One of the most lucrative and prestigious professions besides medicine is the practice of law. However, with increasing pressures and numerous changes in the legal world, the workload is rising at an unprecedented rate.
The most important part of an attorney’s professional life is time. There is severe competition to meet the required number of billable hours. Usually, an attorney needs to complete 12 billable hours on average for every working day.
Many attorneys lose track of time. This slowly becomes detrimental to their productivity levels. If they keep track of their time, their attention will divert. This is bad because their whole focus needs to be on their clients.
Let’s first understand some key responsibilities of an attorney. These include:
Advising and representing clients in courts or government agencies.
Researching and analyzing legal matters.
Assisting and communicating with clients.
Drafting legal documents for lawsuits, deeds, contracts, etc.
Preparing to defend clients in courts.
The above-mentioned responsibilities may not encompass the entire set of duties attorneys perform. But, the important point to takeaway is that with these excruciating pressures it becomes hard to track time.
How time tracking app can streamline processes for attorneys?
When an automated system like Stafftimer app is monitoring time for attorneys, they can spend more hours dealing with their clients without the hassle of manually filling timesheets. In the end, every minute matters when you are practicing law.
Time monitoring is not left in workspace
Yes, you can use Stafftimer even in a court or some meeting with a client. Its screenshot feature is optional. This means that you don’t need to worry about accidentally capturing case proceedings. Attorneys just need to enter a task, and get liberated from the stress of calculating time. The tracker shall keep counting it for them.
Daily work reports
An attorney will not need manually filled timesheets since Stafftimer provides them with daily work reports. These reports can serve as verified proof of their billable hours.
Accurate invoicing
Staftimers calculate work hours in an immaculate manner. No need to worry about getting inaccurate invoices and wasting your hard labor. The app provides effective solutions for these situations.
Clients can receive bills with the proof attached. Don’t worry about bothersome tasks like payroll and making calculations for invoices. An attorney’s every minute counts and Stafftimer takes great care of it.
Intelligent reporting and real-time monitoring
As an employer or a partner in a law firm, your resources are not getting wasted. Why? Because Stafftimer is taking care of them. The app provides employers with daily reports. These reports can tell how much time an associate lawyer was spending on each task or window.
With real-time monitoring, employers know how much time an attorney is taking on each case as it live-shares their screens. This way, employers always know who has the chance to progress further and who is struggling.
Cost-effective solution
When an employer knows who is productive and who is a dead fish, they can save their resources by eliminating unproductive employees. Legal practice needs aggressive competition between equally capable persons. It can’t afford to carry someone around.
Team members’ hours can be tracked to plan budget costs. This data can then be used to accurately bill clients.
Offline tracking
If attorneys are out of the workspace and lose connection to the internet, Stafftimer will keep on working. It will update from the back-office once the connection is restored.
Female lawyers
Ambitious lawyers who are also mothers will find it difficult to split their time. Either they can spend quality time with their kids or focus most of their attention on their practice. Seeing this complicated predicament for their female lawyers, some major law firms are offering flexible work options.
This means that they can choose to work from home on certain weekdays. However, the real challenge is how to ensure that they are actually working? And how many hours they are spending on work? Stafftimer solves this problem by keeping track of time. This way, everyone gets paid according to the number of hours they’ve put into work.
Conclusion
Employee monitoring software is a crucial need for the legal world. Their work, routine, and progress all revolve around billable hours. Therefore, it’s necessary for them to use a time tracking software that can monitor their time. This lets them pursue their commitments without any worries.
Quality of life is a distinct concept from the standard of life. It’s your monetary capabilities that define your standard of life. But the quality of life lies in the contentment of heart.
It’s the small things in life that lay foundations of long term happiness and more importantly peace of heart. Some forms of happiness that are heavily relied upon as a benchmark of success and accomplishment only bring in temporary charms.
We, at times, mistake excitement for happiness and is short-lived.
Somebody landing an admission offer from Ivy league or a six-figure job might feel over the moon. For the time being, one feels its effect is going to last for eternity. Even though after some days when the excitement fades and the new change becomes a routine of your life you start feeling empty.
