeth: Yeah, it’s true. And I think, you know, we do hard things. Lawyers do really hard things. And sometimes it’s just when we have this. overwhelm, frustration, things fall through the track, you know, you’re not having some news helping you that need help. Like you do sometimes just like, oh, you know, throw up your hands and just like, I wish somebody else would do this when it’s like, well, it’s really this really kind of small few things.
Elizabeth: And then it’s really makes it a lot easier.
Dina: Yeah. I mean, I saw that with my own trial practice and this was something I learned late in my trial practice because there was nobody at my office who have these kinds of skills. Nobody had heard about a coach. I mean, it’s kind of like this vague thing. It’s like, like, what do you do exactly as a coach?
Dina: What do you cheer me on? You know, it’s like, no, but it’s interesting because. A lot of the lawyers I worked with, they overworked themselves. A lot of them you could tell were unhealthy because they were not putting time into their health. [00:12:00] And for those who were, I mean, they always had someone in the background kind of taking care of the world.
Dina: Like you could see this with a lot of male attorneys, you know, it’s like, Oh, okay. Your wife takes care of everything. You just do trials like, Oh, okay. So they can take care of themselves, but I think female attorneys are in this unique position because not only are you doing your trial work, but you’re also expected to do other things, right?
Dina: You might be able to ask for help, but at the same time, you are in charge of transporting people or I don’t have kids, but I saw this with other trial attorneys, they had their own responsibilities. I had other responsibilities that were outside of that, but it was just really interesting to watch the attorneys.
Dina: And they’re not all men attorneys have it all together, but there were the very few that I saw were usually men who had like somebody else helping them like in a large capacity. But when I learned later in my [00:13:00] trial career is that the stress that I felt in my trials early on didn’t have to be that way if I planned.
Dina: And I was like, wait a minute, what? And I didn’t jump into planning right away. I really took it really small. Like I took small steps for myself. So can I just offer some of that for people listening just to take like a small step for themselves? Yeah, absolutely. So for me, I started with the baby step of my morning routine because I hated how I felt in the morning.
Dina: So I didn’t really think I had any control over it for a long time. I just thought, Oh, this is just what it is. This is my day. I just get up and I run and I go and I all the things and I’m already rushed. But then I started to just notice how I felt. It was just one morning. I just. felt so rushed and I just decided, I don’t like feeling this way.
Dina: I just don’t like it. And so I said, well, what can I do about it? And so I think that was the only, or the first time that I ever really said that to myself, which is what [00:14:00] can I do about it? Like, it doesn’t just have to be this way. And I said, well, I guess I could wake up a little earlier. And so I started playing with the idea of, okay, what does it look like from, what do I want my morning routine to look like?
Dina: Do I want to have a cup of coffee? Do I want to be able to sit and, you know, journal? What do I want? I never asked myself those questions. So when I just asked myself this about my mornings, then I started to make a shift. But what I noticed is that shift didn’t happen overnight because what happened is the next morning, I still woke up late.
Dina: I still picked up the phone and, you know, hit snooze a dozen times. I still scrolled. I still did all the same habits. And I was like, well, gosh, like why, why? Am I not? And I think that was the first time I didn’t beat myself up for not doing what I said I would do. I think it’s the first time I just got curious.
Dina: And I think that’s where we really hit a block when we’re trying to create a new habit, is we beat ourselves up for not doing it differently because we tell ourselves, well, I should know better, [00:15:00] versus just getting curious, like, why not? And so then I discovered, well, you know, I didn’t sleep very well because I stayed up the night before and, you know, I had coffee late, you know, in the afternoon and so I could then analyze it like it was a science project and not make it mean anything about me.
Dina: And so then I started to really have this routine and I could see, oh, I can’t leave my phone in the room. I have to put it in the other room because otherwise I’ll just stay in bed, right? So it’s those kinds of things that. When we start to make progress on just one little thing, one little habit. In our life, we begin to get more confidence that we have more power, that we have more control over our life, that we don’t have to be at the mercy of what time, you know, court starts.
