There are days where even lawyers who LOVE their jobs wake up and don’t want to go to work; the idea of drafting another pleading or talking to another client is just too dreadful. Most working professionals are bound to hit a wall every now and then, regardless of their job - but given that practicing law is extremely stressful, it probably happens more often to lawyers. (If you’re one of those lawyers who is always happy at work and has never had a bad day, please email us immediately and tell us how you do it.) For the 99.99% of lawyers who do have bad days every once in awhile, here are things you can do to make work enjoyable even on the worst days:

Get a Hobby 

Wait, how are you supposed to get work done when you’re focusing on doing something fun? Turns out, having a hobby actually improves your job performance. When you take time to decompress and do something fun, even if it’s for an hour, it can actually alter your mood and get you to have a whole new perspective on your work. So whether it’s going for a run, taking some photos, working on a crossword puzzle, just go out and do it and then get back to work.

Explore a New Practice Area

OK - this sounds like an extreme step, but it’s all about thought exploration. For example, if you’re a family law attorney, you can “explore” the idea of focusing on adoption (and not just divorce cases). You don’t have to take any action steps until you're ready to commit; even just considering the transition may increase your appreciation for your current work, or spark new ideas in your mind. Spend an hour researching what other attorneys do and see if it piques your interest. The reason this may be a good way to make law fun again is because we all fall into ruts and get bored of doing the same thing over and over. The book Hooked: How to Create Habit Forming Products suggests that what makes something a habit-forming product is creating engagement in various methods. If you’re constantly rewarding someone the same way, or providing the same benefit for using your product, that gets repetitive and boring to your consumer. The same goes for anything we do in life. Sameness is boring. So, try to "explore" a new area of law, and see if it gets you excited.

Meditate

Jeena Cho is the lawyer-turned-meditation-guru who you need to follow. She is an expert on meditation and mindfulness, and encourages everyone, especially lawyers, to pursue meditation. According to Jeena: “When you’re in a stressful situation, the last thing that you may want to do is sit down to meditate. However, research study after research study indicates meditation can trigger the relaxation response in the body. The relaxation response was first described more than 40 years ago by Harvard Medical School Professor Herbert Benson… The physiologic opposite of the well-documented fight-or-flight response, the relaxation response, is elicited by practices including meditation, deep breathing, and prayer, and has been shown to be helpful in the treatment of stress-related disorders ranging from anxiety to hypertension.” If you want more information on meditation, follow Jeena on Above the Law and her blog.

Do Some of the Menial Tasks

If you take a break from over-thinking and focusing on big goals, and instead focus on smaller tasks, you can actually get a lot of work done. Break up big projects into TINY (and we mean tiny) pieces, just so you feel like you're accomplishing a lot. Breaking it up also makes it less overwhelming and intimidating.

Set Working Hours

We turn back to Jeena on finding work/life balance; it turns out, it’s really hard to achieve. Creating your own working schedule may do the trick. If you set specific hours and have a hard stop at 5pm every day, you may actually be more productive. According to Jeena: “Most research indicates that the average person can perform up to three to five hours of deep work.” Furthermore, “working more than 50 hours diminishes your output so much that you might as well not work those hours at all.” So, if you limit your hours, you’ll actually be more productive and have an incentive to get all your work done in a set amount of time - rather than having a seemingly endless workday. Ultimately, you’ll be more focused.

Add a Creative Task to Every Work Day

While drafting pleadings is invigorating (no, we’re not being sarcastic), it can also be draining. Adding one creative task to your agenda for each work day can provide a much-needed change of pace, and can reinvigorate your interest and motivation in completing tasks that are a little more draining on your mind. Whether you brainstorm ways to market your firm (even if your ideas are completely outrageous or cheesy), or draw, or paint, or color - add creativity to your work schedule and do it. You’ll be surprised how much more engaged you are.

Mingle

Talking to other people is hard, but it can really boost your mood and morale - and even give you inspiration to improve your practice. We intentionally called this section “Mingle” instead of “Network” because we don’t think going to legal events will help with this. Mingling requires that you step out of your comfort zone: meet some new people outside of your industry, listen to some thought leaders in other industries, attend lectures, book clubs, social events in other industries, a gala, an art exhibit - anything to get you out of your comfort zone and get you thinking about something else other than work. 

Recharge & Refresh

You've probably heard the expression "Netflix and chill" and some days, you should do exactly that. If you're burnt out, just stay at home, put on a good movie, and relax. Recharge your batteries - because tomorrow, you'll be that much more productive.