In this episode, Jim and Tyson interview Karen Caffrey a licensed professional counselor and a lawyer; Karen went from the practice of law to the practice of therapy mainly counseling lawyers. They will go over the importance of wellbeing and health for lawyers, the mindset of wellbeing, and how that wellbeing can be achieved. Also, how therapy works and how it can help your personal and business.
“You can’t be a good lawyer if you are not a healthy lawyer.”
Karen’s web site: http://www.karencaffrey.com/
What does it mean to be healthy?
It’s multifaceted, there’s a physical aspect, a spiritual aspect, a work aspect and a mental and emotional aspect…
Lawyers are reluctant to go to therapy
Because of 2 things: first, stigma; the fear of how are they going to be judged, and the second is fear on confidentiality.
The business of law and psychotherapy
“The nexus between the business of law and psychotherapy Is a lot of the challenges lawyers face in having a good business of law come from psychological reasons.”
“Who we are as people, directly impacts who we are as lawyers and who we are as business owners doing the business of law.”
Please give us a shout out in the ABA JOURNAL’S ranking of podcasts!
Hacking’s hack: Whenever you can take a day off of the week. Unplug yourself: get away from the phone and the computer, the office.
Karen’s tip: Put your wellbeing on your radar screen and to do this by diaring it. You can dairy it every day, and spend 5 minutes talking about your wellbeing. Prioritize your wellbeing.
Tyson’s tip: Productivity – A website: Activtrak: https://activtrak.com/. It allows you to plug in yourself, your partners and employees, and it shows your productivity level.
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Transcripts: Dealing With The Pressures and Responsibilities of Being a Lawyer ft. Karen Caffrey
Karen Caffrey
You know, lawyers are humans, meeting the needs of humans. And because of that everything that we bring to all of our human relationships, all of our fears, all of our resources, all of our strengths are going to come out in our relationships with our clients with our referral sources, with our opponents. And so who we are as people, directly impacts who we are as lawyers, and who we are as lawyers, doing the business of law.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
I’m tasting matrix what’s
Jim Hacking
going on my friend? Good morning. It’s good to talk to you. It seems like it’s been a while.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, it really hasn’t. We just talked last week not too long ago. But we’ve not seen each other in person for a few weeks. So maybe that’s what it is. So how you been?
Jim Hacking
I’ve been great. Do we have a fun weekend we went to the Cardinals game yesterday. And we went out to dinner with my dad, my dad’s getting older. So we all went out to talk about that. And it was a good relaxing weekend. But you know, sometimes it’s better to get back in the office because there’s so much activity with the kids and everything that sometimes I feel it’s sort of quieter here.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, I get that too. It’s sometimes nice to be in the office. So whenever no one’s around, you can kind of get some stuff done or at least focus or concentrate. So it’s kind of nice. Like, you know, we’ve got a guest this week gonna introduce her.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, I’m really excited to have her she’s a LPC and a JD Her name is Karen Caffrey. I’m not sure exactly how Karen came on our radar. But I think with the Connecticut connection that it might have been our friend Ryan McKean. Karen, welcome to the show.
Karen Caffrey
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Tyson Mutrux
Yes. So Ryan is in my mini mastermind for mastermind experience. And he actually did make the introduction. So that’s where that came in. So Karen, you’ve got an interesting journey, you want to talk a little bit about how you got from law school to where you are now.
Karen Caffrey
Sure thing, I began my professional career as a lawyer, I went straight from college to law school, I went to the University of Connecticut, and I did practice law for 10 years, I did five years in private practice, just sort of corporate and general law. And then I transitioned into a fortune 100 company. And basically what happened is I got into my own therapy, my own psychotherapy for my own personal healing. And it was incredibly meaningful to me and very transformative. And what it came down to is, law just didn’t make my heart sing. I think I was a good lawyer, but I didn’t love it. And I love my personal work and therapy. And I decided I really wanted to do professional work that had deep meaning for me. So while I was practicing law, I went back to school, and I got a Master’s in Counseling Psychology and became a licensed professional counselor. And I’ve been having a private practice as a counselor for Wow, 27 years, and I do a lot of work with trauma, but I specialize in counseling lawyers. So I’ve kept that connection with the legal community. I love working with lawyers. And that’s how I got here today is, yes, Connecticut connection. And because I do work with blur,
Jim Hacking
I think that it’s interesting that you’re an expert in trauma. And in helping lawyers, I think there’s a connection there. I think that the practice of law can be traumatic. And you know, we take on a lot of the burdens from our clients. And we’ve had some interesting discussions in the Facebook group where people talk about, about that about this responsibility that we take on really, in many of the things that we do as lawyers where we’re holding our clients lives in our hands. And so what are some things that lawyers should be thinking about as they’re going through their week and dealing with clients and all of their frustrations?