Dina: We don’t have to be at the mercy of whatever else we think we’re at the mercy of. We can take charge of our life.
Elizabeth: Absolutely. And I think having just thinking about being curious and [00:16:00] also just starting with something as simple as what time you wake up in the morning. And so many times, I’m sure you’ve probably heard this again, but that people will say, well, I tried to mirror, like, you know, name some highly productive person or multimillionaire and it just didn’t work.
Elizabeth: And I’m like, well, you know, cause when you try to force such a giant change, it really makes it really impossible, but. It’s so funny. We are highly evolved creatures. We, especially, you know, going to law school, we get all this training and like, it’s just sometimes super simple just to trick your body and just like put the phone in another room.
Elizabeth: Yeah. You know, they shiny object syndrome. I mean, that’s basically one of the first things I did when I was like, okay, what’s distracting me. It’s. this thing, it’s going in the other room. So if I really wanted it, I would have to get up and go and just that little thing. I was like, I didn’t do it. So it’s really sometimes such small things that you can experiment with to figure out like what’s going to make you feel even just [00:17:00] a little bit better.
Elizabeth: You know, using your time to do something other than rush out the door or immediately get to
Dina: work. Yeah, and I think a question to ask, like it’s good for all of us to ask this question is where do I feel frustrated, right? Where am I frustrated throughout my day? Am I frustrated when it’s 11 30 and I don’t have any food in my office and I end up going and getting some garbage food across the street, right?
Dina: Does that frustrate me? And then ask yourself, well, what do I want to do about it? And so that might mean that, okay, well, maybe I create a plan where I get some healthier foods and I just stock them in the fridge. You know, it’s just those little questions we can ask ourselves and reduce the frustrations throughout our day.
Dina: Because if you think about it. We’re batteries, right? But we have finite amounts of energy throughout the day. So if you start a day fully charged with a lot of lawyers, a lot of us don’t start fully charged, right? But if you did [00:18:00] start fully charged, by the end of the day, you’ve made a million decisions.
Dina: You have done a lot of work and your battery is depleted, which is why when you get home, you feel so exhausted. But what people don’t know is that our emotions can be very big power drains. So when we feel overwhelmed, when we feel anxiety, when we feel frustration and stress, it’s like Putting your phone in the freezer, it like zaps all of the energy from your phone.
Dina: If you’ve ever brought your phone up to the mountains and you’re like, why is my phone dead? It’s like, it’s because it’s been zapped of its power. So the emotions, when we get into those kinds of emotions, they can drain us. So if you start to reduce your frustrations, you’re going to find that the less frustrated you are throughout the day, you’re going to get just like a little bit of energy.
Dina: You’ll have a little less in the middle of the day. Oh my gosh, why didn’t I think about this and this? You’ll have thought about it. You’ll have taken care of it.
Elizabeth: Absolutely. And I [00:19:00] think, you know, you mentioned earlier about just like having a trial docket and learning how to plan that. And that’s one of the things that is really hard as a newbie or even even 10 years out.
Elizabeth: Nobody really tells you that. And that’s one of the biggest things that I gathered when I went off and I did my fellowship with. Don Keenan was, we did three major trials, but we did them all the same planning. And so it was like, Oh, like there was a lot of like relief of knowing, Oh, okay. There was delegation.
Elizabeth: There was. Planned out time, you knew what time things were going to happen, and so even though trials can be so chaotic, we had a plan to know, okay, this for sure is what’s happening, and that’s the same thing that can happen any day of trial, you know, of having or being a litigation lawyer is that every day somebody, like you said, could walk in the door with something different, or there’s a fire that has to be put out that day, and it is those little things of like, well, let me just plan for what I know I have to do every day, which is eat.
Elizabeth: Mm Yeah, and what I [00:20:00] know will drain me and I feel like sometimes we’ve Until you kind of start to experiment with like, Oh, why don’t I block just a, you know, 30 minutes after that hearing, even if I know that drive is only going to take 15 minutes, maybe you can just decompress for 10 minutes or, you know, having that set list of groceries that no matter what happens, you’re always going to buy, you know, carrots, hummus, and like something else that’s good for you, no matter what.
