This year has presented untold challenges for students. At a time when business is anything but usual, we are forced to carry on as if it were. Certain of ourselves, though the world is uncertain of itself. If our reality is a simulation, as some have suggested, it is as if the attendant slipped and unwittingly engaged the red button on the switchboard reading ‘expert mode’.
Whereas yesterday’s 1Ls had to contend with the task of making sense of law school, the 1Ls of today must attempt to do so while trying to make sense of the ever-fluid world around them. Before starting my MBA year, I could hardly have imagined that I would be scheduling team meetings at 3AM, EST. Yet, there I was time after time, re-formatting graphs destined for a PowerPoint deck, my nth coffee of the day in hand while the sun rose on my teammates on the other end of the Zoom call. The unbridled joys of remote work.
It is no secret that the path we chose is difficult. It’s a stressful endeavour, no doubt made more so by our current circumstances. However, as much as this situation appears an obstacle to us, it is at the same time an opportunity. It is an experience through which we may all come to realize the true colours of our resilience. We may not be able to control the workload dealt to us, or the ways in which the pandemic has frustrated our lives. We can, however, control the attitude we adopt in the face of these. What matters most is not what happens to us, but how we respond to the stimuli. In that spirit, I wish to offer some concrete suggestions I have found helpful, which I hope will in turn help others manage work and life better under these challenging circumstances.
It’s not uncommon for law students to work over 100 hours per week. Moreover, the harder one works, the more work seems somehow to present itself. All of this does not seem to leave room for much else in our lives. Yet, that ‘residual’ aspect is critical to our wellbeing. The key, then, to my first suggestion is to not treat the non-work part of our lives as residual or secondary. Rather, it should be the wharf to which we moor our ships – a necessary constant amid the vicissitudes of our work lives. In a moment where work and life seem so inseparable, it has never been more important to take steps to ensure their separation. We must recognize and respect each as distinct, and allow them to coexist. The balance may not look the same week-to-week, and at times it may not be struck in the short term. For this reason, balance should be sought in the longer term.
To clarify what I mean, I will take this suggestion from the abstract to the concrete (quite literally) with an anecdote. Personal fitness has always been important to me. However, as gyms across the province were shut down at the dawn of the pandemic, I was forced to adapt. Like many, I turned to running. At first, it was a harrowing ordeal. “How could anyone enjoy this?” I would think to myself. Panting dramatically, a ferrous taste in my mouth and sweat flowing over my sleep-deprived body, I would glance down at my Apple Watch: just 1.6 kilometers down. I might as well have run 160 kilometers. Moreover, I felt like I was depleting my already-scarce time and energy resources. Somehow, to continue felt unsustainable.
In the face of this, I kept going and pushed myself to run even more. Eventually, I began to see the payoff. The decisive moment came when I began to think differently about how running fit into my life. Rather than conceiving of it as claiming a valuable slice of a fixed time-energy pie, I saw it as expanding the pie. In business terms, running turned from a cost center to a revenue machine. I saw immense benefits to my health and wellbeing, as well as my capacity to work. I learned that life needn’t come at the expense of work. On the contrary, by embracing what I term an abundance mindset, I allowed my investments in one to enhance my appreciation of – and capacity for – the other. Of course, it was not always possible to get outside as much as I would have liked to given the flux in my work demands. However, to indulge an economics metaphor, I would always achieve long-run equilibrium. An extended slog on the work-side would always eventually be rewarded with a restorative run.
Find and commit to doing what makes you whole. It could be any number of activities: reading, going for walks, calling a friend, meditating, watching your favourite show, or dancing artlessly in the kitchen to the new Kid Cudi album while your brother is trying to sleep (of course, I would never). Whatever it is, treat it as indispensable. Because it is.
It’s easy to justify allowing work to overwhelm your life. The supply of work is practically endless. The more difficult task, and more laudable accomplishment, involves empowering yourself to take control of your work. Even if it were possible to complete all of it, let alone to our exacting standards, it’s not clear that this would be the best use of one’s time. Perhaps the most valuable lesson I learned in 1L is that perfectionism is costly. There is a point of diminishing returns.
The better approach is to adopt a more pragmatic take on work. Identify that 20% which controls 80% of the outcome in a given task and commit to performing that portion to perfection. The opportunity cost involved in taking on the other 80% is often too high to be worthwhile. Of course, work hard. That’s what we all came here to do. But more importantly, work smart. Drink from the tap, not the firehose. Reinvest what you save into yourself and your wellbeing.
We all chose this path to realize our dreams. If we allow them to consume us in the process, there won’t be an ‘us’ left to realize them. I hope that my thoughts will help others on their journey to developing personally and professionally in a healthier, more sustainable way.