Your practice isn’t built overnight. It gets better each and every day with your constant effort. You can’t, however, just show up and handle cases and expect your practice to grow and improve. You’ve got to put some energy each day into the practice if you’re going to build your vision.

Here are nine ways to improve your practice. Do these things, and you’ll see a change. I’ve tried them all more than once and they work—I promise.

1. Schedule 15 minutes per day—put it on your calendar—to plan your week and your day. Work with a to-do list (on paper or online). Start the week on Monday with a plan, and update your list every morning. Lock in on three to five items for the day and get them done before you knock off. Don’t let the day force you to deviate from the plan.

2. Sit in your lobby, watch, and listen. How’s the noise level? What or who can you hear? How does the furniture look? Is it in decent condition? How old are the magazines? Are the plants dead? Take notes and assign someone to fix things.

3. Call five lawyers and schedule lunch with each one. At each lunch, ask for help growing your practice. You’ll enjoy making connections and seeing old friends, and you’ll get some good ideas and some referrals.

4. Send flowers and a thank you note to someone on your staff. If you don’t have a staff, then send them to someone who has done something nice for you. It’ll make their day and yours.

5. Get current on returning your calls. Call everyone on the list today. Allowing messages to pile up only makes things worse. Delaying an unpleasant conversation is like leaving a dead body in the heat—it only stinks more. Return your calls each day.

6. Fire two clients today. Pick the two clients that are driving you crazy, insulting your staff, and just aren’t worth the money. Make them available to the legal community so someone else can have the pleasure (be sure to comply with your licensing rules). Feel free to send them flowers as well.

7. Learn something about something. I’d suggest you spend 20 minutes reading about QDROs or family law taxation. We never seem to know enough about dividing retirement plans, and they represent a huge percentage of the assets we divide. Studying some tax law will make you stronger (if it doesn’t kill you). If you don’t have a good book on these topics, go ahead and order one today.

8. Get someone on your staff to document or update a system for your office handbook. If you don’t have a procedures handbook, go ahead and get it started. Build it over time. If you already have a handbook, it’s time to update and improve it.

9. Call anyone who owes you money. Ask for it. Put it on the to-do list discussed above and make the call today. There’s nothing like getting some money through the door to turn an average day into a good day.

Of course, these nine things aren’t going to fix everything wrong with a practice, but they’re good stuff for making improvement, and they can be done today. Take a few minutes right now and do them. Your day and your practice will be better for the effort.