Elizabeth: And so there’s so many little things that to experiment with. And I feel like sleep and food. Yeah.
Dina: Top of the list.
Elizabeth: Yes. Yeah. To manage that energy and, you know, to really just kind of check in and say like, wow, I am exhausted. Why did I plan to have, you know, back to back hearings and meetings with people when I knew I was going to use all my brain power in that hearing?
Dina: Yeah. And I think that really comes to a point where you mentioned about. giving yourself a little time to decompress. And one of the things I see with lawyers, we [00:21:00] tend to like to squish things in our day. So we’re like, Oh, I’ve got an extra five minutes here. Let me put this 20 minute project in that five minutes.
Dina: I can definitely make some progress on it. And so we’re just like mushing stuff into our day, thinking that we should be able to get it all done. But what I want to offer is that giving yourself. A little bit of decompression time between projects, between meetings makes a world of difference. I had a client who was just having back to back consults and she was noticing she was forgetting writing notes.
Dina: She wasn’t, you know, doing things and I’m like, okay, let’s talk this through. And so she realized, oh, hey, I’m not giving myself any space between these meetings. I don’t want to have so many meetings in one day. I want to have those delegated or. Designated for specific days during the week, instead of just kind of letting my assistant hodgepodge them throughout the week, like let me decide where I want to have these sessions.
Dina: So then I give myself the space that I need. And [00:22:00] then she started doing that with her whole calendar and she started recognizing that her billing went up, that she felt more energized at the end of the day. She was taking better care of herself because she had those moments to take a breath, get organized, and then she could move into the next task.
Elizabeth: Yes. I feel like sometimes just even like remembering, like, you’re going to have to use the restroom at some point.
Dina: Like, leave space. Yeah. Please leave space because there are some people that I’ve talked to who do not use the restroom or I, before they worked with me, I think they didn’t use the restroom because they were like, I’ve got to build this.
Dina: So just give yourself the grace. You deserve to be treated like a human and not a robot. Need bathroom breaks.
Elizabeth: Yes. And eating breakfast and eating lunch and not skipping a meal. It always, you know, I know for trial lawyers, it’s, and I’m sure you probably had this too, like you just get so nervous you can’t even eat anything more than, you know, like a granola bar.
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm . But it’s just mm-hmm . The more you play with like the energy [00:23:00] intake and all that kind of stuff, the more you realize, like, okay, I may not feel like it, but I got to overcome whatever the stress is happening in my brain. And I know my body needs this.
Dina: Yeah. I mean, if you think about a marathon runner, they may not feel like eating, but you bet they’re eating.
Dina: Right. I actually learned this late in my practice too, which is I need to have a meal. And it needs to be something like it doesn’t have to be a rich meal or anything like that, but it needs to be something like a salad and some protein because protein is energy. And if I don’t have that energy in the second half of the day, my performance is going to wane.
Dina: So same thing with a runner. They’re paying attention to what is their food intake? How are they sleeping? Like what they need to pay attention to those things. So when we start to think of our performance as reliant upon the input, the fuel that we give ourselves, it makes it a little bit easier to say, okay, I may not feel like eating, but having this bit of protein is going to help me in the second half of the day.
Elizabeth: Absolutely. And don’t get me started on protein. We could probably do a whole episode [00:24:00] on eating protein. You know, as a building block of energy and, you know, keeping us all going. So, so let’s talk a little bit about, okay. So we talked about the core, you know, block of everything, which is getting your mindset straight.
Elizabeth: And I know you’re not going to make a schedule for us, but tell us a little bit more about like what it means, like, as far as, you know, I think you mentioned time piece, like tell us a little bit more about kind of what you do.
Dina: Yeah. So I mean, there’s basically, it’s very simple to manage your time. I will share them with your audience.
