Bahar Ansari is the Co-Founder of 2nd.law, the first virtual law firm, and Case.one, a cloud practice management system for legal professionals.
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1. To kick things off, could you tell us a little about your career background and current role?
I am an attorney and I also co-founded a technology company building software for different verticals, for example for lawyers. I also founded the first global robotic law firm, called 2nd.law, where my current role is CEO and Partner.
When people ask what it means to be CEO, I always want to say that the CEO is the person who will clean the trash after everyone leaves the office. Your job is to do everything, to know everything and to take responsibility for everything, because at the end of the day unless you approve things don’t happen.
2. What does a typical day in the life look like for you? Can you take us through a recent workday?
I usually wake up between 6 and 6.30am. I take a couple of calls because we work internationally and that’s a good time to be on a different time zone. I get to the gym at 8, I work out for an hour, go home and work another 1-2 hours from home, get ready, take a couple more calls (either client or sales calls), I get to the office around 11 and work from there.
Usually do online zoom meetings. I always forget to eat lunch, unless somebody takes me with them, which is not good. My afternoons are my own productive time, between 3-6 is my prime time, since everyone at the office is almost done and ready to go home, so I am much less distracted, there is no calls, no interruptions, so this is the time for my responsibilities.
I get home between 6 and 8, eat dinner and after that those 2 hours is my creative time- I meditate, I think of ideas, I build things and catch up with my personal emails and social media.
3. Does your current role allow for flexible or remote working? If so, how does that fit into your life and routine?
Yes! This is the only reason I do what I do! Over the years as we have used more and more technology, my work has become more free, and in this moment and time I’m free enough to work from anywhere in the world for any period of time. Almost 100% of my work is on my phone or laptop.
4. Do you have any tips, tricks or shortcuts to help you manage your workload and schedule?
I am not the best at project management, even though I know a lot of methodology that works for other people. I personally work on to-do lists and checking things off gives me satisfaction, whether I finish it or not, the list stays and I always get to it to finish.
If you can relate your to-do list to a time frame, you get better results. My biggest tip: don’t do things that other people think you should do that works for them. All of these tips have to do with what feels right for you and works with your personality. So I’d say my advice is not to take anybody’s advice unless it feels right.
5. What does work-life balance mean to you and how do you work to achieve that goal?
I always talk about work-life balance. It was the biggest driver in me wanting to have this company to be able to build this virtual work environment.
To be honest, I completely fail at having work-life balance, I love my work and spend a lot of time working and creating, but I’ve been able to balance my work life by including my personal (friends and family) in my business.
If you have to think of work as work to balance against your life and fun, and you are not finding it then maybe you are not in the right job.
That’s because if you really love what you do, it’s a natural balance, since what you do is feeding your soul and your personal life does too, so it’s not like you get 8 hours of abuse and 8 hours of happiness, and you can’t work 9 hours because then it’s gonna cut into your personal time and make you more miserable.
If you truly enjoy what you do, you make time for it when you can. Your natural week progresses the way that when you are at home and have downtime, instead of going on Instagram or to watch Netflix, you pick up your laptop, because there is something you are truly interested in finishing.
Now, may be that’s delusional, not everybody might feel this way about everything they do, but that’s what work-life balance is- finding some things in your work life that you enjoy doing and try to sprinkle it and manage your time for the project in a way that you touch a little bit of it every day.
For example if your work requires artistic things that are inspirational and operational things you don’t enjoy that much, instead of leaving operations of until the last minute, sprinkle them in.
Maybe spend 2 hours a day and do a combination of those tasks, so you have this positivity about your work and something you look forward to, and the rest is just life- you gotta do what you gotta do.
If I say I love everything about what I do it would be a lie. I love the idea of what I do, and I love that I live towards a purpose, and it combines my skill set into one, when I think about it I get really excited, but if I talk about most of my daily tasks I could write a lot on how much I despise them.
Some of them aren’t even my forte. So something’s gotta give. And you balance that against things that feed your soul. To me that’s work-life balance.
6. What do you think are some of the best habits you’ve developed over the years to help you strive for success and balance?
Number one habit that I have learned, and I incorporate it into everything: no matter what happens in life, I don’t try to predict the outcome. I may think of all the different possible ways that it would go, but I’ve learned to just say to myself “let’s see.”
Because you do your best and there is a lot of different forces in play: life, business, economy, Universe, whatever you wanna think of, all you can do is your best and just put it out there and wait, and understand that you did your best and that’s what I always work on.
7. Are there any books that have helped you improve over the years?
- The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) by John Maeda
- Rebooting Justice: More Technology, Fewer Lawyers, and the Future of Law by Benjamin H. Barton and Stephanos Bibas
8. What is the number one thing you do to make sure you get the most out of your day?
It’s doing everything with intent and purpose. Everything I do in the day I think about it, do it and make peace with it.
9. Do you have any last thoughts on work, life or balance that you’d like to share with our readers?
One thing that’s recently been the most on my mind is that if you approach people and think to yourself “what can I learn about this person and what do we have in common?” and find similarities with yourself versus “why are we different” in any way as human beings, then you start training yourself to always look for a point of commonality and that’s what creates connection.
You build those connections by trying to find one thing that you can agree on and connect on versus how much you disagree on and you are disconnected from each other.
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