Edward Adams, University of Minnesota professor, is a world-renowned expert in accounting, corporate finance, corporate law, entrepreneurship, and commercial law. Throughout his 33-year career as a professor at the University of Minnesota, Edward Adams has accomplished a great deal for the university.
Edward Adams has taught undergraduate and graduate students in bankruptcy and bankruptcy theory, creditors’ remedies and secured transactions, banking law, commercial paper, and corporate finance. Other courses he has taught are on contracts, MBS concepts for lawyers, securitization, and law and entrepreneurship.
Mr. Adams founded the Introduction to Law program, which introduces underserved students to law. He also founded the People’s Law Program, which provides pro bono legal advice to local community members.
His service to the university includes serving as co-chair of the University of Minnesota Law School’s Adjunct Appointments Committee, as well as the Educational Policy Law and Law and School Learning Improvements Committees. He is a member of the University of Minnesota Budget and Finance Committee.
Additionally, his scholarship culminated in receiving multiple grants that support research in bankruptcy, creditors’ remedies, and corporate and commercial law. The academic has written several books and articles covering bankruptcy, corporate statutes, and federal securities laws. His research has been published in peer-reviewed publications, such as the Nevada Law Journal, Utah Law Review, Journal of Corporation Law, and Journal of International Law, among others. His extensive expertise and credentials include an MBA from the University of Minnesota and a law degree from the University of Chicago.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
Wake early (4:30), walk three miles, gym for an hour, emails (once a day—only once—at 7:00 am); work until 1:00, eat lunch, work until 4:00, run three miles, 6:30 drinks and dinner, 10:00 crash. My greatest productivity hints are to work out every day; do not let other people’s needs or schedules control yours unless they should—i.e., your clients, boss, spouse or, most importantly, your child(ren). Have goals; we only get somewhere by happenstance without them.
How do you bring ideas to life?
Write them down and socialize them with people whose opinions I respect.
What’s one trend that excites you?
Using AI as a tool to enhance productivity.
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
I stick with MY goals and ignore requests/projects/people who waste/abuse/do not pay me for my time or get in the way of what I am trying to do.
What advice would you give your younger self?
You mostly regret the things you don’t do, not the ones you do do.
Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?
Fortune favors the bold, never the timid.
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
Play hard, work harder.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Gym.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
Stay away from toxic people and don’t let their problems become yours; you likely know them within minutes of meeting them, so trust your instincts.
What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?
I was involved as an investor in a company with cutting-edge technology that failed because of poor leadership. Great leaders make even poor ideas a success. Poor leaders make great ideas a zero.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
Gemini by Google allows for massive research collection and analysis.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?
EconTalk (podcast) with Russ Roberts: Roberts is a terrific interviewer, a brilliant person, and seemingly a real mensch. The Fate of the Day (book) by Rick Atkinson: Atkinson brings history to life, and his second book in a three-part trilogy of the American Revolutionary War details the inevitability of a British withdrawal but not necessarily a United States of America.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
Succession: bigger-than-life wealth meshed with common-day problems. We all live, love, struggle, succeed, and die, and it’s the backgrounds for it all that are different.
Key learnings
- Set goals and don’t organize your schedule around others’ needs unless you have a responsibility to them (i.e. your boss, clients, spouse, and/or children).
- AI is a revolutionary tool for enhancing productivity, gathering research, conducting analyses, and improving everyday processes.
- Stay clear of toxic people, but value good friends and colleagues.