1. Clean out the junk.
It’s easy to let our offices become cluttered: our desk is a mess with on-going or half-digested projects, scattered pens, and things on our to-do list that have been perched on the corner of the desk so long green mold has overtaken them. Clean it up. Check out my previous blog, My Desk, My Enemy and The Organized Lawyer for tips on how to improve this situation. I’ve found it particularly helpful to have a place for EVERYTHING. I line up hanging file folders in my credenza, label each one and drop documents in there to keep my desk tidy. I try to keep five projects on my desk that I’m actively working on. If my discipline lapses, I put aside time at the end of the week, dump all contents of desk into a huge box and go through each item one-by-one (toss things in the garbage, take other stuff home and keep items I really need to file later on). Another nifty item that I value as much as my beloved North Face ski jacket: a ScanSnap. It allows me to scan and trash paper documents that I don’t use often, but need to refer to later on or preserve, quickly and easily.
2. Marketing.
Most lawyers have this on their to-do. Nevertheless, they never get around to working on it. But giving it the time and energy it deserves energizes us because taps into our creativity and invests in our future. We all need more clients and marketing is an important part of any serious game plan to get them. Check out these greats blogs on this topic from the Attorney at Work website for more ideas.
3. Mindfulness.
Mindfulness mediation involves taking a set period of our day to sit in silence and watch our minds as thoughts and feelings roll by without reacting to them. As lawyers, we’re hammered all day by stress. It depletes our energy and effectiveness because our brains are knocked off balance by all the moment-to-moment crises, both real and imagined. Sitting quietly for a proscribed period of time allows us to regroup and refocus. Check out this article from the ABA Journal, Minfulness in Legal Practice is Going Mainstream. I do it everyday for 15 minutes. I’m a busy lawyer, just like you. If I can find the time, so can you.
4. Exercise.
Everybody knows how important it is for our health. It clobbers high levels of toxic stress, gives you pep and leaves you less prone to anxiety and depressive disorders. If you’ve been avoiding the gym or have “fallen off the wagon,” try doing it before work. I’ve found it’s critical to always keep my gym gear in my truck. It serves as a constant reminder to hit the elliptical and gives me one less reason (“I don’t have my workout clothes with me”) why I can’t go to the gym. Check out the excellent book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain for further reading on the connection between exercise and our mental health.
5. Find Meaning.
If you dig hard enough, you can always find meaning in your day-to-day law practice. Stop thinking of your job solely as a matter of dollars and cents and as much a matter of service to others. When we don’t do this, we dehumanize our clients and, in the process, ourselves. It’s all about balance. You don’t have to forget that law is a business. But you also shouldn’t forget that your clients are flesh and blood folks with real problems that need your care and attention. I love this quote from author Studs Turkel: “Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”
6. Stop blaming the law for your problems.
This is a big energy sucker. And whining never helps. Blaming is the opposite of taking responsibility for one’s self: you become a victim of your own life. Choice empowers us. Complaining disempowers us. It’s as simple as that. It’s a question of attitude. I had a friend who blamed the law for all his misery. So, he chucked it all and went back to school to become a teacher. What happened? He was unhappy and blamed his dour mood on teaching. The moral of the story? While it’s true that the practice of law is tough and demanding, our experience of it is greatly influenced by our attitude. Resolve to have a better one.
7. Be careful about the company you keep.
Lawyers are known pessimist – they tend to see the worst in everything. Check out this article, Why Lawyers Are Unhappy, by Martin Seligman, Ph.D. Dump lawyer friends who incessantly gripe about being a lawyer. If you have to work with them, don’t join in their bitch sessions. You don’t have to, after all. You have some choices here. Sit quietly, offer something constructive, or change the subject. Over my twenty-five years career, I’ve found that hanging out with complaining lawyers that love to bitch about how shitty life is or tear down other people behind their backs leaves me dispirited about life and law. It’s cancerous.
8. Enhance your relationship with those you work with.
We snap at co-workers, are dismissive of their needs and don’t treat them with the respect and thoughtfulness they deserve. As a consequence, we don’t get much good energy in return. Would it take much time to get your secretary a cup of coffee in the morning? Small acts of kindness count in life. How about stopping whatever you are doing to actually listen to a co-workers problem and not check your e-mails or texts on your cell phone? When people do this to me, I find it rude. Being considerate to others goes a long way!
9. Find pleasure outside of work
Lawyers bark they don’t have time to do neat things after work or on the weekends. When we talk about importance of the work/life balance, this is what mean. For me, I’ve found it with blogging and volunteering at a wonderful place called St. Luke’s Mission in a poor section of Buffalo. I find these things not only meaningful, but also pleasurable. Silliness is also good tonic for all the seriousness that ails us. And lawyers are an all too grim-faced bunch. I finally got around to going to a new indoor go-kart track they recently built at our mall. Frivolity is a good thing!
10. Get more sleep.
We neglect sleep at our own peril. In fact, we’re a country of sleep-deprived people. Our bodies evolved to need a minimum amount of sleep and lawyers don’t get enough. Perhaps their bodies are too jacked up with stress or they can’t stop ruminating about their law practice. Recent research indicates that a lot of depression’s worst symptoms (lack of concentration, chronic fatigue, etc.) are deeply influenced by poor sleep. Maybe you need a sleep study to get to the bottom of what ails you in this department. Take care of this and you’ll be in a better position to wake up refreshed and ready to charge through your day.
“Human beings are designed for regular physical activity. The sedentary nature of modern life probably plays a significant role in the epidemic incidence of depression today.” Andrew Weil, M.D.
