Lawyers, Put the Digital Pacifiers Down and Get a Better Life

If you’re reading this on your phone or tablet while in line somewhere, I want you to stop. Right now. Disconnect from your digital pacifier, look up, look around, and notice the world you’re in at this very moment. Try to connect with it, by making a conversation, noticing something interesting, or discovering an enticing smell or texture. Do it now, I’ll wait.

“Sweetie, give mommy the phone and go play.” Words for digitally addicted lawyers to live by.

That’s the simple, condensed version of how to make your life richer and more fulfilling. But I know, you’re lawyers, and you need more, much more than that!

So the expanded version goes like this:

Even as I sat writing this, I really, really wanted to check out Facebook, or answer an email, or knit, or basically do anything besides listen to my own voice. Part of that is simply one of my inner critic’s many tricks. (There are so very many, and all quite clever!)

When Pacifiers Become the Problem

But part of it is the conditioning of modern life. We walk around with this notion that we must be productive, or at least doing something, every waking second, or we have failed. At what, I’m not sure. At being a good cog in the corporate wheel, maybe. Or a good consumer. Or being on top of things, whatever that means.

Our electronic pacifiers certainly feed this behavior. With our smartphone appendage, we don’t have to be with our thoughts while standing in line, let alone observe our surroundings. We certainly don’t have to interact with people on the way to the office restroom; we can check email or Facebook, or get in a couple texts! Whoo hoo!

Yet one of the biggest complaints my clients have is that they don’t even have time to think, they’re so busy and overworked. Hmmm, really? It’s a great hairshirt to moan about. Occasionally, it’s even the reality of the situation.

Smart Lawyers, Dumb at Life, Part 2

I stand by my assertion that lawyers are, by and large, a bunch of quitters. Not in the sense that accusation is usually hurled, mind you. At work, lawyers tend to be tenacious and will dig their heels way in when they think they’re right, i.e., every other minute at the very least.

A magnanimous gesture, lawyer-style.

No, what I mean is that lawyers quit when the going gets tough at anything they’re not already pretty good at. Things they tend to suck at, like relationships, compromise, and dreams, for starters. Because they’re so used to being smart and good at the smarty-pants stuff, they’ve set themselves up for motivation by external validation, and haven’t worked much at resilience.

Resilience is, essentially, the ability to bounce back after a failure or set-back. To have hope in the face of disappointment. Looking back, I can count on my hands the number of lawyers I’ve known who are resilient at anything but work.

But if you’re performing well at work, why does that matter? And surely, career coach, you’re not saying we should all go and find a job that we suck at just to learn to be resilient?

Smart Lawyers, Dumb at Life, Part 1

You wanna know why your legal career and your life suck? It’s because you’re too damned smart for your own good. And no one has been in your face telling you that you can, and should, do a lot of stuff that is hard, and that you suck at, so you can have a better life and career. Except me!

Attorneys attending the school of life. Not always pretty.

It’s more than a little heretical to say this to even the most well-adjusted lawyers, all 77 of them. But it is the path to a more balanced, satisfying, and sustainable life and career.

I don’t know if you caught the Quora answer a little while ago that has, um, motivated me to say this stuff out loud. The question was: What does it feel like to be a smart person?

Are Smart and Happy Mutually Exclusive?

Most attorneys are indeed very smart, but many, many of them are miserable, or at the very least not happy. And that matches up with the bottom-line answer on Quora:

Overall, being smart brought many accolades and successes, but it also made me anxious, afraid of failure, and eager to quit at the first signs of hardship.

The guy—a former high school math whiz, ranked 25th in the country—is right: Being smart has its downsides, and usually they center around the crippling unwillingness to persevere with stuff you’re not naturally good at. Say, working with those who aren’t like you, or keeping on in a hobby or even a job that you’re not performing brilliantly at.

Essentially, being smart in a culture that prizes the punch-list lifestyle can lead you

Walking Into a Better Law Life

I really hate how much a 25-minute walk in the morning turns my mood around. There, I said it! As a coach, I’m all about tools to improve your life and get you moving forward toward your dreams. I feel like I should be enthusiastic and positive about the ones I know that work, like exercise,

I’ll bet she sees something more interesting than whatever is on your screen at the moment! Though I might suggest taking the sidewalk instead of the middle of the street.

I’m just not that into walking. The movement itself does not thrill me. Unlike my new love, tai chi, which is graceful and flowing; I just adore it. Or like some of my old loves, horseback riding and dancing. All about flow and grace and harmony, some of my most favorite things.

But this morning, it was finally sunny and heading toward warm for the first time in a while, my mood was crashing, and I knew I needed to rebalance those pesky perimenopause hormones by moving. So I did. I went for a walk.

I am very fortunate that my street is pretty interesting for me. I love gardening, and there are lots of nice gardens along the way to admire and inspire. Plus the singer in me loves hearing the birds chirping like mad to catch up on their chatter lost to nasty weather lately. It is a feast for some of my senses, and I do try to really observe, notice and appreciate what’s around me. In other words, I am present as I walk.

Which brings me to the actual point: Be present in your life, even during stuff you don’t love. And find ways to embrace the good things in your life.

Shift Into the Present and Out of Worry

The more ways you find to be present in your life as it happens, the less time you spend on energy-sucking things like worry. You also make your life richer, by being in the moment and adding to your experience library.

I usually see the opposite of being in the moment at health clubs: People are plugged into TVs, music, or audio books so they can avoid the feeling of being in their body, and also to avoid contact with those around them.

If your workout is so unpleasant that you need to numb out to get through it, maybe it’s time to choose something you inherently like the feel of.