Karen Caffrey
Well, in general, one of the things I help lawyers focus on is lawyer well being, which is a real hot topic in the law right now. I think I sent you guys a link to the national task force. I’m aware of our well being they published a report last year, and it chronicles a lot of really long standing issues that the legal profession has been struggling with you named one of them, and that is the pressures and responsibilities of paneling, people’s legal problems, but frankly, also the emotional problems that go along with that. And to some extent, that depends on the kind of law you practice, and somebody who’s practicing perhaps family law, or criminal law is going to be perhaps feeling the emotional stressors of their clients lives more than someone who’s maybe, maybe, you know, practicing corporate law, but well being encompasses a whole lot of things. And if I were to say the one goal that I hope to, to sort of discuss and put on the table with you guys today is that it’s something that should be on every every lawyer’s radar screen, their own well being the well being of their colleagues. the well being of people in their firm. I think for many years, certainly when I began practicing, you know, a couple of decades ago, well being and mental health of lawyers was sort of like a poor cousin. As a matter of fact, when I began practicing Connecticut didn’t even have a lawyer’s Assistance Program, we were actually going to embarrass to say, the last state in the union to get one. And what the tax court says what is really true is that, you know, you can’t be a good lawyer, if you’re not a healthy lawyer, there are very high rates of depression, high being about about 28% of lawyers report depression, there, there’s alcoholism, there’s all the things people do lawyers do, to cope with a tremendous amount of stress that they’re under. So the very first thing is saying, by the way, my well being not only matters to me personally, it matters to me as a lawyer, and it matters to my clients. So that’s sort of a 5000 foot, comment on that I can get that into more specifics of the kinds of things people can do if you want.
Tyson Mutrux
It’s a good segue, because I want to kind of dig a little bit deeper into that. So what does it mean to be healthy? What does that mean to actually be healthy?
Karen Caffrey
It’s multifaceted. There’s a physical aspect, a spiritual aspect or a work aspect. It’s hard to be healthy when you’re if you’re not, if you can’t make enough money to earn a living. I, of course, tend to focus on the mental health and emotional aspects of psychological aspect. It’s someone who is suffused with a sense of well being who is able to perform their days in general with in a good mood, who are someone who is functional, someone who is sleeping well, feeling well, you know, generally operating on all four cylinders, so to speak. It’s a little bit individualistic. Metaphysical, one of the first question that person is asked himself is do I feel healthy? Like if you were just to ask yourself right now, do I feel well, and you might go, oh, gosh, you know, I’m really tired. I only got five hours sleep last night. Or maybe I’m maybe I feel great. They’ve got eight hour sleep, maybe I’m needing that fourth cup of coffee to be awake. Maybe I hadn’t seen my spouse in five days, or we had an argument. I haven’t paid attention to it. Maybe I’m hungover. You know, maybe I’ve been drinking heavily over the weekend. So asking that question that can be an individual answer, there is an individual answer. But health can cover a whole range of aspects because we are, we are complex people, we have a whole range of of silos in our life, any one of which, if it isn’t working, is detrimental to our health is frankly, detrimental to our ability to practice law.
