Dear Advy,
Any suggestions for a new lawyer on dealing with lack of focus? My day seems to be filled with so many projects that I feel like I am jumping from task to task and never feel like I am accomplishing anything. By the end of the day, I go home moody and a little depressed that although every hour seems to be filled (lunch hour too sadly), I can’t actually point to anything I’ve gotten done.
Sincerely,
Foggy Focus
Dear Foggy Focus,
Does it make you feel any better to know that I wrote the notes for this letter in June and I’m only now writing up the answer?
Your letter identifies two problems:
- A need to find ways to focus;
- Stress associated with beating yourself up for what you perceive as lacking focus.
Of course you ask about focus, so I’ll give you some tips about that. Fundamentally, though, it’s the second problem that we need to spend time on.
You have many projects on the go. When you shift from one to another, it takes a while for your brain to adjust to thinking deeply about the new project. If, of course, you then must jump to yet a third, fourth or fifth project etc. the result is that you do not engage deeply in the problem solving that your clients and your principals within your firm want from you.
What is it specifically that prompts a jump from one thing to another? Is it e-mails? Consider closing your e-mail program and only opening it to read messages at pre-determined parts of the day. You could even use your “out of office” message to alert people to the fact that you deliberately will not read e-mails all day long. Then set times of the day when you will read your e-mails and possibly recalibrate what you are going to work on based on the e-mails you’ve received. Are the interruptions by phone? You can do the same thing, but with your voicemail message being the thing that tells people about your new habit. Are the interruptions text messages or other kinds of instant messaging programs? You can do much the same with those. Are the interruptions due to people walking into your office? That’s trickier, but in much the same way as you exercise your phone and e-mail hygiene, you can let people you work with know that (for example) between 2:00 and 4:00 pm each day you will close your door, turn off your e-mails and put your phones on “Do not disturb” so you can focus deeply on client work.
You may object that you’re a junior lawyer and you can’t just tell senior partners or clients that you can’t be disturbed for stretches of the day. Actually, you can and probably should. Remember that these people are coming to you to fix a problem. Perhaps they need an issue researched for a brief that’s due. Perhaps they need you to draft a contract. Perhaps they need you to make an appearance at court for an adjournment. Whatever the specifics of what they are asking you for, the common thread is they want you to apply your expertise to the problem and that takes focus. Taking time to do one thing at a time is a value-added proposition in terms of what you are doing for them. Not everyone who comes to your door and sees a sign announcing your door is closed until 4:00 will appreciate having to come back later but odds are most will, especially when they see the fruits of that habit reflected in your work product.
A key component in any of these practices is communication. Communicate to the people who are, or who may interrupt you that you are blocking them right now because you must do that in order to do a great job. Even better, let them know ahead of time so they don’t even come knocking at your door. Have a conversation with your supervisor or mentor about how you can put this plan into action. There may be things that truly are urgent enough that they should open your door even when it’s closed but most people will respect and even appreciate that you are doing this to accomplish the goals they themselves have – of receiving excellent legal advice.
You can also reset your brain by going for a walk or similar low-stress exercise. Moving your body has a direct relationship to your ability to put things into perspective and set priorities. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, go for a walk even if it’s a short one. By the way, please eat your lunch. You are working against your own productivity when you skip meals.
We lawyers often re-invent the wheel a lot. If there is a process you repeat many times in your practice – setting up calls with clients, registering a Writ, organizing pre-trial conferences, performing corporate searches or anything else – take the time once to build a sheet setting out the details of how to do each step. If you work with a legal assistant, this can vastly simplify getting things done even if your assistant is replaced permanently or even replaced temporarily with someone else in the office. If you yourself have to do each step it can at least help you pick up where you left off when you are interrupted. Consider putting together and saving these active checklists, or prefabricated instructions so that getting these things going takes less attention from you. Yes, each situation will have unique elements or things that need to be tailored to the specific situation. Build those variables into your set of instructions so you can check a box or fill in a blank or otherwise easily insert the custom part of the task to be done.
You can also use your calendar to separate what is truly urgent from things you are merely worried about forgetting to do. Sometimes we jump from one distraction to another because we worry that if we don’t immediately deal with the latest incoming thing, we will forget to deal with it altogether. That worry converts what could have been something you do later today or later this week into something you absolutely positively must take care of right this instant. If an e-mail comes in, you may be concerned that you may forget to deal with it unless you put everything else down right now and work on it. Most e-mails (or phone messages, or text messages) are not urgent. You can manage that anxiety you feel that you may forget about it if you don’t act on it immediately by making an appointment in your calendar later on to read that e-mail and respond, to return that phone call, to read and answer that text message, to go talk to Bob down the hall about that thing he mentioned to you. Put a copy of the e-mail you’re your calendar appointment. Put a screen shot of the text message into your calendar appointment. Put the sound file or a note about what an incoming phone message was about into your calendar appointment. Then at a time and date when you really do have time to deal with it, you have everything you need right there in front of you. Converting incoming distractions into future appointments can help you manage interruptions.
Above all, remember to be honest with yourself about how much time is needed to do a task and be sure to factor in a bit of buffer to establish realistic timelines. This may help maintain your focus, knowing you have allotted enough time to get the task done and not worrying about meeting a “too short” deadline.
The bigger problem your letter identifies is how you treat yourself.
My half-joking first line above has a serious message as well: We are all having trouble focusing. Working without interruption is harder with every new device or piece of software or other means the outside world has of vying for your attention. Getting one thing done at a time is more and more difficult, and that is a function of the society you live and work in. It’s not a character defect.
There are certainly things you can do to increase your ability to focus. Aside from the tips I’ve suggested above, you can practice and enhance your capacity to focus by engaging in mindfulness meditation and many similar personal practices, many of which are offered by your local lawyer assistance program and you’ll find a program on how to overcome barriers to mindfulness practice in your daily life on The Well-Being Hour.
What will not help you regain your focus is beating yourself up. There is quite good evidence that when you berate yourself for what you perceive as your shortcomings (in this case, not having finished any one particular thing in the day), you make it less likely that you will be able to improve on your performance. Your difficulty focusing is just that – a difficulty. It is not a defect or a character flaw or anything like that. It is very human to have difficulty focusing when there are many things to interrupt your focus, and likely, you are no worse and no better at it than the people around you. When you find yourself beating yourself up over having spent a day without finishing any one thing, think about how you would respond to a good friend who reported that to you. Modify your self-talk so it is more like the compassionate advice you would give a friend.
Try to write down something at the end of each day that you did accomplish no matter how small that may be. Check in with your supervisors and co-workers and perhaps a mentor as to what their expectations are in terms of finishing things. Begin your week by making a list of what you do want to accomplish in the week and keep track of your progress in getting those things done. Celebrate small wins.
I should also add that the reality of practicing law is that there are many tasks that shouldn’t be finished in one “go”. It is appropriate to share drafts of documents with team members and with clients to get input before finalizing them. It is often appropriate to hold off on finishing a document that names a corporation (for example) until you have the corporate search result back and you can be confident you are naming it accurately. We no longer practice law using pre-printed forms that had to be typed out before using them and yes, believe it or not in the era before desktop computers that was how documents were generated. There is now an expectation that documents will go through many iterations. To borrow a phrase they use in Silicon Valley, getting these things done in small steps is “a feature, not a bug” i.e. your very act of moving from one thing to the next to the next in small increments is often helpful, not harmful to the quality of your legal work.
Charles Darwin took 17 years and went through at least four complete revisions to get to the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, and he only wrote his final version because he realized someone else might publish before him. Give yourself a little slack that it took you a week, and two re-writes to draft that demand letter.
Be well,
Advy