Dina: Like it’s, that’s not a problem. It’s a beautiful thing, but that’s not where the problem comes in. The problem comes in with implementing, which is where I come in, but I will share exactly the steps to manage your time. Do you want to hear them? Of course. Okay. No.
Elizabeth: Okay.
Dina: So, so basically you start with, you know, you’ve got a bunch to do, right?
Dina: You’ve got your different things in your emails. You know, there’s different people who, [00:25:00] you know, things on your voicemail, you’ve got things in your inbox. Okay. You’ve got probably appointments on your calendar. That’s usually what lawyers use their calendar for is just the appointments. Maybe they put deadlines on there.
Dina: That’s it. What they don’t do is think about their whole week, right? And they don’t think about it in a way that allows them to think, what can I delegate? What is the most important thing for me to do? What can I take off my to do list this week? What can be put off to another time? We can’t even think about those things until we think consciously about the things that we need to do.
Dina: A lot of lawyers have a to do list, and it’s just this ongoing running to do list.
Elizabeth: I can show you mine.
Dina: And a to do list itself is not a bad thing, but what are you doing with it? Like you might have a very effective. way of using your to do list. I have no way of knowing. But if you have a [00:26:00] really effective way of using your to do list and you don’t feel overwhelmed and you don’t feel overworked, then great by all means keep doing that.
Dina: But if you create a list of items and you go through them and you look for the ones that are the most important, maybe there are deadlines on Friday. Let’s say today is Monday. You’ve got some motions or whatever due on Friday. Okay. So you’re like, okay, I want to work on those, you know, other items. What needs to take priority this week?
Dina: I need to talk to this client. I need to talk to this client. I need to get this project going so that I can turn it in. next week, right? So maybe there’s an email you need to send out. So basically you list out everything you need to do now at this point, only spend about 10, 15 minutes doing this. I know a lawyer can spend like hours doing this.
Dina: If you do 10 to 15 minutes of this, I guarantee you, you have the most important things on that list. Don’t use this as your procrastination time. 10 15 minutes [00:27:00] tops to write that list. Now go through that list and circle the items that need to get done this week. And then next to each of those items, estimate how long each are going to take.
Dina: And this is where so many lawyers get caught up. Because they tell themselves, I don’t know how to estimate. That is not true. You estimate all the time. So go in, make an estimate of how long you think it’s going to take. If you really don’t know, add a little extra time to it. And then. Once you do all that, I want you to go back and I want you to put yourself on the to do list.
Dina: What do you want? Do you want to go to the gym three times this week? Do you want to do something else this week? What do you want? Do you want to have 30 minutes every morning so that you can sit with your coffee and just, you know, scroll social media because it’s fun. Whatever you want to do, I want you to put it on the list and then I want you to look at Do you have any other commitments?
Dina: Do you have commitments with your [00:28:00] spouse? Do you have commitments with your kids? Like anything else like that, put that on the list too. Because there’s an order of operations. When you put these things on the calendar, knowing that yes, you already have appointments and already on the calendar, that’s fine.
Dina: You’re going to put the items that are a priority in this order on your calendar. You first. You have to go on the calendar first. Wait a minute. Hold on a second. What about my
Elizabeth: consultations and my
Dina: I mean, that stuff, it’s just there. It’s like, I just pretend it’s like, okay. But we got to put you on the calendar, right?
Dina: So. You have to be the person who decides I’m leaving the office. This was me. I’m just describing what I did. I’m leaving the office at four o’clock to go to yoga at four 30. That is my non negotiable. I would leave the office four o’clock. Boom. Okay. Four o’clock. Was everybody else leaving at four o’clock?
Dina: No, but I knew that later than that I was going to be exhausted and then I wasn’t going to go. So I needed to prioritize that [00:29:00] for myself. I would do the work. I wasn’t worried about that, you know? So. I made that a priority for myself and that went on the calendar first. And it seems so counterintuitive.
Dina: And I think a lot of women have a problem with this idea of putting themselves first, because. They’re trained, we’re trained to put everybody else first and that everybody else gets our attention. Everybody else gets our time. But when do we get to have that time? So it’s important to start training your mind.