At times even worse than before. The reason is the spike in expectations generated as a result of that pleasant change in life. Materialistic accomplishments can inflate the human ego but the satisfaction of heart is just another matter.
So what are the factors that raise our quality of life if not these things?
Let’s discuss how we can improve the quality of life?
Quality of life is a subjective reality. You can’t generalize it. For some it’s maintained through their love for pets, for others it means books or family. An old lady in the neighborhood feels the serenity of heart seeing her garden every morning. So basically everyone defines it in different ways. No single formula exists for all.
1. Nothing can substitute for healthy relationships
No matter if you own a BMW or a luxury mansion in a posh area. If you are lonely in your life or even at heart, it will all look meaningless. Time spent with loved ones and quality of relationships add towards the longevity of life and overall well being.
Lack of quality relations is equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Risks of cardiovascular issues or dementia are drastically decreased too. Successful marriages bring in similar positive effects in contrast to a problematic one.
Some people while running for material growth forget it a big deal whom they are earning for? Spending over time at work or lack of quality time with families can cause feelings of frustration in individuals without realizing the cause. Working 16 hours a day to earn extra bucks but not being able to make it for an event at your child’s school won’t bring you satisfaction.
Instead of becoming a part of the continuous rat race, learn to value your relationships. They boost the sense of security and fulfillment in a person, not commodities. Things are meant for people, not people are meant for things.
2. Modern work habits differ a great deal from good old days!
When we say we are working, it’s not the same when our grandparents used to say they were working. Their work habits didn’t leave space for workouts or exercise. Instead, their work was an exercise in itself. Even in old age like beyond 80, or 90, people of preceding generations were more active than our present ones.
They were not excessively reliant on machines, used to plow fields, execute household chores themselves without any paid help. All of these factors strengthen vital organs, decrease the chances of obesity and keeps one active.
Whereas our generation tends to work for longer hours, but our mode of professional life doesn’t add to our physical well being. To keep the traditional work spirits alive, one can make some modest changes into the routine.
Instead of totally relying upon household help, there should be a distribution of tasks. Where both of you work side by side thus keeping your system running. Since a desk job will tie you up with the seat so enhance your activity at home. Do a walk for at least 20 minutes after every meal.
A workout is a good option but if you have long working hours, or families to look after along with work, it might not be a good option. Spending another 2 or 3 hours outside of home shall start giving you a feeling of being a guest in your own home.
3. Are you a foodie?
If yes, then this question was not to compliment you. Foodie in a contemporary sense has become someone with excessive intake of calories than normal. Processed, or junk food, carbonated drinks, and usual essentials of our daily meals are adding less value and decreasing more.
Eating organic has become a fashionable slogan with little implementation. Again in the old days, organic food was a norm and health issues or chronic diseases like those of today were almost non-existent. Nowadays commercialism has taken place of reasoning ability and many prefer harmful food more because of apparent taste.
4. Health is wealth
One’s emotional and physical well being are connected with their state of health. Our family/social lives, eating habits and work routine are all crucial and essential basis to maintain health and longevity of life. Money isn’t a savior and many affluent ones are suffering from acute depression. So be mindful of your lifestyle preferences.
Abkhazia, a small region under the administrative authority of Georgia has remained a center of attention for international media and global researchers. The reasons are extreme longevity of life and immaculate health of its elderly people. Many hit 150 there and above 100 is a norm.
In fact not only a norm even after hitting century they keep on working in fields and old women knit without glasses. Some men are reported to have kids after the age of 100. And research shows they don’t even suffer from chronic diseases or any significant health issues.
What are the reasons behind it?
The ones we discussed above. They eat organic completely and no concept exists to consume more calories than needed. They live in a form identical to tribal setup. With each family consisting of 50 members. The love and bonding don’t let them get old.
Even a person at 110 looks like 70 years old. Besides, they work at least four hours a day even after hitting the 90s. They don’t seem to retire and remain active in their collective social life for longer. The things we call backward or conservative add value to life. The lifestyle habits we left behind were the ones adding value to it.
