My Lease is Up! Time for a Fresh Look at Overhead.

You've seen me post previously about renting too much or too nice of an office.  That was a BIG mistake of mine.  Worse yet, I had an escape clause that I could have exercised after either of the first two years of the lease, and I decided each time not to exercise it.  Dumb.

At the end of the first year, I figured I still needed the nice space to impress those clients that were going to walk through the door "any day now."  After all, it had only been a year, and everything I'd read told me I was supposed to still be losing money (which I was), so I thought I'd take it another year.  The two-year point was the pint, after all, at which I was supposed to start making money.

So another year went by, time to either get out of the lease or stick it out for the full three-year ride.  To tell you the truth, I can't really remember why I didn't exercise the early termination clause.  I know it was a conscious decision (i.e., that I didn't just forget and miss the deadline), but I can't remember why I made it.  Could be that I had a burst of business at the time that both made it inconvenient to move and convinced me that prosperity was around the corner.  Could be I was just stubborn and wasn't willing to admit that I had bitten off more than I could chew.  After all, I still had money in the bank back then.  Whatever the reason, I stayed in the for the long haul.

Now, the three years is up, and none too soon.  Beautiful building, great landlord, nice location, even fair rent -- but even the fair rent is more than I can afford right now.  So I am downsizing quite a bit.  A home office wasn't practical, so I still had to rent space, but at only about 36% of the rent I've been paying for the last year.  That ought to help.

A friend of mine helped me move some of my office furniture into storage (another expense, but I'm hoping I'll need it again in another year or so, and storing it is much cheaper than buying the same quality all over again).  He said to me as we were carrying something down to the truck, "I don't mean to sound callous, but I remember asking you as you were moving in (he helped with that, too), 'Are you sure you need all this space and this nice of an office?'"  I remembered that very clearly . . . damn!.

The change in office is a good opportunity to reevaluate all of my overhead.

Phone lines and Internet ISP?  Gone!  It will be less expensive for me to use cell phone for voice, Sprint wireless broadband for Internet, MyFax for Internet faxing.  With the wireless broadband, I can drop my ISP.  No hard feelings towards any of my vendors.  The AT&T service was fine, and I would happily recommend DSL Extreme, which was great.  But money is money.

Westlaw subscription?  That $500-a-month monkey on my back is over in about three more months, and I'm letting it drop.  I actually love the service, but handy as it has proven to be (working on those briefs and memoranda late at night, after the law library closes), my client load was never consistent enough for me to be sure I'd have clients to pass the cost through to every month.  I ate a lot of it out of my pocket.  Doing without will require two things: (1) a satisfactory, low-cost alternative (Loislaw, maybe) and (2) the discipline to adjust my work habits so I'm not doing late-night work and can get heavy-duty research done at the library (which happens to make Westlaw available to its patrons) during the day.

(You may be wondering why I have to work late at night when business has generally been slow.  Two reasons: (1) when I got business, it was in spurts, and (2) ADD [I think].)

The combined savings in rent, phone, Internet, and Westlaw will be around $1300 per month.  Yeah!

In any event, I'm sure happy for these changes.  Combined with a recent uptick in business, they are giving me reason to hope -- for around the 10th time or so since I opened my practice, I'm afraid --  that prosperity is right around the corner.

Here I go!

Get Your ADD Under Control Before You Go Solo

That post title may strike you as tongue-in-cheek, but it's not. I'm deadly serious. And forgive all the background you're about to read before you get to the point of this post, but it's necessary.

Do I have Attention Deficit Disorder? I don't know for sure. I've always considered it an over-diagnosed "disorder." But I can tell you that since I started writing this post around 60 seconds ago, I've already thought of 5 other things to do and I almost left this page in the middle of typing this to run a Google search on one of those items.

I used to joke about having ADD. When I was an in-house general counsel, I used to come home frustrated with all the different things that had tugged at my attention diuring the day, with the result that I would hop from project to project. I'd come home and tell my wife, "It's as if I have adult ADD!"

Well, maybe I do. My wife is fairly convinced of it. She's been reading up on it because our daughter has dyslexia, and dyslexia and ADD often go hand in hand.

I'm not yet convinced, but I'm getting there. I know how my mind can flit from one thing to another. But I don't quite seem to fit the profile. According to the book I'm reading, Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder, the typical ADD sufferer is an underachiever and behavior problem in school and tends to "settle" for an unsatisfying marriage and career. That just doesn't describe me at all. I was near the top of my class in high school and law school (undergrad, where I majored in electrical engineering, was another story -- I barely finished in the top half of my class). And, to put it mildly, I was (for the most part) a "goody two shoes." And I sure didn't "settle" when it came to marrying or my career. I think I made out like a bandit in my choice of spouse and I am in the career that I want, and that I thoroughly enjoy when I am not being distracted . . . I'm just not sure I'll be able to make a living at it on my own.

No, school was no problem, nor was my coice of spouse or career. It's everything else I have a problem with.

But I also think I demonstrate the upside of ADD: I am a creative thinker. Sometimes, too creative, which can be a problem. I come up with a million ideas during any given project, most of which are eventually jettisoned, but can get in the way of the development of ideas that make it through to the end.

So, whether I technically have ADD or not, whether it's actually a "disorder" or not (regardless, it is a different way of thinking), I know that I am distracted from my tasks many times during the day. Sometimes, I go to the law library to work, even if I don't need to use its resources, just to eliminate distractions like internet access and administrative office tasks. (I'm not about to seek medication, and will not self-medicate with alcohol or drugs, which is apparently common.)

I have the potential to succeed despite ADD. So, my immediate steps are to become aware of how my mind works. I am now very often aware when I am being distracted and can correct much better than I used to.

The authors of Delivered from Distraction note that many highly successful business people have ADD. I've only looked at one case study so far (I'm not very far in the book), but the keys seem to be to concentrate on being the creative guy and delegating out all the admin stuff.

That can be tough to do when you're starting out as a solo with no staff, but it can be done. For example, I think Foonberg's advice to hire a bookkeeper is the best advice in his book. You can also get cost-effective help with typing, etc., maybe hire someone to come in one day a week to get all your filing up to date. The less organizing you have to do, the better -- at least that's what my ADD-addled mind leads me to believe.

What else am I doing? My wife is reading a book titled ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life, and that's next on my list. I've also discovered an ADD-specific blog: The Splintered Mind by Douglas Cootey: Overcoming AD/HD & Depression With Lots Of Humor And Attitude (which looks especially promising because the blogger is, like me, very cautious about medicating for ADD). There are probably more out there, but I'll have to be careful not to over-commit.

So, finally to the point of this post. Be very honest with yourself about how you work. Have you been troubled by ADD? If you have, recognize it and plan for it. Start reading about it. I sure wish I had, instead of just joking about it.

UPDATE:  Ray Ward at the (new) legal writer has a post describing how distractions like e-mail and the telephone can interfere with getting actual work done.  I feel that distraction in spades.  Sequestering myself in the library is sometimes the only way to avoid it.