Dina: So this is where mindset comes in to say, look, what I want is important. And so you have to believe that in order to put yourself on the calendar first. What I want is important. And if you’re not putting yourself on the calendar, you’re not believing that what you want is important. Which is, it stinks to say that out loud, but I mean, it’s huge and that’s
Elizabeth: sometimes like probably the biggest, [00:30:00] hardest realization that people have when they look at their calendars and their lives and just realize like, oh, I’m not putting myself forward or first at all.
Elizabeth: Like, what does that say about how I feel about myself?
Dina: Yeah, because the calendar really reveals a lot, right? So, Oh, I’m giving my time to these organizations that I don’t even care about. Why am I doing that? Oh, I don’t have anything that involves me on my calendar. Why not? And that’s when it comes down to what do I really think about myself?
Dina: What do I really think? Am I not valuing myself and my time? So it can be kind of confronting when you start getting into the conversations and coaching around time management because we start to see, Oh, I am not looking at myself as my most valuable asset in my business. Right? I’m not treating myself like the fuel for my business to continue to grow because I’m not putting myself on the calendar.
Dina: I’m not putting time on my calendar to work on my business. So if I’m not doing that, nobody else is going to do it. I’m responsible for that. [00:31:00] Yeah. No. Back to the order of operations.
Elizabeth: Okay. So we’re making a list. We’re putting ourselves first. Okay.
Dina: Calendaring yourself
Elizabeth: first. Okay. Yes.
Dina: And then you put on the calendar, your family commitments, your friend commitments, all that good stuff.
Dina: And then you put on the work, right? Then you put in, okay, and this is where I want to give this tip. Start to pay attention to your energy levels throughout the day because everybody’s a little different. My energy is highest in the morning, and so I’ll put my more the things I need to think more about early in the morning, whereas in the afternoons, I’ll tend to put things that aren’t as focus dependent, and it makes my life easier.
Dina: So at the end of the day, we tend to be. You know, our energy is coming down and we’ve maybe done some heavy lifting earlier in the day. And so if we’re putting high intensity [00:32:00] projects in the afternoon, we’re might be setting ourselves up for failure. So just notice that where you’re putting things on your calendar.
Dina: And then put space in between your calendar. Start to just pay attention. Like, Hey, do I have back to back meetings? When I look at my calendar, how do I feel? If I feel overwhelmed, how can I make my life easier? Like ask yourself those questions. Where can I delegate, right? What order of operations needs to be done?
Dina: And that brings me to big projects, right? Like trials. So a trial isn’t, you know, it could be, all right, all day long, I’m going to be in court. But most of the time you’re not in court. You’re preparing for trial. You are creating exhibit lists or you’re organizing exhibits. You’re thinking about the questions you need to be asking.
Dina: You’re reviewing documents, you’re reviewing depositions, you’re reviewing all these things, right? So if you are not blocking time specifically for those items. And you’re just saying, I’m going to work on the [00:33:00] Smith file all day long. You’re setting yourself up for failure. You want to give yourself designated blocks.
Dina: So you want to say, if you’ve got the Smith trial you’re working on, before you put it on your calendar in blocks, you want to think about, okay, what do I need to do specifically in the Smith trial? Estimate how long each of those individual tasks are going to take, and then you can spread them out so you’re not getting burned out on the Smith file.
Elizabeth: Absolutely. Or trying to start the thing that makes you least excited. Like maybe it’s an opening statement and you’re just like, Oh, I don’t want to do that. You just sit there instead of doing, you know, like work on a cross exam or read, you know, I mean, it’s kind of one of those things like reading your energy and it’s definitely, you know, happens where you’re just like, again, mindset, like, I’m not good at this.
Elizabeth: Therefore, I’m not going to start this. Um, but it’s like, Okay, let me make a list. Let me at least organize and use this time for, like you said, like the Smith file or writing cross exam, [00:34:00] which people love or, you know, doing direct exam, like writing it out and, you know, when you take those steps further out, people always run into me and they’re like.