Jim Hacking
Back in 2003 2004, I was experiencing all kinds of stress, we had our second son. And I was working full time as an associate attorney. And I remember how stressful it was. And I remember I was driving my wife insane. So she asked me to consider going to counseling, and I’ve been going to counseling ever since. So I think that therapy weekly therapy really helps. But I think that there’s a lot of stigma attached to it. I also think lawyers think that they’re tough, and they don’t, they don’t need that. And I also think that they’re worried or afraid of what’s actually going to happen when they go to therapy, can you talk to the listeners a little bit about people, maybe what they should be thinking about as they’re considering going into therapy, and then what they can actually expect in therapy, how it sort of works,
Karen Caffrey
right? But I’m gonna say two things. First of all, you just named the two major impediments to Why certainly people in general, but lawyers are reluctant to go to therapy. And the first is stigma, the fear that somehow they’re going to be judged, particularly if they’re weak, or, you know, not as good as the other guy or woman. And the second is a fear around confidentiality. And so the first thing I’ll say is every therapist is bound by ethical codes of confidentiality, as are all the statutory of the enabling statutes for lawyers Assistance Program. So a great deal of effort is put into keeping this process confidential. When you go to see a therapist, I mean, the first session, the first question I ask people is, you know, what brought you here? How can I help you? And there’s usually like you like for you to miss a precipitating problem. It could be something like, people will say, My wife says, I have to be here, my husband says, I have to be here. Or, you know, somebody brought an attention to the problem to their attention, like actually approached them or confronted them. You know, my feeling about somebody who’s coming to therapy is that I think it takes courage. I’m very respectful of people who come into my office, have the courage that took to take that first step of a first session is basically just a conversation. I mean, this is not some sort of, or shouldn’t be in a some sort of clinical judgmental evaluation. It’s a conversation, what’s going on in your life, what’s working for you and what isn’t working for you. And actually, the best therapy focuses on resources that a person has, you know, what are the strengths in your life what what is working for, you know, every lawyer that to get to law school, you’ve got to be intelligent, you’ve got to work hard, you got to be driven. Lawyers in general are a very A resourceful population is one of the reasons I like working for them, they have to be, they have to be very smart, they tend to be hardworking, they tend to be curious, you know, willing to look at whatever’s going on. But, but we’ll do a full assessment, you know, the person will say, well, here’s what brought me here. And we’ll go through their life, you know, what is working? Where are your stressors? You know, there’s a very common things with lawyers, they tend to work too hard, they tend to overwork. I’m thinking of one attorney, I saw one of the few standard questions I’ll ask people, and one is, when’s the last time you took a vacation, and the guy who got the gold medal in the SEC, this is actually a very high functioning guy, he said, I haven’t had a vacation seven years, after I pick myself up off the floor, we had a conversation about that. It was amazing, he was still still functioning. and that’s unusual to go that long. But that’s the kind of thing that for example, that a lawyer or the lawyers might be skipping on in terms of their well being, they have a hard time resting or finding a way to carve time out of their life to rest. And perceiving that as a priority, and an important for their functioning, not just for their, their subjective well being before they’re functioning on their competence as a lawyer,
Tyson Mutrux
the parent least my job, and I think most lawyers in particular, we have really, really high highs and really, really low lows. And so sometimes it can be hard to balance those, for example, I try cases, and so you can have a huge victory, you feel like you’re on top of the mountain, or you could have a client where they go to prison, you know, it can be terrible. So what are your tips on managing those highs and those lows?
Karen Caffrey
What you’re really talking about is how do I handle emotion? You know, one of the things about law in general is that lawyers are discouraged from being emotional. And we’re trained out of it. We’re trained into the all about our minds, we’re all about cognition. So the answer would be, you know, for sure, finding a person or persons and it could be it doesn’t actually have to be a therapist, it could be a spouse, it could be a colleague, somebody you can talk to you honestly, openly about what it feels, first of all, what it feels like to celebrate, because believe it or not even celebrating, it can be stressful. If you go out and drink too much. Oh, you know, get overwhelmed by the emotions of believing in unhappiness. But especially the losses, the client that goes to jail, the big case that is lost after months of working on it. Can you grieve? Is it okay to feel sad? Did you just say, is there somebody in your life who you feel comfortable sharing your nine game space with, but the emotions that go along with it, and a lot of people in my lawyers will say, No, they don’t, they’re just so afraid of being judged of losing faith of the emotions themselves, are afraid of getting overwhelmed. And this is one place where actually having a therapist or a counselor can be kind of a safe harbor, or safe haven for bringing some of those more intense emotions that maybe you don’t feel safe sharing with someone else. I will say that one of my goals as a therapist is to help people find ways to cultivate relationships with the important people in their life, that they can share their emotions. In other