Be Well
| Publication year | 2019 |
| Pages | 37 |
Is it Possible to Do Less to Achieve More?
By Samara D. Anderson, Esq.
Prioritizing Doing and Getting Things Done
As a perfectionist and Type-A over-achiever, I find it extremely challenging to just “be.” To carve time out of my life to do what appears to be nothing, just doesn’t make any rational sense. I still recall the first yoga class I ever attended in 2003 just after graduating from law school and starting my legal career while training to run the New York City marathon as my first attempt at 26.2 miles running non-stop. As the yoga teacher told all of us to “find our breath” once we found a comfortable position, I could hear this rather loud voice inside my head saying “What, I am supposed to just sit here and find my breath? This is ridiculous. I have so many things to do right now. Sitting here just focusing on my breath seems like a massive waste of my time. And time is money.” I left the class as soon as the last Om vibration ended and vowed never to waste my time doing “nothing” again!
It was early in my litigation career and I was just starting to integrate the mentality that there may never be any “free” time in my life. One of my partners had pulled me aside when I started and gave me some words of advice: “Now Samara, the biggest mistake new lawyers do is not adequately capturing their billable time. For example, if you are in the shower and you are thinking about your legal analysis or a client’s legal issue, you need to capture that time. If you are out running and outlining your legal memorandum, you need to capture that time. This will be the best way for you to achieve the 2700-hour billable time requirement.” I took these words of advice to heart in a very intense way, which led to billing 3,000 hours/year for a few years in a row, until I started to feel the effects of BURN OUT.
I truly believe everyone handles their perception of stress differently and individual manifestation of stress can also vary widely. My coping mechanisms were to try to squeeze more and more out of every minute, so I could achieve more so I could make more money and thus, be more successful. The only way I could do that was to numb the stress with alcohol after intense days of triathlon training and litigation tasks. I actually became a triathlete as a “break” from working so hard at the law firm. So, outwardly I appeared healthy and happy, but inside the long-term effects of...
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