How To Slow Your Mind When It's Going At 150 MPH

Meditation may be the key for lawyers who get distracted often.

Jeena Cho

Jeena Cho

You’re at the office, trying to work on a brief. The phone rings, you answer, talk on the phone. During the call, you see an email alert. You open the email and completely lose track of the conversation on the phone. Then your secretary pops in to ask a question. In the middle of your conversation, you get a text message. Several hours go by, with this continued cycle of distractions, and it’s 3:30 p.m., when you realize you haven’t made much progress on the one important task of the day — the brief.

According to a Harvard research study, we’re distracted approximately 50 percent of the time. We’re constantly multitasking, jumping mindlessly from one task to another, not really focused. What’s worse, our smartphone, the email alerts on our computer, all of those little notifications release dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. Our brain is literally becoming addicted to distractions.

Long gone are the days where lawyers can spend four hours of uninterrupted time researching, thinking, pondering a complex legal issue. Sadly, at the exact precise moment when our ability to focus is becoming ever more necessary, our ability to focus is rapidly decreasing.

I’ll often talk to lawyers who complain of feeling as though they are being pulled in a hundred different directions at once. Trying to remember all the endless lists of to-dos, and find time to do it all.

This way of living, needless to say, can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, and feeling as though the mind is literally racing at 150 mph. One huge benefit I noticed when I started practicing meditation was that my mind wasn’t constantly racing. It’s not that my mind never felt busy, distracted, or agitated, but as I started practicing taking just a few minutes each day to sit in silence, I started to notice all the various states of my own mind.

This increased awareness gives you the ability to make conscious choices. I can choose to not redirect my attention to the many distractions when I need focused time. It gives me a sense of having control over my own mind and what is really important in the moment.

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There are a number of studies that have proven that meditation can increase focus and concentration. When you understand the mechanics of meditation, this makes perfect sense.

When you meditate, you choose an object of focus — such as your breath, sounds around you, or other sensations. When your mind wanders, gets distracted, lost in thought, daydreams, etc., you return your mind back to the object of focus. Many new meditators falsely believe that meditation requires the mind be completely free of thoughts. This is a common misunderstanding.

During meditation, you are practicing the ability to return your mind over and over again to the task at hand — the meditation. Similarly, you can bring the same discipline to work. When you’re working on a brief, and you notice your mind is racing, lost in thought, worrying, or just distracted, you can notice this and return your mind back to the task.

One common objection I get from lawyers is that they do not have time to meditate. First, consider, how many hours a day you’re wasting simply because your mind is going at 150 mph, unable to focus. What if you can reclaim even a small percentage of that time? Second, meditation doesn’t have to take much time. My recommendation is to start with just 6 minutes. That’s just 0.1 hour.

If you’re curious to see if meditation can help you improve focus and concentration, you can join my co-author, Karen Gifford and me for an 8-week program, offered through the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL). Seyfarth Shaw LLP is sponsoring the event. Each week, you’ll receive a short (0.1 hour) guided meditation in your Inbox. Also, you can get two free CLE credits by attending the webinars live.

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Jeena Cho is the author of The Anxious Lawyer: An 8-Week Guide to a Joyful and Satisfying Law Practice Through Mindfulness and Meditation (affiliate link). She is a contributor to Forbes and Bloomberg where she covers diversity/inclusion, resilience, work/life integration, and wellness in the workplace. She regularly speaks and offers training on women’s issues, diversity, wellness, stress management, mindfulness, and meditation. You can reach her athello@jeenacho.com or @jeena_cho on Twitter.