words, therapy is the place to share them. But you what you want to do is develop the ability to share these other people. So it’s not just your therapist that you have other resources with the people in your life to feel safe with. And if you don’t, what’s that about? What’s it about? That you’re living a life where you have to keep your game face on all the time? So a little bit of a long answer. What do you do with the highs and the lows, highs and lows, bring emotions, emotions, we’re supposed to feel emotions, we’re designed as human beings to feel emotion. And so if we can’t, if leaders if we feel unsafe feeling them if we feel unsafe sharing with someone else, or if we engage in behaviors, that to repress those emotions, we lose the caveat, we go out, we use a substance, or we avoid it, we just, you know, you know, knuckle down and forget it happen and overwork and don’t deal with it, those things tend to backup. And then what happens is if you don’t deal with your emotions, you get a symptom, you get depressed, you get an anxiety disorder. And that’s, that’s the long term effect of not finding a healthy way to deal with those emotional highs and those emotional
Jim Hacking
lows. We’re talking today with Karen Caffrey. She’s a licensed professional counselor and a lawyer and we’re having a really good discussion. I’m excited that you’re here, Karen. One thing I wanted to talk about was suicide. And I opened up the maximum lawyer conference this year by talking about one of my mentors from even before I went to law school, and then all through law school. And then after law school, he was a very successful plants attorney here in St. Louis, who ended up killing himself at around the age of 60. And I wonder often, you know, I love these lawyer lunches that we have here. Here’s my idea of a typical lawyer lunch. Hey, Tyson, how are you doing? I’m good, Jim. How are you? Busy? Yeah, I’m busy. And then we talk about cases for about 25 minutes, eat as fast as we can and we’re back to work. How can I how can Hey, lawyers, how can lawyers have more serious conversations? What are the questions we should be asking each other? That way? The
Karen Caffrey
questions are obvious, the hard thing is doing that the question is like, how are you really doing? Are you having any struggles? Is there anything? You know? Is there anything that you are struggling with that you’re not talking about anybody else? You know, it’s a, there’s a great and popular writer and researcher named Rene Brown. She’s a professor at the University of Houston, she’s written a lot of good books about XML vulnerability, Daring Greatly to get them in perfection. And he talks about how difficult it is to be vulnerable, but how important it is to be vulnerable? Because the question simply is, how are you really doing? What’s going on? Are you having any problems that you that you know, you want to talk about? Or frankly, sharing your own problem? Sometimes, the best way to invite somebody into a deeper conversation is to deepen it for ourselves, you know, how’re you doing, Jim? How you doing? I’m great. Lots of cases, how are you doing? You know, I just didn’t know it. so down lately, some mornings, because I can’t get out of bed. Or I don’t know, I’ve been drinking a lot more lately, I’m a little worried I might have a problem. So that, but that requires vulnerability. So it’s taking that risk wisely. You might not do this with somebody you don’t know, you do this with somebody that you’re getting to know that you’ve gotten to know we put it that way. But it’s about it’s about asking the next deeper level of personal question, or offering the next deeper level of personal disclosure, both of those are likely to invite a deeper conversation. And then the other thing I’ll say is, especially with something like suicide, is, don’t be afraid to ask the question, particularly if you notice something going wrong. We are at some extent, our brothers and sisters, keepers. We are a community, we should be a community of people who care about each other. If somebody’s not looking, well, you know, are they coming into work late? Do they look exhausted? Have you noticed alcohol on their breath, you know, it’s a sign of caring for it certainly could and should be a sign of caring to bring these questions up with people, we, when we see something going wrong, or see something that we it’s concerning, rather than to pretend that it’s not going on. There are every state, by the way, has a lawyer’s Assistance Program and put a call into the lawyers assistance approach. Matter of fact, one of one of the calls that I’m told from our person here that one of the most frequent calls is one lawyer or judge calling about another, hey, I’m seeing that someone so is having a problem. And this is if you don’t feel like you can amp it, you can bring it up yourself with a person. And this is what’s happening. And sometimes what will happen is the lab person can make that call for you to say, Hey, we’ve heard you have we, you know, we’ve heard some concerns. And again, this isn’t about punishment. It isn’t about censure. It isn’t about judgment. It’s about caring for those around us. So and it was that felt that’s kind of a long answer. And it’s the the tragic consequence of not asking these questions is, as you say, these are the unfortunate the tragic number of lawyers and others who commit suicide, because is they hit it really, really well. They never asked for help, or nobody noticed,
Tyson Mutrux
there. And I’ve had lots of conversations with Ryan about the session that he’s had with you. And he seems to really get a great benefit from it. And something that he wanted to make sure that I brought up to you was just about, you know, a lot of these sessions. Some of the sessions are about, you know, lawyers being sad and depressed. But a lot of it has nothing to do with that. And a lot of it has to do with how therapy is necessary for the growth of the business and getting your personal and professional visions together. Can you talk a little bit more about the business side of therapy?
