Late-comers to the paperless revolution almost always desire to get a fresh start. The proposed plan is most often to start moving to a paperless system by a heavily settled date, at which point the existing motherlode of paper files…
The Wednesday morning meeting in Cambridge will now be held in room 3007. If you have any questions, please call Lottie 617-482-9600
View image | gettyimages.com I visit a lot of law firms; and, I’ve seen a lot of stuff . . . most which I can’t tell you about, because -- well, you know. So, it’s not every day that…
It is the normal human experience to feel a range of emotions from elation to deep sadness. Some people feel this range of emotions to a lesser degree (find it hard to feel intense emotions) while others feel it to a greater degree (find it hard not to feel intense emotions). Typically, by the time a person has reached adulthood, he or she has some sense of the likely emotional patterns that they experience. A common experience that makes people feel alarmed is when they have an unexpected emotional experience. For example, if a person generally copes well with stress and adversity and s/he all of a sudden has an unexpected reaction to a stressor. I have heard many people say something to the effect of, “I usually bounce back after a setback, but this time I’m not bouncing right back.” Whether the change is due to the situation or to the person, the fact is something is different.
One of the more common issues that professionals struggle with is the all-too-common procrastination. Procrastination, just like salsa, can be mild (putting off a simple task that you eventually complete within a few days), intense (developing a pattern of avoiding certain activities or tasks that one day lead to serious consequences), and everything in between. However, unlike salsa, there is no mango version of procrastination.
Simply put, procrastination is avoidance. We avoid things that make us uncomfortable. We avoid things that we fear. And the more you avoid something, the harder it is to confront. It’s like that email you got from an old friend that you were meaning to reply to. At first you put it off because you weren’t sure what to say (avoidance), then maybe you forgot about it, then you remembered that you hadn’t responded, you then felt bad, and then continued to avoid responding because it was now more uncomfortable because you still don’t know what to say AND you feel bad about it.
In my first post of this series on securing your data, I addressed the Massachusetts Data Privacy Laws, which provide standards for businesses that keep certain types of personal information. Part of the my discussion followed the insights of a panel…
Problems come in all shapes and sizes. Needless to say, having only one method of addressing problems would be like having only one tool in your toolbox to fix every household maintenance problem that arose. By the way, I don’t recommend using a hammer to remove a light fixture. Usually doesn’t work out the way you hope. So it is obvious that we need multiple methods of addressing all of the different types of problems that we face each day. Obvious? Yes. Yet in reality we often get into trouble trying to use a preferred problem-solving method with problems that require a different approach.
View image | gettyimages.com Even in an increasingly cloud-based world, physical location still matters. The cloud itself, after all, is really just access to remote servers, hosted by someone, somewhere . . . hopefully not in North Korea. Most…
Multiple times throughout our day we are all faced with decisions to make. Some decisions are easy and do not require much energy, while others are quite taxing and require considerable mental fortitude. Understanding the factors involved in these tougher decisions can help break through the barriers that often keep us from making a decision. One unhelpful tendency that can occur is the experience of over-thinking or over-analyzing a decision. This involves spending too much time considering the options (the pros and cons of potential choices) to the point where a decision is never made, aptly referred to as “Analysis Paralysis”. A desire for perfection and a fear of failure often fuel this tendency. It’s important to recognize that when we are faced with options, it is inevitable that each option will have both pros and cons associated with it. In other words, there is no perfect option, so stop looking for it. It’s important to recognize the pros and cons of each option, to accept that whatever you choose might not work out, try to see failure as a learning opportunity to embrace and not something to avoid at all costs, and try to see your decision as one step in the process and not the final step.
The year 2014 brought us major products like Apple's iPhone 6 and Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3, but what about legal-specific products? Well, fortunately, Neil Squillante of TechnoLawyer has that covered. Published by Squillante and staff, TechnoLawyer is a premier publication for lawyers interested in…