5. Leave your comfort zone
It’s not always good not to take risks or embark upon new adventures. Sometimes leaving your monotonous and boring routine and sitting on a roller coaster ride of life brings more taste to life.
Like you eat daily from home or sometimes from a classy restaurant, but eating from a little cart by the street side has its own value. This is just an example. The real thing is to keep trying something new or different. Learning a new language, an art or a skill but keep experiencing life.
6. Become a voice for the voiceless
Do remember that people around the world and in every state suffering from some racial, political, ethnic or religious injustices and crisis. Do become their voice. Work for social change and resistance. When you find yourself capable of bringing even the tiniest change into society, it makes you feel actually accomplished.
7. Travelling brings a real-life exposure
When you’re traveling, ask the traveler for advice / not someone whose lameness keeps him in one place. (Rumi)
Travel brings in light and refreshment to life. Visually and physically experiencing new cultures, rituals, languages, traditions, and landscape creates vitality in life. It also broadens your horizons and adds new dimensions in life.
You will understand how much more you need to learn and explore in life. And it’s not confined to where you were glued before. You will emerge as more experienced and tolerant of views and beliefs contradictory to your own.
8. Read, learn and impart knowledge
Reading social media posts, or a newspaper doesn’t constitute proper reading. Learning anything new be it language, skill or a piece of knowledge acts as a form of mental exercise.
Therefore serving as a protection shield from Alzheimer’s and mental diseases. Also learning and education play an important part in the expansion of life span and keeps one healthy.
Book reading can trigger happiness in the human mind. When you read any literary text, you start imagining yourself in the world of your characters. You visualize the age and places spaced far apart than your own.
Similarly, if you are reading a philosophical text your brain starts racing to unlock the answers to complex questions. It makes you play mental gymnastics. The same applies for any subject. Knowledge comes to revive the emotional spirits of man, thus adds towards a sense of fulfillment.
But mere learning doesn’t suffice. Spread what you learned. Be it through writing, lecturing or just word of mouth. Especially writing helps one vent out their internal frustrations.
9. Money is not a useless thing either
By no means, its implied that earning a substantial amount is something evil and one should drop the idea of pursuing material success. It is important too. Getting short of finances can cause heavy stress in life.
After all no matter how many meaningful elements you have in life. You still need to pay the bills. The real thing is not to make it a purpose of life. Some people consider money as the end goal. Whereas its just a necessity of life. Like you need food to live but you don’t live for food. The same applies here. It’s not a purpose or ultimate goal.
But do strive for a good standard of life. Just remember don’t do it insanely. If you devise a careful strategy and worked hard. Money shall reach you eventually.
10. Learn to live for others
Even an animal cries when feeling pain but a human is one who feels for others as well. If you are blessed with anything try to share it with those who need it. If you have money more than you need than fattening your bank account won’t bring any gratification.
Its helping others, that would. Involving yourself in some charity work shall make you feel more at peace with yourself. Blessings increase with sharing.
No matter what one says or writes. Ultimately you can best decide and find for yourself what brings you real happiness. A man is capable of recognizing himself like none else. So do some soul searching and reach for the best conclusion yourself.
Time management is a real challenge. There is a lot of information available on the internet to teach us how to manage time. But most of the time the article itself is so much time consuming that it seems to negate the whole purpose of time management itself.
We would like to keep it brief so the attention span of the reader remains constant. Time is to work what oxygen is to the body. Squandering it into unnecessary diversions can act as a productivity killer. Let’s examine a few techniques that we can adopt to keep us on track.
Planning a day in advance keeps you organised
Use a proper planner or something like that to keep you on track to plan a day ahead in a coherent manner. Simple planning in the head won’t suffice. It has to be properly updated and maintained as a task manual for yourself. So you can check your progress.
“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
Precisely what it means is to execute your most challenging work assignment as the first thing in the morning. You may find yourself short of energy later in the day to handle it more productively. It can be something that was the most time-consuming task. So having a feeling that you are done with some hefty portion of your day’s assignment can make you feel relieved. Thus, you feel more energetic and productive for the rest of the day.