Elizabeth: Oh, in two weeks, I’m starting this trial and I’m just like, okay, and just walk me through what’s your, you know, order of proof. And like, let’s talk about that. I was like, oh, well, I haven’t done that yet. I’m just like, oh, okay. You know, just take a step back. But it’s so funny how much work we can get done ahead of time.
Elizabeth: Even if you feel like, oh, well, this is going to change because of emotion limiting or that’s going to change because they have the like, Okay. Just getting in and having that think time and writing it down like significantly helps you in the moment when you get there to know you’ve at least done reviewed and at least had a start on something.
Dina: Yeah, I think that’s something we underestimate how much we can get done when we use. Those brief moments, like if you give yourself an hour on a day to, like, think about the opening, right? Or an hour to think about [00:35:00] the exhibits and organize them, right? That has a compound effect. So, by the time you’re about to go into trial, oh, you’ve taken care of everything because you were paying attention to it.
Dina: And I just think about it in terms of. If I’m not thinking 10 steps ahead, then when the day comes of trial, I am going to feel so flustered that I won’t be able to think straight. And that’s not good for me. It’s not for good for anybody in the courtroom.
Elizabeth: Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, and I also feel like. Sometimes when you walk in or you watch a trial or you watch a motion, the lawyer that knows their file forward and backwards, it’s like smooth sailing versus you’ve seen the lawyers that get flustered and they just, you know, they’re looking, they’re digging around or trying to find an answer.
Elizabeth: And so it’s like, even just having, like you said, 1 hour at a time or 2 hours at a time and just being in that file really helps you just know the facts so well. [00:36:00] When there is something that comes up, that’s, you know, you weren’t expecting. It’s okay. Cause you at least know, like you said, okay. So they said, Hey, so I’ve got one, two, three.
Elizabeth: Okay. What’s going to work, you know? And so it really helps you be able to think on your feet, 10 steps ahead.
Dina: Yeah. And it’s also, I mean, trials are show. And I remember being a prosecutor and you always want to know your case front. You know, forwards and backwards. And you always wanted to know it so well that it was very clear to the judge that you knew what you were talking about and to the defense attorney that you knew what you were talking about.
Dina: So that if you were going to resolve that case, which is the goal so often. That was going to be the time because you knew your case so well and you knew the value of your case that the opposing counsel wasn’t going to pull one over you. And they also were more inclined to try to settle the case. And the judge would sometimes put a little pressure and be like, are you sure you want to go to trial?[00:37:00]
Dina: Do you see what’s happening here? So it’s important that we also do that for the sake of, in the civil context, it’s like for the sake of the client. It’s like, okay, what’s in their best interest?
Elizabeth: Absolutely. And, you know, most of the time, you know, in civil cases, they go years and years and years. So there are mountains and mountains of facts that go in with all that stuff.
Elizabeth: So it’s, you know, it’s again, having an organized, thoughtful planning way to go about revisiting and getting things ready for the show. That trial is really just. It puts you head and shoulders above so many other trial lawyers that are out there. And again, it makes a huge impression on judges.
Dina: Yes. But yeah, when you go into a courtroom confident, it’s going to make a difference in your case.
Dina: Managing and planning your time out in a way that’s effective is going to give you an advantage.
Elizabeth: Yes. And let me just point out confidence is different than the ego. [00:38:00] Yeah, yeah, definitely people who instead of planning, just try to rely on ego and that, you know, I can tell you jurors see just right through that very quickly.
Elizabeth: If you were just trying to rely on ego versus You know, confidence and knowing your file.
Dina: Oh, we can help. We could do some more stories on ego on this one.
Elizabeth: I love your three steps. I will say just from my personal experience in trying to, you know, grow business and really try to manage my time. I love this idea and I started to do it. I just call it my Sunday planning and I just take. 20 minutes. That’s all I’ll allow myself to do because I’ll do it for hours and do the same thing and just look at, you know, the week ahead and the week next and just not 20 minutes.
