Simple Changes for Productivity and Focus

I came across a fantastic article this week that I think offers great advice that can be easily transferred to the world of litigation and prosecution.? The piece was entitled, “The Biggest Wastes of Time We Regret When We Get Older” by Kristin Wong.? The author addresses four simple changes to our mindset that can make us more productive.

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First regret – not asking for help.? Here Wong writes about how once when she was given a new assignment, she had no clue what she was doing, and stared blankly at the screen for an hour before finally giving in and asking for some direction.? A startling comment by the coworker who helped her, ultimately changed her mind set about asking for help.? The coworker said, “You might feel dumb asking questions, but you look dumber when you don’t get it because you failed to ask.”? As with all things in life there is finding the right balance to this.? I remember years ago when I asked a law clerk to research an issue for me and his response was to simply email the question to our entire staff of attorneys.? It certainly did not impress me with his research skills.? And yes, we want people to demonstrate their value by taking initiative and being problem-solvers.? But Wong points out that we also waste time, fail to learn, and do inferior work when we don’t seek out help when we need it.? In the legal profession, the willingness to ask for help is tied tightly to competence.? If you examine the official comments to Rule 1.1 of the Rules of Professional Conduct, which require competent representation of a client, there are multiple references to how competence can be created by consulting with someone who understands a topic and can get you up to speed.? While we shouldn’t delegate our duty to learn new things, we can save time? and improve our performance if we are willing to lean into the expertise of others.? Wong’s article also gives solid advice for how to email someone asking for their assistance.? You start with 2-3 sentences of honest appreciation about why you are reaching out to them, to show that you have thought about why you are coming to them for help.? You follow this with one sentence that states a single, focused question that people could provide an answer to.? This helps make your request easier for the other person to understand and respond to.

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Wong’s second piece of advice I won’t spend too much time on as it is not rooted in the professional sphere, which is the regret of spending too much time trying to make bad relationships work.? Wong’s third suggestion is to stop spending time dwelling on your mistakes and shortcomings.? This one is particularly helpful for litigators because I see it happen all the time.? Sometimes an attorney will mess something up in a case or make the wrong strategic call, resulting in a bad outcome.? Now of course we all want to learn from our mistakes and any utility that guilt has as an emotion is in driving us to different conduct in the future.? But it is when we decide to wallow in that guilt rather than moving forward (having learned a lesson), that we create devastating personal impacts that can be career ending.? I’ve watched attorneys who can’t get emotionally past an error, ultimately find professional stagnation, burnout, and they eventually leave the profession.? From my own perspective, the practical application here when we feel guilt in these situations is to directly focus on what we learned from an episode, reflect on how it will impact us moving forward, make amends and apologies if the situation calls for it, and then move on.

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Wong’s last suggestion is to stop spending so much time worried about other people.? Here she is not talking about our charitable approach to improving the lives of others, but rather when we focus on other people in a way that is wholly unhelpful to our own emotional flourishing.? I attended an elder fraud conference years ago, where one of the icebreaker activities was for everyone to go around the circle saying who they were and one thing they liked about their age.? For those who were middle-aged and older, they frequently cited something along the lines of being less concerned about other people’s opinions of them (versus how this influenced them when they were younger).? In her article, Wong talks about another dimension of our focus on others with an exceedingly practical professional application.? How to deal with jealousy.? Whether it is in the workplace, or just a manifestation of the impacts created by social media, we all experience this emotion.? And it is probably obvious how little utility jealousy has towards improving our situation (I wrote last year about a book by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy that talks about how focusing on the gains in life rather than the gaps is one of the biggest determinants of our happiness).? Wong gives great advice for how to make jealousy productive.? When you find yourself jealous of something in someone’s life, be willing to repeatedly ask yourself “why” in a way that you break down the gut reaction so that it allows you to take an affirmative step to solve the problem.? Wong offers the example of seeing someone’s enviable foreign trip on social media, experiencing jealously, and then deliberately asking yourself why you want the object of your jealousy in your life.? If, for you, at its core it is about creating an opportunity to expose your children to other cultures for example, this highlights a way within your existing reality and resources that you can address the emotional impulse.

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This week may we find ways to make some simple changes to our mindset that improve our lives.? Have a great week my friends.