Toad Day

If this has a familiar ring, it’s because you’ve read this theme before in this blog. It’s important enough to repeat.

Toad Day is something I read about decades ago in one of the practice management texts I used to devour. It’s something we instituted at the office and practiced for years, at least until I joined the “big firm” where the best I could get was, “Oh, that’s a nice idea, but it’s not practical.”

The notion behind Toad Day is that we all have ugly stuff that piles up in our lives, practices, and businesses, and we all do the same thing with ugly stuff, we shove it into a dark corner for “tomorrow”.

But of course “tomorrow” never comes. We’re too busy with urgent stuff, so the ugly stuff just festers in the dark corner. And gets older, and riskier, and more complicated. And we forget important details. And pile more ugly stuff on top of it.

Until one day, like some malevolent fungus, it comes oozing out from under the doorway and spreads its evil slime all over our lives. It wrecks our day. Our week. Our month. And costs us a pretty penny in cash, time, opportunity, and reputation.

Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.

So we instituted Toad Day, twice a year. Booked solidly into the calendar, sacrosanct, unavoidable, no excuses. The good news was that you could wear grubbies, and pizza came in for lunch. Sometimes beer, too.

The bad news was that you had to go and get the Toad File, the one you hated most, the one you kept procrastinating. And put it right in the middle of your desk. Bang!

And then you worked on the Toad File exclusively all day long, or until it was finished, whichever came first. If you killed one, you’d go for another. No e-mail, no phone calls, no visits, no nothing, just grind away on the Toad File.

There were several clear benefits to Toad Day.

First, there was something liberating and energizing about getting an ogre out of the dark corner. It just made your step lighter.

Second, it almost certainly prevented professional negligence claims. Professional insurers tell us that the vast majority of Errors and Omissions claims arise from want of diligence in a file. Toad Day forced us to pay attention to files where we were being “undiligent” because we hated them and kept procrastinating.

Third, it taught us to make better and fuller notes when we worked, because nothing is worse than staring at a file with no idea what it was about, earnestly but futilely trying to remember what you had told the client.

Fourth, and maybe most important, it taught us to avoid Toad Files in the first place. We learned to say “No” to matters where we had no expertise or enthusiasm, and to clients with whom we weren’t comfortable. If you’re picky about your intake, you have much less difficulty with Toad Files.

Try it. It will change your life. Toad ya so!