Five weeks ago, we started our series on how to create a Rainmaking To-Do list that you will actually get done – we took a break last week for the holiday.
Five weeks ago, you brain-dumped everything rattling around in your head. Then you culled it down to what you actually wanted to do. You prioritized your top three. Last week, you put them on the calendar like they were depositions.
If you’ve done all of that, you’re already operating differently from most lawyers when it comes to business development. But there’s one piece left, and it’s the piece that determines whether any of these stick past the first few weeks: the check-in.
Here’s what happens without it. Week one goes great. You make your calls, send your notes, show up for your scheduled time. Week two is a little shakier — a deposition runs long, something gets bumped. By week four, the calendar entries are still there, but you’ve started clicking past them without a second thought. Nobody decided to quit. It just quietly stopped happening.
The check-in is what catches that before it becomes the new normal.
Pick one fixed time each week — fifteen minutes, no more — to review your three priorities. Friday afternoon works for a lot of people, since the week is winding down and the upcoming week hasn’t started. Monday morning works for others, as the start of the week feels fresh. Calendar it like everything else.
Ask three questions about each priority. Did I actually do what I scheduled this week? If not, why not — was it a genuine conflict, or did I let it slide? And what’s the specific action for next week?
Be honest about the difference between a real conflict and an excuse. A genuine emergency happens occasionally. A pattern of the same priority getting bumped every week is not an emergency — it’s a sign that priority needs to move or that you need to protect the time more aggressively.
Track it somewhere simple. A notebook, a spreadsheet, whatever you’ll actually use. Not for the sake of data, but because seeing four consecutive weeks of follow-through is its own kind of motivation, and seeing a pattern of misses tells you something needs to change before you’re three months in with nothing to show for it.
Every ninety days, go back to the brain dump. This whole series is a cycle, not a one-time fix. New priorities will surface. Old ones will get accomplished or stop being relevant. The lawyers who build sustainable books of business treat this as an ongoing practice, not a project with an end date.
Here’s the thing about the check-in that makes it different from everything else in this series: it’s the only piece that requires you to be honest with yourself on a recurring basis. The brain dump, the cull, the prioritize, the schedule — you can do all of that once and feel accomplished. The check-in is what separates lawyers who build real momentum from lawyers who had a good month four months ago.
Fifteen minutes. Once a week.
That’s the series. Brain dump, cull, prioritize, schedule, check-in. Five simple steps, and yet most lawyers never do any of them — which is exactly why the ones who do stand out.
The post Rainmaking Recommendation #325: The Check-In first appeared on Enlightened Rainmaking.