What 100% Commitment Looks Like
U.S. culture presents lawyers in either an extremely positive or negative light. We are either good or bad, smart or dumb, wealthy and high powered or overworked with a bleeding heart.
Internally, there are dichotomies too. You went to a top law school, or you didn’t. You work for BigLaw, or you don’t. You believe in 100% commitment to your work, or you strive for work-life balance and are phoning it in.
You are either tough enough to be a lawyer forsaking all semblance of a life, friends, or family in pursuit of being the best or you’re not.
When you give a bunch of A-type lawyers these choices, they almost always want to do the former. It’s not because they don’t want to have a life. It’s just that A-type lawyers believe that they will be the exception to the rule. Somehow they will be the best, save the day for their clients, workout, get married, have children, get rich, and be happy all without breaking a sweat. If this means they have to work 90-100 hours a week to do it, so be it. That’s what the job requires, and they are playing to win.
Except who decided that winning looks like this? What if you don’t want to work 100 hours in a week because you’d prefer to take your kid to school every day or just sleep in on a Saturday? Are you winning? Are you still a good lawyer, if you want to be a good family member, friend, and caregiver too? Can you be 100% committed and care about your wellbeing at the same time?
Of course, my answer is yes, but here’s why.
The whole premise of work v. life balance is a game that no one should play.
When you have to choose between competitive forces, one of them has to lose. That is the nature of competition. Something must lose for something else to win. However, your work and life are not adversaries. They are components of your whole full life. So when you are forced to choose between them, you end up cycling between anxiety and guilt that you made the wrong choice no matter your decision.
Like most things in life, how you choose to navigate your career is not a black and white question. There are many shades of grey (or purple if that’s what you’re into). Because of this, you do not have to buy into anyone’s belief system about the right way to work, play, or be a good lawyer.
The social norms concerning how much lawyers work, when they work, and what lawyers look like doing that work, were developed a long time ago when people like me (i.e. women and minorities) weren’t even allowed to practice. Those norms considered the lives of the white men in the profession at that time, but they did not consider your life now. Your life now is full of family, friends, hobbies, and activities that may take you away from your desk for a few hours but end up making you a better lawyer and person in the long run.
Because you are an adult, you get to choose what working style works for you without shame or guilt. The options aren’t more committed or less, and they certainly don’t mean you’ll make less money because you choose a different path. (Some of the richest people I know work way less than I ever expected.) It simply means that you are an adult and you get to define success for yourself.
Adults accept responsibility, make independent decisions, and become financially independent. Most lawyers have the responsibility and financial independence thing down, but it’s the independent decision-making thing that has us tripped up. Sure, we no longer let our parents or family tell us what to do. But we have replaced them with partners, managers, and supervisors.
In most legal professional environments, if a partner or supervisor tells you to do something, you do it. Despite having to call out injustice on behalf of your clients, when it comes to working at the firm, you are supposed to sit there and take it. The object is pleasing the partner, not the client, at all cost. Even if it feels like they are exploiting you or being disrespectful to you.
Again, this is a social norm you don’t have to accept. I know there will be a lot of eye rolls at that statement, but it’s true. Partners do not get to define success for you. They supervise your work and decide on the trajectory of their business. However, their business is not your life. If you decide a partner’s work demands don’t fit your view of success, it is not because you can’t hack it or you’re not committed. It’s because that work style does not work for you.
Remember, I’m talking to a group of lawyers here. You’ve never been lazy in your life. You eat hard work and commitment for breakfast. So you’re not half-assing a thing if you decide that what works for your life isn’t what the partner is demanding. You’re also not an entitled whippersnapper who wants all the accolades without paying your dues. To the contrary, you’ve just decided as an adult what dues are worth paying and which ones are not.
So What is 100% Commitment Then?
To be committed, the kind of 100% commitment required for success, you must begin by first defining your version of success without judgment or concern about what someone else might think. If you create a vision that truly honors who you are, it won’t feel like you are sacrificing your life to work or vice versa. Instead, your life’s work becomes apart of the overall fabric of your life. It moves and breathes with you. It helps you to see that all of that other stuff – health, relationships, hobbies, and sleep make you better able to give your all to the work. It helps you to bring your highest self to the cause.
Once you define that vision, then you commit 100% to it. This means disappointing people instead of pleasing them. It also means setting boundaries when necessary all the while knowing and accepting the consequences.
Wallace Wattles wrote, “[t]o think according to appearance is easy. To think truth regardless of appearances is laborious.” You will never work as hard as you do when you decide to have your own mind, define success for yourself, and take action to create it. That requires 100% commitment. Everything else is easy in comparison.
Are you struggling with work/life balance and ready to stop? How might you begin to shift your version of success and commitment in your career? Let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.