Health Care / Medicine

Why Rest Is Critical For Good Lawyering

Scientists are discovering the importance of play, rest, and unplugging from work. How can lawyers take advantage of these findings?

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Jeena Cho

Jeena Cho

For the second year in a row, my husband and I started the New Year by attending a week-long silent meditation retreat at Esalen. Usually, whenever I attend a long retreat, I feel exhausted for the first couple of days. I start to sleep a solid eight hours and really practice unplugging from the world. It’s an opportunity to take a journey inwards, reflect, and examine life.

As I sat overlooking the Pacific Ocean, watching the whales migrate and dolphins play in the water, I was reminded of the importance of rest. Many lawyers I talk to complain about how they always get sick on vacations. I believe part of this is attributable to lack of rest in our daily life.

Scientists are discovering the importance of play, rest, and unplugging from work. As discussed in this Scientific American article:

Downtime replenishes the brain’s stores of attention and motivation, encourages productivity and creativity, and is essential to both achieve our highest levels of performance and simply form stable memories in everyday life.

Sadly, Americans are taking fewer breaks throughout the day as well as less vacation. When I offer stress management workshops to lawyers, I’ll ask the audience how many of them regularly eat lunch at their desk. In general, 75% or more of the room will raise their hands. This is consistent with this NPR story:

Research shows that only 1 in 5 five people steps away for a midday meal. Most workers are simply eating at their desks.

“So staying inside, in the same location, is really detrimental to creative thinking. It’s also detrimental to doing that rumination that’s needed for ideas to percolate and gestate and allow a person to arrive at an ‘aha’ moment,” Elsbach tells Jeremy Hobson, host of Here & Now.

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The human body (and brain) simply isn’t designed to sit stationary for 8-12 hours per day. The body needs time to not only collect information and data, but also time to process it. Much of this data processing happens in our sleep where the brain moves memories from short-term storage to long-term.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of spending many hours or even days trying to solve a problem, walk away from thinking about the problem, then an insight hits in the shower or taking a hike.

When we walk away from a problem and engage in rest, play, and downtime, it puts our subconscious to work. Lawyers, of course, put an extremely high value on their conscious, cognitive thinking abilities but perhaps we should also value productivity and creativity that comes from downtime.

Downtime doesn’t require you to go on a week-long silent meditation retreat (although I highly recommend it). You also don’t need to go on vacation. All that’s required is intentionally pausing and giving yourself a rest.

Here are some practices I’ve found to be helpful:

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1. Get up from your desk! According to this Forbes article, “Sitting is the most underrated health-threat of modern time.” Set an alarm and regularly get up from your chair – stretch, walk around the office, or walk around the block. By adding movement into your day, you’ll increase energy by as much as 150%.

2. Work hard. Then unplug completely. Most of us continually think, worry, or obsess about work in an unhealthy and unproductive way. Developing a concentration practice — such as meditation — will train your mind to completely focus on what is happening in each moment instead of continually walking around in a fog of useless thoughts.

3. Find tools for insta-unplug. Find healthy activities that promote downtime. This can be listening to your favorite song, going for a long walk, jogging, swimming, yoga, playing Scrabble, or other relaxing activities. The more tools you have in your arsenal for unplugging, the better.

What tools have you found to be useful for unplugging? Drop me an email and share. smile@theanxiouslawyer.com

P.S. I’ll be teaching an 8-week Better Lawyering Through Mindfulness course starting January 12th. Get additional information here.

Jeena Cho is the author of the upcoming American Bar Association book, The Anxious Lawyer: An 8-Week Guide to a Happier, Saner Law Practice Using Meditation (affiliate link). She offers training programs and coaching on stress management, work/life balance, and creating a sustainable law practice using mindfulness. She’s the host of the Resilient Lawyer podcast. She practices bankruptcy law with her husband in San Francisco, CA. Connect via Twitter @jeena_cho or email smile@theanxiouslawyer.com

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