Most hard things are off-putting to most people. We experience things as difficult because parts of our brains and bodies say, “No, no, not this; try anything else”. Feelings like unease and anxiety come up, and often self-criticism. But complex things take time and repeated engagement to learn.
Readers, I have been on a journey. I invite you to join me for a recap. I recently gave a talk to senior lawyers about being a human and a manager of lawyers. One of the topics I was anxious to cover was how millennials[1] are people and not some Read more…
And so, you feel you should probably just keep going. Just get through it and then see what happens after that. After all, what if you took a break and never came back? What if you fell behind everyone else? What if future lawyers saw a big gap from June 2019 to July 2020 and refused even to let you in their doors? It’s all too much. Better to just keep grinding on as best you can, right?
Hello, fellow nerds. It is the time of Christmas and summer, when most of you will, with any luck, have time for some leisure. As nerds, I expect some of your leisure might take the form of reading, and I am here to help. (For the moment I am going Read more…
Around 90% of the guests on the podcast chose to study law because they were good at English. Rare is the guest who studied law because they wanted the skills to do particular justice-related work, or the guest who thought being a lawyer looked like fun. (I say that with Read more…
by Katie Cowan Let’s say everyone starts their day with a hundred M&Ms and several bowls with neatly-printed labels. I know I am jumping in at the deep end here, but just go with it. M&Ms represent units of personal capacity, or mental bandwidth. I say M&Ms rather than “units” Read more…
When I was in law school I amused myself in lectures by writing dumb jokes and asides throughout my notes, and referring to all male litigants as “Dude” and all male judges as “Judge Dude”. I was going to find a cool example and share it in this column, but Read more…
When I was six my school got very excited about Edward de Bono’s Thinking Hats. This was an innovation methodology, applied to education, and intended to teach children about different perspectives, and how to navigate their own minds. There was the yellow hat to think about the good things about Read more…