There are some people, like me, who make lists upon lists upon lists for everything – grocery lists, cleaning chores lists, work lists, and business development lists, to name a few. I even have lists of blog posts and articles I want to write about. But this topic was not on the discussion list, which is why I want to write this piece.
The main justification for discussing it is that I have just realized that on most of my lists, I have written items and tasks that I think I should do but will never do, and that I really don’t want to do.
Sound familiar?
Be honest. How many times have you written “schedule a lunch with a referral source” on your to-do list? Or “follow up with that contact from the conference”? Or “update my LinkedIn profile”? And how many times have those exact same items rolled over to next week’s list? And the week after that?
Another problem is that no matter what you write on your list, when work gets busy with other tasks and deadlines, the lists go by the wayside. We are still in the legal industry where the billable hour matters (more than it should these days). A client emergency hits, a filing deadline moves up, and suddenly your rainmaking list is buried under a stack of matters that feel more urgent — even if they aren’t more important.
And then there are the lawyers who don’t use lists at all and genuinely can’t figure out why nothing is moving forward in their practice development. Hint: it’s not because they’re too busy.
But here’s the thing. To-Do Lists aren’t inherently bad – if you use them.
The real problem isn’t the list. It’s what’s on it. Most rainmaking lists are a mix of things you actually intend to do, things you think you should do, and — here’s the uncomfortable one — things you keep writing down so you feel productive without having to actually do anything.
That last category is the killer. It gives you the psychological satisfaction of having a plan without requiring any action. And it quietly drains your motivation every time you look at the list and see it hasn’t gotten shorter.
So here’s what I want you to do this week. One evening. Thirty minutes. A rainmaking brain dump.
Grab a pen and paper. Not your phone. Not your laptop. An actual pen and actual paper. There is something about the physical act of writing that engages your brain differently than typing, and for a brain dump, that matters.
Set a timer for 20 minutes and write down every single rainmaking task rattling around in your head. Every phone call you’ve been meaning to make. Every email you’ve been putting off. Every event you think you should attend. Every person you’ve been meaning to reconnect with. Every idea you have about growing your practice. Get it all out. No filtering. No judging. No prioritizing yet. Just dump.
When the timer goes off, stop. Then spend the remaining 10 minutes looking at what you wrote and asking yourself three questions about each item:
Do I actually want to do this?
Will this actually move my practice forward?
Or am I keeping this on the list so I feel like I’m doing something without actually having to do anything?
Be honest. Brutally honest. If the answer to that third question is yes, cross it off without guilt. A task you’ll never do isn’t a plan — it’s just noise.
What’s left is your real rainmaking list. Not the aspirational one. Not the performative one. The one you’ll actually act on.
Most lawyers carry their entire business development to-do list in their heads, which means it’s competing for mental space with every client matter, every deadline, and every other demand on their attention — for months, sometimes years. That weight is real. Getting it out of your head and onto paper doesn’t just organize your thinking. It frees it.
Try it this week. See what comes out. And be prepared for the moment when you realize how much of what you’ve been “planning” to do, you were never actually going to do.
Next week, we’ll talk about what to do with the list you just created.
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