All of us, especially parents, engage in triage from time-to-time. But public defenders do more triage than the average person. Any public defender who can�t learn to triage at least minimally well quits or is fired for not making caseload. All the good legal skills in the world won�t help you survive if you can�t triage. Being good at triage is a matter of judgment and experience. Being excellent is the art of making it appear so effortless that the person in front of you doesn�t remember or care that you are doing it. Training new attorneys, as I did today, requires thinking about how I triage so they can learn too. It occurred to me, however, that the lessons I tried to teach today apply in my life outside of work as well.

In every walk of life, those who are good at triage follow the basic rules. They dutifully sort tasks into things that must be done right away, things that can wait a bit, and things that would be nice but would not cause a problem if not done�at least for a very long time. They sort tasks into essentials and frills. They analyze, they time, and they balance. What must be done gets done by the date it must be done.

Better triage requires remembering a few more principles. After you sort what must be done right away, the things that can wait are best sorted again. Mentally stack them into items that will be more work if done later and items that will be either the same amount of work or less. Organizing files, for example, is an easy step to keep skipping over because it is not essential but, at some point, it begins to cost so much searching time that you�d be better off doing it sooner rather than later.

All of us panic sometimes when the chores pile up. When panic is threatening and you feel like Sisyphus, take your list of immediate tasks and look for the one you can do fastest or easiest. Do that one first. Just the act of crossing something off your list (either mentally or with pen and ink) often is enough to alleviate panic and get a body moving again. If nothing on the immediate task list looks doable, file a few things. There�s nothing like reducing a pile to give you enough feeling of accomplishment to push on. As an added bonus, it generally doesn�t require much brainpower either so it can be done when panic has turned your brain to mush.

When doing triage involving people standing in front of you, the temptation is to be thinking about the next task and moving the current encounter along. But appearing to hurry will cost you. If you appear to hurry, the person inevitably will slow down. There�s just something contrary about people that way.

Appearing to listen and accounting for feelings will save time eventually. If you appear to listen really, really hard in the first few encounters, you can get away with hurrying someone later. Remember too that the person in front of you doesn�t care if you get tasks for other people done. Saying, �I�d love to chat with you but I need to hang up the phone so I can do X in your case� will get you much farther than explaining that you simply don�t have the time.

Make sure your watch is visible, if necessary, but never in a location where glancing at it is obvious. Holding paper with the hand that wears your watch so you can see it when you are writing notes is a subtle way to know the time. Taking lots of notes is good too and not just when you get older and your mental hard drive begins to fill up. Taking notes convinces people you are listening�and if you take notes in shorthand, bad handwriting, or with brief words, make it a priority to type them up or fill them out. You will not remember what they say in a month even if you think you will�unless they are about trivia anyway in which case you probably will remember them.

Yes, triage is an art. You can�t display it proudly on a museum wall or do it on a stage and get applause but doing it well is an art form nonetheless. Who would have thought that I, the creator of many an interesting piece that caused even my mother to wonder what it was, could ever be considered an artist.

But I am.

|