Hello again everyone! I am very excited to report to you that my next book (number six) is in the hands of the publisher and should be out by this summer.[1]  The working title is The Productive In-House Lawyer: Tips, Hacks, and the Art of Getting Things Done.  I think you are going to really enjoy reading this one, especially if you find yourself pressed for time to do all the things you need to do on your to-do list.  Which basically means anyone reading this.  The book is jammed to the rafters with different ways to squeeze more time out of your day with the goal of getting more done (and more important things done) in the time you have vs. working more.  While I am not going to go into too much more detail here (I do want you to actually buy it when it’s available), there is one section of the book I keep coming back to in my head.  What section is that you ask?  Well, thank you for asking!  It is the section on how to say “no.”  In particular, how to create a “Not-to-Do” list, i.e., a set of principles that guide how you will spend your time by setting out the things you will not spend time on (or spend significant time on).  I certainly cannot take any credit for the idea of a “Not-to-Do” list.  The concept has been around forever, and history is full of people wildly succeeding at not doing things, such as Emperor Nero standing by while Rome burned, my law school roommate, the Kardashian family, Congress… okay, enough of that.  But you get my point, and that is the blindingly obvious fact that one path to getting more done is to reduce the number of things you are doing (Hey, I never said this was rocket science).  One way to do that effectively as an in-house lawyer is to create a list of things you will not do – a “Not-to-Do” list.  Alas, yet another thing law school, law firm, etc. never teaches you how to do (though it is such a fantastic tool).  So, let’s fix that problem.  This edition of Ten Things walks you through how to create a Not-to-Do list (and how to use it):

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