How To Attain Work-Life Balance

In this short video, Tim gives his take on how to attain work-life balance on your legal team. He highlights the importance of setting boundaries and shifting your mindset.

Transcript

Question: How to master work-life balance? What are some different approaches that you've seen work for other people or for yourself?

Answer: For me personally, there's a mental dividing line. It's rare that I'm like, oh my gosh. I just need to completely disconnect from work for a longer period of time. I actually really enjoy what I do and I have for a long time. And so the work-life balance really comes into recognizing when maybe mentally you're starting to get more fatigued. Taking a break and having that mental divide where it's like, alright, my mind needs to rest. 

Sometimes even folks physically, like I've been in deals and in situations where you are working those seemingly impossibly long hours where you're only getting four hours of sleep at night. And, yeah, it's a little maybe different since COVID when, like, the in-office thing wasn't it, but I remember leaving offices at one, one thirty in the morning and being back in at six in the morning. So you can get that physical side.

I know anybody who is an associate at a major law firm, it may even still be the case now, but pre-COVID they had showers, locker rooms, beds, and cots set up. So if you're working a deal and you're coming up on deadlines, you're just like, alright maybe I'm not leaving the office for three or four days.

So there is some physicality around the work-life balance that I think is important. But, you know, I think largely where people get hung up is the ability to make a mental shift. And we saw it when people went full remote during COVID.

You didn't have that commute home to be like, okay. Work is done right now or at least for the time being. Maybe I'm logging on later to do some stuff. But if you don't have that actual mental separation, it's really hard to balance your life. 

The other thing that I would say is that it's important to set boundaries. If you do have some family commitments, I know folks with children or, you know, other responsibilities, it just is what it is. You say, I have this time where I simply cannot be available. And if you communicate that effectively, most people are willing to respect that. The other thing is that if people don't respect that, that's okay. Just like, I'm gonna be gone. If you still want to have that meeting, still have that meeting. Life goes on without you, and that's okay. You'll figure it out. You can catch up. Sometimes the business just has to move forward, and that's it. But being firm about that and not sort of caving to that pressure is really important.

Question: How do you encourage that on your team?

Answer: They think about it the same way that I do where, and I encourage them. They're obviously like, oh if we need to do that, this is a better day. I get it, you have something going on with your kids, it's okay. Go enjoy the time. We'll fill you in, and that's that if we have to move forward at that exact time.

Whether it's work or it's another meeting. Like, maybe you're double booked. Are you really going to have that much heartburn about choosing which meeting to go to? Probably not.

But all of a sudden, when it's a commitment that you made maybe at your kid's school, or a commitment that you made to go visit your parents, or something like that. Now all of a sudden, it's a challenging decision, and I don't think it should be because either way, you're missing that meeting. And you're just going to have to figure it out after the fact, and that's okay. Or prepare ahead ahead of time for it.

So I told the team very directly, vacation is vacation. That's fine. Just ask that you communicate effectively before any issues are to go to somebody else. And communicate to somebody else that there may be more issues coming in. And it's okay, everybody takes vacations. Everybody needs time off.

And as a worst scenario, I've had people get sick. Like, in the hospital sick. I've had people, you know, have injuries where it's just like they can’t be there and life has to go on. So, whether you're choosing not to be there or you physically can't be there, really doesn't make that much of a difference to me. Just go take the time that you need to take so that when you're here, you're contributing at your best. 

That's another thing I push with the team a lot is that after thirteen hours, fourteen hours of eyes on contracts, trying to draft whatever it is that you're trying to draft, we're not getting the best out of you. That's that's when mistakes happen. You're better off just going and taking some time and getting to a better mental space, a better physical space, and coming back at it.

That being said, I have very little tolerance for people who set a deadline, don't manage well to it, and then are panicking to meet that deadline. If you're pulling an all-nighter for a project that should take you two days and you set a week-long deadline, that's on you. Then you know what? Pull an all-nighter and get it done, and it better be good. Because that was your failure to manage your time. That wasn't a work-life balance issue.

There's a little bit of push and pull there, and everybody's made that procrastination mistake before. Certainly, almost every lawyer has made it at least once in law school, if not every single semester in law school. So that's how I think about it with the team.