Disciplined Lawyers

Todd Rowden is the best lawyer out of my graduating class at UW-Madison School of Law, class of 1989.  He was one of those lawyers who set his work schedule the first month out of law school and hasn't varied it since.  Up at 5:40, 20 minutes of callastenics, shower, cereal, 6:40 train to downtown Chicago from Winnetka.  When he moved his practice out to Schomburg, the train time changed.  He got to sleep a bit later. His work day has stayed equally as consistent over the years.   

Attoney Jeff Hermann out of Seattle practices the same way.  He's well on his way to being another "super lawyer" like Todd.  Jeff shuts off his phone for many hours a day as he drafts personal injury demand letters. Each one takes about seven hours he says. According to Jeff,  most personal injury attorneys wait until the evening or the weekend to do this essential task of lawyering.  "They fritter away the work day answering the phone and responding to crises  on someone else's time schedule.  I don't want to get into that routine," he told me tonight. 

I see the brilliance in Jeff's plan.  Why save the core of your work for non-work hours?  That only eats away at your personal time. 

I like how Julie Morgenstern - the organizational Goddess - refers to personal time in her book Making Work Work.  Personal time, according to Morgenstern, is where we get balance in our lives and reenergize, refresh and renew.  She believes if you can escape a bit and  attend to your physical health and your relationships during your time off, you will become more patient, innovative, accurate and motivated at work.  Personal time feeds your work life, which in turn  feeds your personal life (ie.. helps you to afford those good vacations or lovely dinners with friends). 

I'm trying to find more work life balance.  Somewhere along the way, I learned to put the serious, deep-thinking work aside until the quiet hours at the end of the work day, rather than buckling down and putting systems into place that would allow me focus time during the productive hours of the day.  I need to break my habit of taking a night or two a week to devote to paperwork.  The hard part is breaking the pattern.  I get into a jam and want to buckle down and work a weeknight.  I fight myself, and head out to play instead. 

Jeff and Todd figured out the sucess recipe early in their career and kept to the simple principle: 

        Do your primary work during the primary work hours of the week:  success will follow. 

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