Karen Caffrey
Oh, that’s interesting. You know, I don’t know if all other therapists work like this. I have, because I was a lawyer. And frankly, just because I have a personal interest in in business and marketing stuff. It’s something that I find that lawyers who come to me that we end up doing a lot of have conversation about now. The Nexus is the nexus between, let’s say, the business of law and psychotherapy is a lot of the challenges that lawyers face in having a good business of law come from psychological reasons. Obviously mystical, give some examples. They let’s say they lack some technological expertise, and they feel fear and they feel stuck. Oh, you know, I have no idea how to get this kind of tech system go and I’m like, Well, you know, reach out for a consultant, oh, I’m afraid I’ll look stupid. There’s lots of sort of fear driven emotional factors that keep lawyers from doing the things they need to do to become what you guys are calling a maximum lawyer, you know, so that’s the nexus there. So some of what I do is because I’m aware of it, talk to them about different kinds of things they can do to improve the business of their law, but most So what it is, is what are their psychological impediments that keep them from using the tools or taking the steps that would help them have a better legal business, social, social anxiety, which sounds almost cliche in my business. But to be a good lawyer, you need to be in some ways, like out in the world, you need to be able to go to meetings to network with people that have social connection, that have a human relationship, one of your podcasts that was a woman, her name is Billy, and I can’t remember her last name. But at the very end of the interview, she talked about she was she was very tech oriented person talks about some great data that she was collecting, at the very end, she goes, you know, once you get this all in a row, it comes down to the human connection, you know, larger human meeting the needs of humans. And because of that everything that we bring to all of our human relationships, all of our fears, all of our resources, all of our strength, are going to come out in our relationships with our clients, with our referral sources, with our opponents. And so who we are as people, directly impacts who we are as lawyers, and who we are as lawyers, doing the business of law,
Jim Hacking
care, anything. It’s funny, so my therapist was not a lawyer, but she sees a lot of lawyers. And she’s always trying to juggle our schedule, so they don’t see each other in the waiting room, because she doesn’t want to out as being her client. But my question for you, it’s really about sort of that mindset of, you know, I do spend a lot of time at my sessions with my therapist talking about the business and about, you know, trying to infuse the lessons that I learned about myself into the business and sort of, you know, I have blind spots. And so one of the great things about therapy, for me has been to sort of help me identify my blind spots, and maybe places where I’m stuck. And I think I think that getting stuck, is really, you know, lawyers can really find themselves in a rut, I suppose most people can. But it just seems to me that the practice of law really allows us to sort of get stuck. And what are some tips that people might take to to get unstuck, maybe short of going to therapy,
Karen Caffrey
ask two or three PCs, trust, what they see are the reasons for you being stuck. And the way or what they see as your growth areas, and most people find it honestly, that like a very difficult thing to do it because it makes you feel vulnerable. But really the people who know you that are the people who are seeing you every day, I mean, even a great therapist, if that’s somebody come in once a week, I only see one hour a week. I know because every week, so despite my training, despite an ongoing relationship, you know, the therapist isn’t seeing you in your day to day life. Ask the people in your office, you know, as somebody who’s working with you every day. You know, what do you see is my biggest challenge. What do you see? You know, I feel like stuck. Did you have any suggestions for me? What how? Here’s a really, how am I impacting you? If you feel your anxiety level going up, what you wouldn’t be alone, how am I impacting you? And what you want to do is want to say, How am I impacting you in a positive way? Because you want to get some positives here? Because I’m sure you are impacting somebody in the positive way. Is there any way that impacting you in a negative way? Is there any way I can impact you differently. So what you’re looking for the people around you are mirrors, ideally, they’re kind of mirrors. And of course, if somebody is working for you, that makes it a little bit of a complication, because the differential in the power relationship, that you could do that with someone who’s working with you, you want to ask for your peers from from appear. And say, Here’s my dilemma to like, I’m stuck around this and you know, what are you stuck around, you can’t take the next step in your marketing, you can’t take the next step in your practice. So basically, the answer is without a therapist, turn to your trusted people in your life. You’d be amazed, you’d be amazed with people, you people close to you see about you, that they’re not saying we’re socially is a culture where we tend to be socially conditioned, if we’re being quote unquote polite, to not say what we’re really seeing or to lack skill in in expressing it. That’s a big problem for us. Not just words, but for a lot of people often we see what’s going on with somebody else several because we’re close to them and we’re frustrated by whatever they’re doing. We don’t let we we’re not skillful in communicating that well. You’re always doing this you know your drive great crazy when you do that, rather than you know well what I see is you know, every day you know you come in here and you feel your smile on your face and you sit alone your office for an hour looking at your you know, your worst thing first isn’t new. But let’s talk about some other way you could do that and or the way you could start your day another way it could be planful about your day, but it’s that’s a little bit of a long answer to if you don’t have a therapist or coach to somebody close to you. They’re waiting, they’re limited they see.
