Biglaw

Are You Languishing?

'Meh' is the perfect word to describe that kind of nether world in which we find ourselves these days.

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(Image via Getty)

So, how you do feel these days? Ready to go back into the office? Prefer working from home for the foreseeable future? Some firms have already announced plans to reopen. Others have not finalized plans. It’s anyone’s guess how the return to work will roll out.

How are you feeling emotionally? If you are at all like so many of us, your answer would probably be “meh.” Not terrible, but not great. I think “meh” is the perfect word to describe that kind of nether world in which we find ourselves these days. “Blah” could also be another descriptive word right now.

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton and his term for what most, if not all, of us are feeling now is “languishing.” He says it’s a feeling of stagnation and emptiness. I think “stagnation” is certainly an appropriate word, given that most of us are totally over Zoom usage, and the last thing we want to do to is spend even one more minute on it. “Emptiness,” a sense perhaps that there is “no there there,” is also understandable. We feel a kind of joylessness and aimlessness.

We all know that we’re feeling that way. We’re tired, depleted, and weary.

Grant says that languishing is the middle stage between depression and flourishing. It would be no surprise at all if there are more mental health issues (at long last we are paying attention to them) in the post-pandemic, return to work world.

Languishing is not firing on all cylinders, it’s a lack of ability to concentrate and creates a sense of dullness of purpose, a going through the motions rather than being energized about what you are doing. None of this should be any surprise to any of us. Languishing is brain fog, the inability to see clearly, the lack of interest in people and things that have mattered to you in the past.

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Grant says that one antidote to languishing is the concept of flow, that you become so immersed in a project or activity or, yes, even work, that you forget all sense of time, that hours pass, and you don’t even know it.

If you have never read the book “Flow,” do so. I think it’s an essential book to understand and use flow in your lives, both personal and professional, especially now in these pretty-close-to-post-pandemic times. I took a class from the author, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, more than 20 years ago at Claremont Graduate University.

Reading his book and taking his class were two of the most memorable educational experiences I have ever had. Grant has reminded me that it’s time for me reread Csikszentmihalyi’s book.

What flow does is take you out of yourself. You become so absorbed in whatever interests you, that makes you happy, content, or joyful at what you are doing that time flies without realizing that it has flown. I don’t think anyone would say that the past 15 or 16 months have been happy, contented, or joyous for anyone, and I think that Grant’s point is that it’s time to find flow.

One of the issues that we have all faced in the past year or so is the fragmentation of our attention: concern about loved ones near and far whom we couldn’t see and, in some cases, not even talk to. Giving children the attention, they needed and deserved while trying to keep them educated as they lost a whole year of social interaction and educational instruction. Trying to keep an even keel at your job (if you had one) while refraining from telling managers that you were not on call 24/7 even if working from home.

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How to handle all this?  Grant has some ideas:

  1. Set uninterrupted blocks of time. That is a way to get our attention, to do work that needs to be done, and that can create a sense of flow. Concentrate on whatever it is you are doing to the exclusion of the world around you.
  2. Focus on small goals. It doesn’t have to be a small professional goal; it can just as easily be a personal one, like writing that essay that you’ve been thinking about, finishing that book that you promised to return to your neighbor, or practicing a musical instrument. Take satisfaction in little things. Sounds a little New Age-y? So what?

Many of us have been living lives of “quiet despair” as Grant, paraphrasing Thoreau, calls it. So, it’s not about just the physical return to work, but the mental aspect as well. Physical presence is one thing, but what about mental presence? As Grant says, “As we head into our new post-pandemic reality, it’s time to rethink our understanding of mental health and well-being. ‘Not depressed’ doesn’t mean you’re not struggling. ‘Not burned out’ doesn’t mean you’re fired up.”

These pandemic times have much to teach us about mental health, how people use their coping mechanisms to survive difficult times now. Everyone has them, some more successful than others. We lawyers pride ourselves on our mental toughness, but perhaps our guard needs to be relaxed, even if just a little.

What’s especially important now is to acknowledge that you may well be languishing, and that’s okay. There’s been grief, heartbreak, frustration, anxiety, you name it, people have experienced it. Even if you have been lucky enough to avoid a bout of COVID-19, there’s still the emotional long haul that we’ve all been through. It’s a form of PTSD.

If there’s anything positive in all this, it’s that now, finally, people (and I include lawyers as people although some would disagree) are starting to take mental health issues seriously, that they shouldn’t be stigmatized any longer because just about everyone has been languishing. We need to regain our sense of equilibrium, but that doesn’t happen overnight.

Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.

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