Also eating the biggest frog of the two can mean that if you are facing the situation to deal with two assignments that will consume most of your time. Then first get done with the biggest or the lengthy one. But frog doesn’t imply that you ought to do the thing you abhor.
It simply alludes towards the fact that we usually don’t hate the task itself but the time and energy consumption associated with it. So devour it first so you can add some sweet delights to your taste buds in the form of lighter tasks for the rest of the day. Especially when you feel least productive.
Time tracking tools: acting as the savior for disorganized people
Yes, you always felt confused about calculating the time mentally that you spent on various tasks. Knowing how much was consumed in each task? Seembothersome right. But it’s no longer the case with the advent of Staff time tracking software.
These time management tools help save a lot of time with automated time tracking rather than old redundant ways of writing manually or taking help of guesswork. You can always know which task consumed most of your time and which one is a light one.
Therefore you can always manage accordingly to deliver more in less time. You will feel deterred from wasting time knowing its being tracked. So subscribe to a good time tracking software and get rid of all the trouble of manual time tracking.
Control your social media habits
It doesn’t mean you stop using social media for life. It merely means keeping it away from your work life. Whether you admit it or not its the biggest ever distraction if we want to do anything productive.
A constant urge to checking your messenger or social media accounts can divert your attention from your work even after you turn off the phone. Because the content of your interaction shall keep hovering inside your head. You may find your work boring or lacking vitality. So turn off the Wifi or better keep the phone at a place like a locker or something. Where you find it bothersome to go and access.
Learn to say no
Warren Buffet once said,
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
Yes, it might happen at the workplace that you encounter colleagues trying to overload you. Know that your one straight no can save you from the hassle of wasting your productive time on uncalled for tasks.
Take breaks to refresh yourself
Use the Pomodoro technique to take a short 5-minute break after every half an hour. And take a longer one after two hours. It can make you fresh in a way you refresh your computer’s screen after every while. Humans inherently seek variety and start feeling bored from the monotony of routine. So a tiny break doesn’t hurt and helps you recollect energy to resume working. It’s better you spend few minutes in a break rather than procrastinating from the boredom of routine.
Eisenhower Matrix serves as a beacon of light to keep the useless stuff away
The first one is about doing the thing on foremost priority which is both urgent and important. Obviously there are things that you need to execute on time to meet deadlines and they are important too. So keep them on the top.
The second quadrant is there for an important task which isn’t urgent than plan for it. Organize structure on how to deliver it and when. But you are in no hurry for doing it now. So timely planning shall help when you actually be doing it. But for now, just defer and focus on what’s urgent and important both.
Third one asks to delegate the task. Well, it’s a kind of work which is urgent but not important. Therefore you can always ask a relevant person to do it if you are busy with something urgent/important.
The fourth and last quadrant is which is neither important nor urgent just delete it. Throw this task away. It serves no good.
Conclusion
Being busy is a lot easier than being productive. And productivity demands smartly crafted time management techniques. Which if followed religiously, they can help one progress significantly in lesser time.
With the rise of Artificial Intelligence, there is a lot of uncertainty revolving around the future of human employment. Regardless, this doubt about ‘robots taking our jobs’ isn’t completely baseless. There is little done to enhance awareness regarding AI technology and its implications.
Evidently, the benefits outnumber the disadvantages but unfortunately, with lack of awareness comes fear towards the emergence of self-conscious AI. Automation and AI, will change everything about life and how we do things? In short, it is transforming the world.
Make humans Aware of the importance of AI
Artificial Intelligence is an intriguing concept that has fascinated mankind for years. There have been amazing breakthroughs in AI, and machine learning altogether. Machines, using this technology can perform complicated problems, which once was impossible for the human mind.
Yet, there has been significant debate regarding the risks and concerns about AI being too smart for laymen. Fear, that, AI will take over our lives one day, is prevailing.
A blessing in Disguise?
Although the implications of Artificial Intelligence might sound detrimental to mankind. This technology is not a curse, but rather a blessing in disguise. It’s a duty of organizations and governments to invest in raising awareness among the masses about how it can have positive effects on our day to day productivity.
