At Two IP we aim to help attorneys live the life they want to live. We have many conversations with patent and trade mark attorneys who are reflecting on their priorities, learning about what is important to them and identifying new exciting challenges they want to experience. It can, though, be a challenge to determine how they can balance all these things with a successful career.
In this blog, we share some of the questions we ask in our ‘business planning workbook’. This is the document we use to help patent and trade mark attorneys examine what is important to them and start visualising what they want their future to look like. If you are looking to create a change in your career, then this process might help you too.
What do you want this change to enable you to do?
Is there something that is driving you to consider a change? Perhaps it’s to do with your home life or maybe it’s a creative challenge that appeals to you? It might not be one single thing but a series of events or decision points that have led you to look for a different route.
What is important to you in your career?
What do you still want to achieve in your career? This might not be traditional goals such as partnership but might be about working with particular clients or solving emerging technical challenges.
What would your ideal working week look like?
What days would you work? What hours would you do each week? Where would you ideally work? These all make a difference to our quality of life and our ability to do things outside of work which are important to us.
What would you like to do more of outside of work?
It is easy to get trapped by the long hours and therefore sacrifice personal activities which bring us joy. If you did work fewer hours, how would you fill that additional time? What would you like to do more of if you had the chance?
What work would you like to do?
Experienced patent and trade mark attorneys can often find themselves not doing the work they really enjoy as over time that has been taken over by meetings, administration and training. What work would prefer to be doing every day if you could choose?
What do you want to earn?
Considering the life you want to lead, what would you realistically like to earn? If you’re not sure where to start with this, then play with our lifestyle calculator – you can test out some different scenarios of how many hours you want to work and what your income could be.
If working through these questions has identified that you are ready for a change but still want to be a successful patent and trade mark attorney, then take a look at our website to find out more about how Two IP works and see if our way of working is the answer you’ve been looking for.