Tyson Mutrux
Jeremy is a word that I don’t really like using much you know, work life balance, but want to talk a little bit about it just When it comes to working hours and time off and things like that, have you read anything? In your research that shows that you shouldn’t work over a certain number of hours each week? In that you should take a certain number of days off each year? Can you talk a little bit about, you know, the number of hours you should be working? And then the amount of time all people should be taking?
Karen Caffrey
No, I haven’t written the research. But um, I don’t know why you don’t like that term Python. But neither do I. And I thought about that, I should say about the past couple of weeks. The reason I don’t like it is that it’s it’s just as iconomy between work and life. As this, these are two separate things and applies it and applies to conflicts between them. If there’s, it’s one or the other, you have to balance these two opposing force forces, rather than looking as at a person as an integrated self, as a complex, interrelated mosaic have all sorts of different capacities. So that’s the first thing I would say I don’t like the idea. I have concerns put it that way. But those two things could be looked at as an opposition, rather than as a sort of a fluid connection of how a person flows through life. It turns to the number of hours as I was watching Tony Robbins movie and not your guru last night. Oh, my goodness, that man is like, it’s his work. I mean, I’ve never seen somebody with that much energy. And he’s an amazing guy. So to your question, like, like, is there a specific number of hours? I would say? No, I would say at least in my experience, it depends a lot on the person. And is that what I would say? Is that person? Well, does that person experience well being to the people around that person experience well being? I can, you know, there are people who are able to fire on all cylinders, and, you know, quote, unquote, work that the 60 hours a week, maybe more and still feel vibrant, and full of energy. I’m pulling out Tony Robbins. As an example, I think that man, he just seems from the outside, you see, it’s just habits are full, energized. Well, life, I think he’s an outlier. I think most people organismic Lee, physiologically, everybody has a point at which they have stimulated their nervous system, let’s put it that way to the point where they need to stop the stimulation, and allow the their bodies and their minds to rest to rejuvenate. That would be a thing that everybody needs, part of well being every person needs to be bring awareness to. So for some people, frankly, you know, 20 hours of quote unquote, work a week will fill them to capacity of that for that kind of stimulation. And they would say, okay, that if you do more than that, you’re gonna, you’re gonna start experiencing a lack of well being. For some people, it could be 60. And I’m not saying there isn’t research out there, there probably is. I just haven’t read it. But the question for a person to be asking himself is, that is what not what is the magical number of hours? Now I’ve reached 40. So that’s, you know, that’s too much of that too little. But how am I doing? What do I need as an individual to function at my capacity, and still feel well, and still be well, in all of its capacity, all of its meanings? Well as a doing good work, being physically well, being emotionally Well, having relationships that are well feeling spiritually well, and certainly as we do our emotional work need to go back to the idea of trauma, because almost everybody’s carrying some sort of trauma from their past. As we heal our trauma, our capacity increases, so we can handle more, live more in life. And so of course, I think I think most people, if we took with the maximum lawyer, word, most people want to live to their maximum wellness. So there’s, we certainly are, I certainly am looking to increase my capacity to live in life and to enjoy life and to do whatever it is that I want to do in the period of time I’m here on this earth, but I’m not aware of a magical number. To summarize that I think the question more is, when am I experiencing my maximum well being, and then work backwards from that as to how many hours a week I’m doing what working, exercising, sleeping, spending time and community or relationship
Jim Hacking
going my church? Karen. So for me, I agree that the work life balance thing is something that’s sort of beaten to death and but one thing that I noticed over the last year that I’ve been getting better about is sort of having sort of boundaries around my time. So this this little thing that I carry around in my pocket, it’s supposedly a phone, but really, it’s like a taskmaster. And, you know, it’s in email, inbox overflow and tasks and everything. I mean, I was laughing today, like my whole law firm is in this phone. Like, I can get all every case I could look at anything anywhere, anytime on this little device. And so, to me that that’s been the biggest obstacle to having sort of clear time at home. Clear time at work, clear time on client focused off clear time. I’m on business focus stuff. And so getting tips on sort of keeping the phone at bay, right? Like I
Karen Caffrey
