Small Law Firms, Solo Practitioners

Stuck On A Problem? Move

Next time you're stuck on a problem, try packing up and moving somewhere different.

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the need to push back against work. To make time for your life outside of the daily grind. That it’s important to be more than your job, both for your job and yourself.

But you do need to work. And when it is time to work, you need to work well. No complications, no distractions, no interruptions. To solely focus on the task at hand and nothing else.

In an older post, I laid out the routine I hear about from many lawyers:

Check Twitter, check email, review a letter. Write a couple paragraphs in brief, get phone call. While on phone, pull up Facebook. Phone call ends, check Twitter, back to brief. Another lawyer sticks head in office, wants to talk about an issue in a different case. Finish conversation, back to brief, an urgent email notification pops up. Read email, not really that urgent. Reply anyway. Couple more paragraphs into brief, calendar notification goes off. Lunch scheduled with another lawyer in 25 minutes.

This type of hectic, sliced-up routine isn’t productive. Rather, there is some productivity occurring but it is at a highly reduced level of efficiency. It’s likely near impossible to really dig into hard problems and deep work if you are constantly being interrupted. It doesn’t allow time for deep work:

[C]ognitively demanding activities [are those] that leverage our training to generate rare and valuable results, and that push our abilities to continually improve.

Deep work, if made the centerpiece of your knowledge work schedule, generates three key benefits:

  1. Continuous improvement of the value of your work output.
  2. An increase in the total quantity of valuable output you produce.
  3. Deeper satisfaction (aka., “passion”) for your work.

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For lawyers, deep work is analysis, deconstructing arguments, writing briefs. It is not “busy” work. It is quiet work, something that requires planning and time to be set aside. In the previous post, I advocated for finding the period of the day in which you find yourself to be the most productive and block aside that time for deep work. No emails, no phone calls, no interruptions.

But even in doing so, it can sometimes be difficult to actually do good work. Despite having set aside the time for deep work, you can be stuck. Banging your head against the wall and generating nothing. In a recent post on his blog Study Hacks, Cal Newport suggested the idea of “concentration circuits” when faced with a block in your ability to complete deep work:

Something about arriving at a new and novel location — somewhere different than where you normally work — provides a boost to your motivation and aids concentration. Over time, this effect will wane. But if you keep switching locations, you can keep re-stimulating this reaction again and again, maintaining an average level of concentration that’s potentially much higher than if you had slogged through the deep task in one (literal) sitting.

I call this approach the concentration circuit as it cycles you through a circuit of locations to keep your concentration levels elevated.

I’ve found this to be true as well. It’s a simple thing but going to a cafe around the corner from our building when I’m stuck on something can provide a boost to productivity. It is a distraction-free zone to some extent (hint: also turn off your net connection). There is something energizing about being in a new location. It provides a sort of mental “re-set” that allows one to re-engage with their work at a deeper level than if they stayed in one spot, furtively attempting to make something happen. Even just getting out of your office and going into a conference room can provide a boost to tackling a problem.

So next time you’re stuck on a problem, try packing up and moving somewhere different. A couple times if you have to. It could work wonders for your productivity.

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Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at keith.lee@hamerlawgroup.com or on Twitter at @associatesmind.

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