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Kathleen: You are listening to The Thriving Lawyer with Kathleen Brenner and Carla Ferraz. I'm Kathleen, a highly experienced lawyer and an International Coaching Federation accredited coach.
Carla: And I am Carla. Like Kathleen, I am an ICF certified coach and I have worked with top leaders and professionals, many of them lawyers, at some of the world's biggest organizations.
My focus is on using evidence based approaches to help my clients thrive at work and in the rest of their lives. Together,
Kathleen: we bring you the Thriving Lawyer podcast, a podcast filled with ideas and inspiration, as well as practical tips to help you thrive as a lawyer and in the rest of your
life. Let's get into it.
Hi everyone. It's Kathleen here, and I'm thrilled to have you back for another episode of [00:01:00] The Thriving Lawyer. In this episode, we are going to be talking about Flow and what that means, but before we get into that, Carla, hello. What have you been up to? I have actually changed my office a bit. I've done a bit of a reset.
After watching the neuro aesthetic presentation in New York, I decided to change a bit. So like we learned how our physical environment really impacts our brain, our creativity, and our focus, and even when our emotional regulation, yeah. So I just came home and looked around my office and thought this, this space isn't helping me focus.
So I reshuffled everything. I moved to my desk, I cleared some of the visual clutters, I brought some plants in and create a space to sit and read. And honestly, I, it is only been a couple of days, but you can really feel like the difference that it made. Like it's, yeah, this space really [00:02:00] affects how we focus and how we think.
And this actually ties beautifully with what we are talking about today, like creating conditions for flow. I can see that's, in a way, it's a shame that it's only an audio podcast. We'll have to do some video ones in the future too. But I can see all these beautiful plants there. So it does look quite the inspiring space.
Hey, that's maybe a good place to launch into, like why this episode? Like why should we spend this time and what's in it for you in terms of listening to us today? It really comes down to Carla's just been talking about the importance of physical space in terms of the creativity and the environment to help her focus on her work essentially, and feel more inspired.
And one of the things that we have come across in our work with [00:03:00] professionals of all kind, and particularly lawyers, and absolutely no exception to this, is that the reality of work today. Is one that is often characterized by pressure, high workloads with all the technology that we are facing, the constant distractions, it's really easy to begin to feel disconnected from your work.
You know, our attention is going in a whole lot of different directions and what that can result in is that we really aren't being as effective as we could be, and we end up feeling. Really drained. And so we see it all the time. I see it not only in coaching, but in terms of lawyers that are in my circle.
Um, and Carla, I know you see this with professionals all the time that you coach. And if we just think about lawyers ends up where you get into this situation where smart, hardworking lawyers, [00:04:00] they're doing their best. They're showing up every day, but they end up feeling like they're just running on empty.
When we think about the thriving lawyer and who they are overall, the thriving lawyer is someone who's not just working harder. It's that old cliche about working smarter. I think, and this is where flow comes in, because it's actually about how we go about doing our work and how we can trigger those flow states to be not only.
More productive to actually feel better and to thrive more holistically across our lives. So we wanted to create this episode and also have to say a special course that you and I have created, Carla, so that lawyers can have real strategies for finding that sweet spot where they're fully immersed. You know, we want you as a lawyer to feel like you are performing at your best and [00:05:00] actually enjoying work.
But Ben, having the time, well, not running on the empty tank, having the time for all those other things that are important to you. So Carla, with that in mind, why don't you tell our listeners what Flow is, just to give us a little bit of a brief introduction. Sure. So Flow is this magical state of being fully immersed in an activity where time seems to disappear and every actions feels really effortless.
And so you're so absorbed in what you are doing that the distractions fade away, your concentration sharpens and your best work effortlessly unfolds. So you're in the zone with your mind and body and your actions are perfect, aligned. So a good example is to imagine an athlete, like in the midst of an intense game, performing with fluidity and easy.
I. Or a musician lost [00:06:00] in the instrument, creating music without a thought or a writer typing so rapidly, the ideas just flow faster and they can't keep up. So these moments of pure engagement are the essence of flow. But the beauty is that flow isn't just reserved for athletes, musician, or, or artists.
Lawyers too can have flow, like they can experience this state of deep engagement and concentrations. And then when lawyers access flow, it has the power to really transform the practice. So helping them approach their work with ga, greater clarity, efficiency, and creativity. So the benefits of flow go far beyond just the positive emotional states.
Yeah, that's great just to fill in the zone. But the research shows as well that actually flow can boost performance, can increase creativity and even happiness. So getting into this [00:07:00] estate can really help you do your best work and increase your sense of fulfillment as well. And we can learn. How to bring more flow into our lives, and this is what we teach a lot in the course.
But Kathleen, how do you think this can be beneficial for lawyers in particularly? Yeah. Look, the reality of legal work today is one of so many demands. And if I, even when I think about my own typical days, and I've got it pretty good in the ear. In my legal environment, but nevertheless, notwithstanding working with fantastic people, doing good work, there's the reality of teams, messages, emails, and there's lots of things coming from everywhere, competing client demands.
And when I think of the experiences of lawyers generally, I think that that would be really typical, these competing [00:08:00] demands, this constant. Demands from people wanting something from you. It could be a colleague, it could be a junior member of the team, a client in this environment. There's that pressure to always be switched on, and that kind of distraction is actually what kills flow.
It makes it so difficult to be able to focus on your work because you're constantly doing that context. Switching between. The different things that you've got on one second, you're looking at an email that pings up. You might get that alert the next minute. You've got a team's message. Meanwhile, you're trying to look at an advice, and then the phone rings like that makes it really hard to just focus and get your concentration on something, and the benefits are really clear If you can get into those moments of flow.
You have a higher level of focus on what it is that you're doing, and that will clearly result in a better work outcome, right? Because you are gonna write better advice, be better at the contract that [00:09:00] you draft, or the documents that you're preparing. