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Career & Practice Concerns

The Art of Interviewing

Anyone who has been on multiple job interviews will tell you that they are often anxiety provoking. Whether you love the job or hate it, you want the interview to go well and you want the employer to offer you the job (even if you decide you do not want the job). After all, we all want to be valued, appreciated, and wanted. The reality is you have to risk rejection if you want a competitive job. So how do you put yourself out there, get rejected, and still go on with confidence?

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The Myth of Multitasking: Why doing less is better

There is a misguided belief that multitasking is a good idea. Basically it is thought that if you are able to do more than one thing at the same time, then you are able to get more done. Unfortunately, the reality of this is quite the opposite. Like most things, it might be helpful to examine this issue on a continuum. On one end you have tasks that need to happen at the same time (for example, breathing and walking) and at the other end you have tasks that should never happen together (for example, texting and driving).

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Eating a Frog during your Power Hour: Tips on fighting procrastination

While the title might sound like the newest diet craze, I assure you it is not. It is, in fact, a technique to fight procrastination. As mentioned in a previous post, procrastination is simply avoidance. We avoid things that are unpleasant. We put off tasks on our to-do lists until later…or until never. As humans, we are motivated by two basic goals: 1) Seeking pleasure, and 2) Avoiding pain. While seeking pleasure can be very motivating (rewarding myself with a cookie after doing a difficult task can help me increase my motivation), we are actually more influenced by avoiding pain. Given that many of our work tasks are unpleasant, dare I say painful, we are given many opportunities throughout our day to decide to avoid something that is unpleasant or to confront it. A pattern of avoiding such things is called procrastination.

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The 2-Minute Rule: Fighting Procrastination

One of the more common issues that professionals struggle with is the all-too-common procrastination. Procrastination, just like salsa, can be mild (putting off a simple task that you eventually complete within a few days), intense (developing a pattern of avoiding certain activities or tasks that one day lead to serious consequences), and everything in between. However, unlike salsa, there is no mango version of procrastination.

Simply put, procrastination is avoidance. We avoid things that make us uncomfortable. We avoid things that we fear. And the more you avoid something, the harder it is to confront. It’s like that email you got from an old friend that you were meaning to reply to. At first you put it off because you weren’t sure what to say (avoidance), then maybe you forgot about it, then you remembered that you hadn’t responded, you then felt bad, and then continued to avoid responding because it was now more uncomfortable because you still don’t know what to say AND you feel bad about it. 

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How to deal with any problem: Problem-focused vs Emotion-focused coping

 

Problems come in all shapes and sizes. Needless to say, having only one method of addressing problems would be like having only one tool in your toolbox to fix every household maintenance problem that arose. By the way, I don’t recommend using a hammer to remove a light fixture. Usually doesn’t work out the way you hope. So it is obvious that we need multiple methods of addressing all of the different types of problems that we face each day. Obvious? Yes. Yet in reality we often get into trouble trying to use a preferred problem-solving method with problems that require a different approach.

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Analysis Paralysis – Why it’s so hard to decide sometimes

Multiple times throughout our day we are all faced with decisions to make. Some decisions are easy and do not require much energy, while others are quite taxing and require considerable mental fortitude. Understanding the factors involved in these tougher decisions can help break through the barriers that often keep us from making a decision. One unhelpful tendency that can occur is the experience of over-thinking or over-analyzing a decision. This involves spending too much time considering the options (the pros and cons of potential choices) to the point where a decision is never made, aptly referred to as “Analysis Paralysis”. A desire for perfection and a fear of failure often fuel this tendency. It’s important to recognize that when we are faced with options, it is inevitable that each option will have both pros and cons associated with it. In other words, there is no perfect option, so stop looking for it. It’s important to recognize the pros and cons of each option, to accept that whatever you choose might not work out, try to see failure as a learning opportunity to embrace and not something to avoid at all costs, and try to see your decision as one step in the process and not the final step.

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I Found a Lawyer in My Serial

Those of you who listen, as I do, to podcasts are probably aware of “Serial,” a spinoff of “This American Life” which is said to be the most listened-to podcast ever.  This series of 12 podcast episodes (the last episode just out in mid-December) follows reporter Sarah Koenig’s investigation of a 15-year old murder questioning the guilt of the young man convicted of it.  (I might also mention that Serial was hilariously parodied on the December 20 Saturday Night Live.)

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Call Them, Maybe?

I am privileged to author a recurrent Q&A column in the Massachusetts Lawyers Journal (in addition to our anonymous online Q&A system).  People seem particularly interested in this month’s column, relating to the problem, seen all too often and unfortunately…

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