Elizabeth: Like you said, make some priorities, you know, puts things in different places so that I can Make time correctly. And I think one of the fallacies of every [00:39:00] person, no matter where you were, is we always underestimate the amount of time it’s going to take to do a task. Yeah. So having a little extra padding is just, you know, and not being hard on yourself for not getting things done at the perfect timing.
Elizabeth: I do want to
Dina: add this though, because this is something that’s so fascinating. And I’ve seen this. You in court where all right, it’s 12 o’clock council. I want you to find the answer to this question and come back at the 1 30 so that we can resolve this. And so having that hour because essentially I need to eat.
Dina: I need to get the answer. All of that in that hour and a half walk to court. I could do that. I researched, I found the answer, but it was because I had that limited time. I was able to do that and not feel like, okay, I need to spend five hours researching. And I think that sometimes I don’t know if you’re guilty of this.
Dina: I know I [00:40:00] have been going into research. We think we need to know everything versus let’s narrow it down to a specific topic. Let’s really narrow the search terms and then let’s go in and focus on that particular topic. And if you give yourself a limited time, like if you say an hour, you will be more likely to do that.
Dina: So there are certain tasks.
Dina: I’m only allowing myself 20 minutes to do this. I’m only allowing myself an hour of research on this particular topic. And then if I find something that’s particularly relevant, and I think I need additional time, I’ll find the time. But that can really help limit the procrastination of going down a rabbit hole.
Elizabeth: Oh, absolutely. And I totally, absolutely agree. I think it kind of goes back to when you’re sitting that estimate things like, and you’re going to write a blog or you’re going to write, you know, like 15 minutes is just not really. Let’s be [00:41:00] adequate, but I also love the same thing of like, okay, I have an hour.
Elizabeth: I need to get this done now because I am totally that way. Like if I’m going to research something, oh my gosh, I go down so many rabbit trails and I have, you know, and so one of the best pieces of advice is sometimes I got from the coaches I work with was like, okay, Elizabeth, just do three. Okay. Don’t do 10.
Elizabeth: Okay. Don’t try to find 10, just three. Really, really. I’m like, okay. Okay. But that’s really kind of one of those things where it’s like. We love research. Lawyers love to investigate and just find everything possible. And I’m, but you know, it’s like, Limit it. Give yourself an hour. Give yourself the rule of three, you know, because at the end of the day, like everything we have has a time limit.
Elizabeth: Opening statements have a limit, you know, the day has a limit in court. You know, we want to make sure that we really focus in and use our time correctly. But absolutely. I love the idea. And that’s what I do to myself too. Is like, when my calendar goes thing, then it’s done and I got to move on to the next thing in order to make sure that I have enough time to get it [00:42:00] done.
Elizabeth: Yes. Love it. Awesome. Thank you so much. Okay. Well, is there anything else to share? Because I know like thinking through, we’ve talked, we’ve covered so many wonderful things. Mindset, you know, the three top tools that you just talked about as far as prioritizing and calendaring and putting yourself first, which is So essential it is for any lawyer.
Elizabeth: So is there anything else that you feel like kind of can stand in the way, like thinking of like what the way lawyers think about things that maybe we just, we can’t even see that it’s standing in our way.
Dina: Yeah. I mean, one of the biggest things, and you did touch on this, is how we talk to ourselves. And I like to, Say it this way, which is talk to yourself like you want to succeed because so often we don’t talk to ourselves like we want to succeed.
Dina: We tell ourselves this is so hard. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m such a bad attorney. Like, shouldn’t I know this by now? Like, what are people gonna think about me? Are they gonna think I’m a failure? And really, when we think about what other [00:43:00] people think about us, it’s actually a reflection of what we’re thinking about ourselves.
Dina: So, really, we don’t see how we’re talking to ourselves day to day. We’re not recognizing all the little digs that we make at ourselves, like, Oh, I should have known that one. Oh my gosh, I’m such a moron. There’s some people who talk like that to themselves. And I used to be really mean to myself, like I created so much shame around The work that I was doing and it put me in a position where I would overwork because I was trying to outwork the feeling of failure.
