The Hustle and Bustle…

This time of year, you don’t even need to ask friends and colleagues how they are doing. You know what the answer will be:

“I’m so busy.”

“I’m slammed.”

“I am so behind.”

“I’m so tired.”

Our society equates value with busyness. But one of the best gifts you can give your clients, your friends and family is to quit complaining about how busy you are or how tired/stressed you feel. A few years ago at WPG, we decided to eradicate the word busy from our vocabularies. My positive spin has been “I’m living abundantly!”

We can joke about the hustle and bustle, but in a number of recent client interviews we’ve heard clients express concern about their lawyers being too busy and how it impacts (or might impact) the work. When you tell your clients how busy you are, you risk creating the perception that you won’t have time to make them a priority.

A few examples:

“She’s so busy [that] I worry she doesn’t have time for us.”

“I can tell when they are busy because the responsiveness drops off.”

“It would be great sometimes if there is a third person when they are both so busy (like now) so they could flex onto our team.”

You may only have so much control over the length of your to-do list or the number of priorities you face before the end of the year. But you can control how your clients perceive it. Keep that in mind as you talk to clients in the coming weeks and avoid creating more concern. Even more, we hope you (along with us here at WPG) can find moments of rest and peace in the hectic days of December.