I am a great believer in the OHIO principle: Only handle it once. When you read an e-mail, decide whether or not to reply to it, and, if you need to reply, do so right then and there. I have found that about 80 percent of all e-mails, whether internal or external, do not require a response.

Wall Street is at best ambivalent. The size of the accounts is nothing big. How many Wall Street firms do you know that are running after people with $5,000 accounts?

If you want an active schedule, you have to husband your time so you can act on the things that are important.

I am a great believer in the OHIO principle: Only handle it once. When you read an e-mail, decide whether or not to reply to it, and, if you need to reply, do so right then and there. I have found that about 80 percent of all e-mails, whether internal or external, do not require a response.

From the law firm's perspective, billing by the hour has a certain appeal: it shifts risk from the firm to the client in case the work takes longer than expected. But from a client's perspective, it doesn't work so well. It gives lawyers an incentive to overstaff and to overresearch cases.

You need to agree with your boss about what you need to get done that week, what are the metrics of success. Sometimes you need more hours, sometimes you need fewer hours.

Most people get overwhelmed by the insignificant decisions of their lives. I'm urging people to minimize the time spent on these when they're not critical to their most important goals.