Tom Mighell and I have recorded another episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report podcast and it’s now available on the Legal Talk Network and on iTunes, with an RSS feed here. The episode is called “Powering Up Your Personal Productivity” (show notes here), and it’s sponsored by Clio. A special thank you to readers of this blog who listen to the podcast – consider trying out an episode or becoming a regular subscriber.

Here’s the episode description:

“Do more with less” is a mantra of the day. One of the great promises of the day is that technology will organize and optimize us, as computers take over the work we don’t need to do and make our lives easier. The reality feels more like a jammed email inbox, a mountain of to-do lists and technology we often fight with. In this episode, co-hosts Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell and special guest Allison Shields, discuss the importance of improving personal productivity and the role technology, when done well, can play in optimizing your work, enhancing your productivity and simplifying your life.

We haven’t had a guest host for a while and we wanted to talked about personal productivity. When it comes to personal productivity for lawyers, law practice management consultant Allison Shields of LawyerMeltdown.com and the Legal Ease Blog is certainly the first person I think of. She has published many articles, blog posts and podcasts on personal productivity for lawyers. All of them are highly practical and she speaks/writes in ways that lawyers can understand, presenting great information that you can put into immediate use. Tom and I were very pleased that she was able to fit a visit to our podcast into her busy schedule.

There’s a lot of great information and discussion about personal productivity in this podcast. In my opinion, anyone who listens to the podcast will take away at least one great tip that will help make his or her life a little easier than it is today.

We launch in with the basic, troubling question of whether technology designed to make us more productive has actually made us feel less productive and more overwhelmed than ever before. Our answers might surprise you. Then, it’s on to the impact of billing time on productivity, the central role of email management and whether there might be a “magic bullet.” If there’s a magic bullet, I haven’t found it. We also discuss the importance of seeing productivity as a process.

Allison offers a very useful way to think about categories of productivity and the need to assess where you have the biggest needs and what tools best address those needs.

We try to end on a note of hope, even though improving productivity is an ongoing battle for all of us.

In our “Questions and Answers” segment, we ask Allison “What are your best tips for improving personal productivity using technology?” Allison has some great ideas, especially about using calendars, and Tom and I chime in with a few tips of our own.

We end the podcast with our Parting Shots – practical tips you can use right away. Allison notes that effective use of Outlook is a key element in improving productivity and recommends Ben Schorr’s The Lawyer’s Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007. She also raves about an online scheduler called Tungle. Tom is also a fan of Tungle, and offers the new EverNote Trunk as his parting shot. EverNote Trunk is described as “a showcase of great apps and products that makes your Evernote experience more awesome.” I maintain that David Allen’s works are essential to understanding personal productivity and highly recommend his books, Getting Things Done and Making It All Work, and some GTD blogs and websites, including David’s website (lots of free resources) and the blog GTD Times.

Give our new episode a listen and let me know what you think. Show notes for the podcast are here. And try some of the back episodes as well. You can also now follow the podcast on Twitter at @tkmreport.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

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Now Available! The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Visit the companion website for the book at LawyersGuidetoCollaboration.com. Twitter: @collabtools