think goes, I hope you have two factor authorization, authentication on your phone. This practical tips like it, which I can mention, and then there’s emotional tip, practical tip, like external things is, first of all have two phones is one thought. Most people don’t do this. Now we have this one smartphone and our business and our personal stuff comes in on the same phone, you could have two, you could have a business phone. And so you put that one, when you don’t want to be doing business, you know, a dedicated phone with a dedicated phone number dedicated email, you’ll literally have a physical object as a separate phone. So you put that phone down and walk away with it, or walk away from it. And then all you have is your personal phone with you. I think a lot of people have a hard time doing that they tend to have there’s a there’s a mixture, there’s an overlap, and they tend to be getting work stuff on their personal phone. You can believe it or not, people are shocked to hear this, you can put your phone down. Very few people notice, I literally do not take my phone upstairs, when I go upstairs at night, I have a bedtime routine, I go up, take my bath, read a book, whatever, I leave my phone downstairs and this we live in especially younger people, this is almost a strange concept to them, it is actually not physically necessary to have our phones in our presence all the time. And I don’t mean to be I don’t mean to be saying that in a derogatory way. But I literally mean like this is information to some people, you can put your phone down and walk away from it. And if there actually is an emergency, Jim, I think you’re more my age. And you may remember the time when not only were there not smartphones and cell phones, there were phones that didn’t have answering machines. And like if somebody called and you were there, then they waited, they didn’t get you. And if it was a real emergency, someone got in their car, drove to your house and said, Hey, you have a real emergency. So these are literally tactical, practical ways, you know, walk away from your condominium, turn it off, like literally turn it off. And here’s the problem with all the things these are in some way, these are sort of common sense. Suggestions. The harder problems are the emotional and psychological barriers to that, you know, there’s this because of immediacy technology, and not being able to see the news, any of your listeners, but there is sort of this implied expectation that we’re supposed to be available 24/7, we’re supposed to respond to somebody else versus be available to respond to somebody else’s needs all the time. Now, just think of that as a relationship, you know, if your wife or spouse, whatever has been said to you, you’re supposed to be held to me all the time. Like, I don’t know about you, but I’d go, I’d be taken aback like what like, I get to, like, brush my teeth, and I get to go like go for a walk. That’s an imbalance. That’s an imbalance in your personal relationship to live as if somebody is available on demand. That’s different is if you actually, you know, there are way of 911 services, and there certainly are some legal practices where a system needs to be put in place. So that, you know, the lawyer can be available in some way for permitting certain criminal practices, some sort of emergency calls and see some system. But this this, this concept, and it’s emotional belief that we’re supposed to be alert, it’s supposed to be, you know, available 24/7. That’s, that’s not human. That’s not healthy. That’s not going to cultivate anybody’s well being. So with somebody who’s struggling with the with, with putting your phone down with turning it off with having the boundaries around their phone, those are psychological things that needs some work around, where did you get this? What’s going on, that you feel this imperative, in a relationship to be completely available to another person that your needs are so low in a priority that they always have to go second to this other person’s needs. So that’s the psychological piece. And that’s the piece that needs to get worked on. If, as a business matter, a lawyer is having a hard time putting systems in place, so they don’t have to be they don’t personally have to be available. 24/7 I think, Jim, you in responding when your emails, your auto response, you’re making an effort to put that you have something sitting there like your auto generate email that you only look at emails twice a day. Did I do I recall that correctly? Yeah. Tell you something. Both. Yeah. So that’s, I think I heard you say in one of your podcasts that you actually may peak at other times, but that’s a good tactic to educate clients or others like here’s, here’s what your basic thing is, here’s what I’m available to respond to your need. And if you have emergency an emergency and call my staff person, so some of it is setting up those systems symptoms, the deeper issue and this is what I signed for. In therapy. I’m thinking of a soul that I work with. I think we worked for a year on getting him to like literally put a song down couldn’t be literally could not put his phone down and walk away from it. And that’s a psychological issue. That’s an emotional issue. It’s not a, it’s not a practice issue. Or if it is a practice issue, it means you need some systems in place. So that you don’t literally have to carry your phone all the time. And if you have this, you either need help putting systems in place. Or if you’ve put them in place, and you still can’t put your phone down that has that that problem has been deeper, deeper territory to look at.