One of the major concerns among people is: what will be the future of our jobs? And why should we invest in the development of such technology using our taxes that is going to work against us? They should know that proceeding with smart strategies lessens any trouble or harm.
Even though robots might already be taking our jobs. But it’s unlikely that it can ever replace jobs involving intellectual, literary, or emotional attributes. The biggest effect will be a change in how humans work. It will change the skills, the tasks and the way of doing jobs. But, it might not strip you off of your jobs, entirely.
As for STEM students
The government needs to invest more in producing AI specialists in the future. So basically educated ones are not going to face a setback. Now coming to the labor force, many manual tasks won’t be available anymore. True.
But wait, hasn’t it been the case historically? Kings used to have slaves to fan them or real-time entertainers for leisure. Now electricity replaced fanning and broadcast media eroded a need for court or street comedians. So should we give up on these inventions and get back to the stone age? No. Then why reluctance now?
Automated technology helping human manpower
As discussed above, there is a huge fear in this regard that robots are going to replace human jobs. A robot can’t be a writer, artist or a political theorist, just to name a few.
Likewise, since robots are developed by the human mind, so more humans are needed to keep it functioning. Robots can not fix themselves if hit by some functional error. Manual tasks like data entry or similar repetitive functions can be taken over by robotics.
With robotics, there is a higher chance of accuracy than humans. They can multitask and process thousands of entries in seconds. For instance, in the medical or legal sector, robots can help make a diagnosis or legal documentation in much lesser time than usually taken. So basically robots are there to increase human productivity as helping hands.
Automated machines have helped to ease the process at factories, industries, and the agricultural sector. Keeping everything in mind, Human manpower is still in control. Tractors and trolleys put trouble of farmers at a halt and didn’t oust humans from their work.
Artificial Intelligence as a productivity booster
AI technology for sure has the potential to enhance productivity in the workplace but it’s not as widely used as it should have been. Let’s discuss some of the ways in which Artificial Intelligence seems to be increasing employee’s productivity.
Ever heard of the language of mind?
Neuro-linguistic programming also known as NLP is a process of involving mental processes that are converted into language thus formulating our behaviors. Which not only include our personal lives but more precisely professional one. On the personal side, you are familiar with the people you are dealing with. But in the professional realm, it’s your communication, body language or expressions that can make or break businesses.
This AI-based program helps to identify strengths and weaknesses embedded in one’s subconscious. Not only that they can detect the negative signaling in their behaviors that might deter many clients and work-based relations.
It’s like learning the language of the mind. How to eradicate barriers in better communication and be more productive at the workplace. And that can be done with the help of NLP designed by therapists and programmers to foster strong work relations.
Facial recognition
When a friend tags us on facebook, no matter how different we look across various photos. Facebook always recognizes us. How does it happen? Machine-based deep learning-enabled this software to act as flawless as possible.
Machine learning use algorithms to parse data. Which makes it efficient in facial recognition, biometrics, or data storage. It’s capable of even developing driverless cars, or recommend movies.
How facial recognition can enhance productivity in the workplace?
In many countries, buddy punching practice exists. This means that one employee arriving on time could manually mark the attendance of a friend even if he was an hour late. AI-based or Biometric system of marking attendance relieved employers from this trouble now they always know who came when? Thanks to machine-based deep learning technologies.
AI-based Softwares and Security
In the present age of cybercrime and terrorism. Security-based software has helped in identifying many trouble makers. For instance in USA SMMS( Social media monitoring software) is in action to identify potential criminals or a malicious individual. Likewise, China uses facial recognition software to maintain security.
The machine-based real-time monitoring system is used for security and surveillance in the corporate world. We are not living in the 90s where the only way for staff monitoring was micromanagement. It lets you record everything you work on using its magical memory. All data is secured using advanced algorithms and applications of machine learning.
Now you can monitor even your remote workforce while sitting in the comfort of your home using AI-based technologies. The system is so automated that it can easily detect how much time was consumed in productive work, and how much was wasted or procrastinated upon. It’s saving resources of companies worldwide.
