Recapturing Time for Business Development

As readers of the Page 2 blog know all too well, we want to see attorneys invest time in their LinkedIn presence. It’s a cost-effective way to network, establish credibility, and boost your visibility with potential clients. Despite those perks, it can still be a struggle to find the time or energy to use the platform. With that in mind, here are some helpful time and task management tips to streamline your day — and free up more time for LinkedIn.

Manage your inbox

A great way to free up some precious time is to get a handle on your inbox. Give the inbox management app SaneBox access to your email account, and its Sane bots will analyze your email history. It could take five minutes or a few hours, depending on the volume of email in your inbox. When the bots are done, only important emails will remain in your inbox. Unimportant emails will be sent to a separate folder called Sane Later, and future emails from any sender will be sorted to the Sane Later folder or your inbox. Another option is the app Mailstrom. It identifies bundles of related mail and makes it easy for you to act on them as a group so you can slice through tens, hundreds or thousands of emails at once — living the dream! In just a few clicks, you can unsubscribe and delete thousands of messages while keeping the important ones. Plus you can use Mailstrom’s one-click block function to stop any unwanted senders or subjects from cluttering up your inbox in the future.

Use a task management tool

Maybe your inbox is just one of many tasks spinning out of control. Another way to increase your efficiency is to use a project management tool that allows you to organize, manage, and track work activities. At Page 2, we use Asana to help our team assign tasks, select due dates, share files and stay in touch. We can see what everyone is working on, and can collaborate, discuss work details and break large, overwhelming projects into small, manageable steps. Microsoft ToDo is a similar product and plays well with the Microsoft Office suite, including Outlook.

Make better use of the technology you already own

Before you adopt a new tool, make the most of the tech you already have. If you own an iPhone you can change your settings to switch off notifications for email. Or you could create custom text messages to reply to calls you don’t want to take. Another time-saving trick is to use keyboard shortcuts. Need to get back a paragraph you accidentally deleted? Hit Ctrl + z to “undo” your mistake. It’s kind of like having your own little time machine. And take advantage of free tutorials and training online, both on YouTube and on the websites for the apps you use. You have a buffet of options at your fingertips.

If you work for a large firm, your IT department may have policies against using these specific outside apps, but you can still apply their principles in other ways, and it’s worth asking what you can use. Dedicating a little time to learning how to better use your devices can make your life easier. Add to that the power of a managed inbox and an organized list of tasks, and you can start freeing up some major time. Before you know it, you’ll be back to dominating the business development game like a true LinkedIn pro.