Fight Perfectionism With Your Body

Especially for lawyers, many of us love, love, love to be in our heads and not so much in our bodies. Maybe we were the klutzy kids in school. Maybe we haven’t found the form of movement that brings us actual pleasure. Maybe a lot of pounding physical movement is simply too much stimulation for most introverts. Whatever the reason, many lawyers tend to avoid the physical. Exercise is usually one of the first things to go when the work demands really ratchet up.

Lawyers also tend to bring their perfectionistic tendencies into their views on exercise. Shocking, right? If they can’t do a full hour of a complete and demanding workout, they won’t do one at all. This is one of they myriad ways that lawyers are brittle and not resilient. The all-or-nothing attitude leads to important but not urgent stuff simply not getting done. You don’t make progress toward your dreams, because you can’t have the whole enchilada right off the bat, instead of getting started with the tortilla chips and salsa.

Might I suggest a short walk, without a phone or other distractions? Look for at least 5 things that interest your eyes, catch your ears, or offer an interesting texture (and touch them if possible). Pay attention to anything that delights your soul, even if it’s no more than a violet. Practice being present in your own life. Just ten minutes a day can really make a difference. And yes, you can actually spare ten minutes. Whatever grind-away time you lose, you’ll make up for in increased efficiency. I promise.

Jennifer Alvey is a recovering lawyer who helps unhappy lawyers find joy in their present, whatever its challenges. And, she coaches them on how to increase that joy in their life and work. Contact her at jalvey@jenniferalvey.com for a discounted sample session to see what that’s like.

Knitting Your Legal Career Together

After much thought, I’ve realized what the solution is to many of the woes rocking the legal profession: Lawyers all need to learn how to knit. Seriously. Everything you need to know about pursuing goals, having a satisfying career, and making changes in your life can be learned by knitting.

Knitting has everything lawyers need for a better life and career: control, autonomy, resiliency, generosity, creativity, and most importantly, fun!

After a brief 30-year hiatus, I have taken up knitting again this year. I had been hearing the call for a while, since knitting folk kept popping up in my life. But I resisted, even though I knew the good things that working with my hands and fibers did for my brain chemistry. Why the resistance? Mostly, because I feared the addiction.

What? A life and career coach worried about addiction? Hell yes. A meme that was going around Facebook says it best: Keep Knitting and Ignore the Cleaning. I was worried I would do pretty much exactly that—ignore all my responsibilities that I didn’t care for (cleaning is WAY up there), and just have fun. Heaven forbid.

Isn’t it interesting how we worry so much that we might neglect the crap we hate, that drags us down and makes us miserable, and rarely really helps us along our path in life? The stuff that is, incidentally, never on our deathbed regrets list.

But we don’t worry with any of the same intensity about what being miserable is doing to our souls and

Magical Thinking and Your Legal Career

One of the reasons it takes unhappy lawyers so long to make a change is that, just when they’ve had it with their dysfunctional job and are ready to throw in the towel, something decent or even good happens. They get an interesting assignment that doesn’t require endless 12-hour days. They get assigned to work with a partner who treats them humanely, most of the time. The case goes into a lull. Hey, things are looking up!

Until, they’re not. The plum assignment ends, the nice partner kowtows to the asshole partner, the case explodes.

Probably not the look you’re aiming for in your legal career search.

Yes, I’m always preaching about reframing the stuff in your life more positively, developing your optimism, and such-like. But thinking that due to this one positive event, your job environment is going to change and now you’ll be happy in law is magical thinking.

Driven by intermittent rewards, magical thinking keeps you in the wildly dysfunctional environment of law far too long. It’s the same dynamic that keeps gamblers addicted: This time

The Legal Industry, the Zombie Apocalypse, and the Right Shoes for It

Whether or not you realize it, your legal career is about to get eaten in the zombie apocalypse. The signs are everywhere; stories abound about

• how law school isn’t worth it, economically;
• deans are resigning in fiery protests and law professors are mouthing off increasingly about the scam that law school is;
• the most positive adjective for law firm hiring the last few years is “lackluster;”
• ginormous law firm implosions (Howrey and Dewey, anyone?);
• clients screeching for, and getting, alternative fee arrangements; yet
• billable hours requirements continue their climb, while pay declines, and
• lawyer dissatisfaction of at least 50% (probably a lot more) of the profession.

If you don’t think this is a recipe for the zombie apocalypse in the legal profession, you’ve been working on the Curiousity rover for the last 5 years. Which is cool. Or living in Denial, Egypt. Which is not so cool. But the really important question is, are you wearing the right shoes for the coming zombie apocalypse?

Damn, You’ll Look Good While Getting Eaten

Cause the thing is, most attorneys wear the metaphorical equivalent what I like to call the “won’t survive the zombie apocalypse” shoes. In real life, I have this slight, um, obsession about classifying women’s shoes this way. The shoes that are 6” stilettos, with big bows and little else attaching them to the feet. And hell yes, they look amazing.

Great shoes if all you need is to look good. If you and your career might need to run in another direction, though, you might want to go shoe shopping for something else.

Trouble is, the only place you can really wear these and not break an ankle is in a carpeted office, doing a job that doesn’t require you to do any walking except to the loo, the conference room and maybe the kitchen to get some coffee. Do more than that, and you risk life and limb. You can’t outrun a toddler. We won’t even discuss your podiatrist and orthopedist bills.

If a zombie suddenly appears and starts chasing you, and you keep those shoes on, you are going down first, before all the people who wear boring 2” wedges, or ballet flats, or even—gasp—Dansko and their ilk.

In Lawyerland, “won’t survive the zombie apocalypse” shoes look like