Tyson Mutrux
Alright, Karen, you’ve given us a ton of information. It’s just been really good podcast. But I do want to be respectful of your time. So I’m gonna wrap things up. Before we get to our tips or hack the week, I do want to remind everyone to go to the Facebook group. Get in there, get involved with the discussion, a lot of great information there. And then also, if you’ll please give us a five star review on iTunes or a future podcast. That would be great. Jimmy, what’s your hack of the week.
Jim Hacking
So in light of our great discussion today with Karen, I’m gonna highlight something that I’ve been doing this year. So we are in the 33rd week of the year now that we’re recording this episode. And I would say probably 20 of the Wednesday’s of the 33 weeks, I have taken completely off I’ve unplugged I’ve, I’ve gotten away from the phone, I’ve gotten away from the computer away from the office. And I’ve had these free days where I just sort of go with the flow, do what I want, go for a hike, go see a movie. And when I come back, it’s been great because the office keeps running things keep moving. new clients are signing up case works getting done and, and I’m getting sort of freed to think about things to do the kind of work that I need to be doing and just relax because even on the weekends, I don’t get to relax. And so having those Wednesday’s right in the middle of the week, really makes the time in the office more important. So I don’t goof around and and then when I get that free time, it’s just been great for clearing my brain out.
Tyson Mutrux
Like, that’s really good. That’s also pretty bold to do. That’s That’s pretty crazy. They can’t imagine that this point taken off the Wednesdays, every week. Is that right? Every week, except for three out of 33.
Jim Hacking
No, it’s been 20 of the 3320.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s still quite a bit that’s hard to hard to imagine for me. Anyways, Karen, I understand you have a tip for us. I
Karen Caffrey
do I want to congratulate you on the Olympic well being that’s incredible and wonderful. And great that you have you set your life and your practice up to do that. So my tip of the week would be for to put your every lawyer to put their well being on their radar screen. And to do this by diary, if you could diary it every day, every day at one o’clock, I’m going to have a ticker that tells me or put in your calendar, I’m going to spend five minutes thinking about my well being and I’m putting I’m deliberately putting that broad because that’s different things to different people, Jim’s got a whole day of well being 20 days or however many days out of 33 weeks. But this is a conscious a great deal of improving well being it’s about putting it on your radar screen and prioritizing it along with everything else. So put in your account, whatever it is that you keep track your time diary, your well being five minutes to sit down, think okay, what do I need to do to be well, and then the next step, of course, is implementing it. But diary, your well being put it on your own radar screen.
Tyson Mutrux
Very good. Alright, so my tip of the week is actually has to do with productivity. And it’s a website slash app that I found, I just stumbled upon it last week and really kind of cool. It’s called active track ACTA I ve, T tra que.com. There’s also an app that allows you to do is it allows you to plug in yourself and your partners, your employees, everyone, with a simple tool that you download to your computer. It does not work on your phone yet, but they’re working on it. But we can do is it just shows your productivity level based on the apps that you’re using based upon the website that you’re going to. It’s a really cool tool, it’s or it’s actually very insightful. You get to see what you’re doing on a daily basis with hard numbers, you know, you can sort of, at the end of the day, kind of look back. Okay, what did I do today, but you can actually see it, see actually what you’re doing. You can see what your employees are doing, which really kind of cool. So I highly recommend it’s free for three users. So it’s pretty neat. Karen, thank you so much for coming on.