Dina: I was trying to really push myself to perform, but I was doing it at my own expense, at my own mental and physical wellbeing, because I felt like I needed to prove that I was. good enough, but I was always good enough. We’re born good enough, but because I was speaking to myself in that way, I had the mindset of somebody who didn’t really truly believe it.
Dina: And so it was really [00:44:00] causing a lot of problems. It was also causing a lot of procrastination because the more I pressured myself, the less I wanted to do and the less energy I had to do it. So a lot of people blame themselves for that. They tell themselves there’s something wrong with them, that there really is something bad or malfunctioning.
Dina: It’s not that at all. It’s just a mindset thing that needs to be addressed. And one of the ways you can begin addressing it is by having compassion towards yourself, really recognizing that you are a hard worker, that you are good enough, that what you want matters. And at first you might not even believe those words.
Dina: If I’m saying it out of my mouth and you’re hearing this, and this is the position you find yourself in listening to this, then you might not even believe it. But I want you to know that it does take practice thinking those thoughts because it’s a new mindset. It’s a new way of being. It’s a new way of recognizing your value and it requires you having fierce compassion for yourself and [00:45:00] reminding yourself of how good you really are and all of the things that you are doing right.
Dina: All the reasons why you are good enough and you are doing the things that you are meant to be doing. So I would add that.
Elizabeth: What a wonderful, wonderful addition. And just so true. I mean, you started off telling us we have 60, 000 thoughts a day and a lot of them are the same ones. And unfortunately they’re mostly about ourselves.
Elizabeth: You know, it’s such a gentle, true reminder, but just so lovely. Okay. Before we end, I want you to tell us a little about your time piece management.
Dina: Oh yeah. Okay. So, well, first of all, I have a podcast called be a better lawyer, but I say that because I talk a lot about time management and mindset in the podcast and I have a program that is specifically where I’m working with lawyers inside a group and it’s all about time management.
Dina: And if you go to Dina Cataldo. [00:46:00] com forward slash time piece, I actually, it’s not open for enrollment right now, but I have a. Freebie there. So if you want to learn more about it and get some mindset working, it’s a workbook that allows you to really think through some of the issues we talked about in this episode, even so link the show notes for that.
Dina: Oh, excellent. Yeah. So time piece is really where we talk about. All things time management. And this week we were talking about resistance to doing work, resistance to, you know, doing the things we know, like we tell ourselves we should be doing. And so every week there’s usually a theme that goes along with what everybody is experiencing that week.
Elizabeth: Awesome. That sounds amazing. So, okay. So we know we want to know more. We have your podcast, being able to be a better lawyer. And then even if somebody wanted to work with you one on one, I know there’s strategy calls that you do as well.
Dina: I do. And I work with lawyers who have their own businesses. And [00:47:00] they want to grow their businesses and they want to do it without feeling overwhelmed.
Dina: So if that describes you and you’re listening to this and you’re vibing with our conversation, you can book a strategy session at Dina Cataldo. com forward slash strategy session. And we can talk about what that would look like.
Elizabeth: Awesome. Yeah. We’ll have links to everything in the show notes. Also, I want to plug your LinkedIn cause it’s always lovely and you put wonderful things out there as well to help people.
Elizabeth: So a great podcast as well with lots of really. Interesting, but like super helpful things to, if you’re growing a business, which most of us who are in employment and personal injury, we’re out there plugging ourselves away in our solo small firm. So I’m so glad that you were here to share with us and we’ll put all the links and everything in the show notes.
Elizabeth: So thank you so much, Gina, for coming and talking us through and giving us some wonderful tips. I won’t say strategies because really time management. If we call it a strategy, that means it’s like a time hack or whatever, which is totally not. It’s a [00:48:00] fundamental, you know, learning to, like you said, talk to yourself and having a mindset and putting yourself first and being super healthy about the relationship you have with time.
Dina: Oh yeah. This is a really great conversation. Thanks for having me on. Of course. Thank you.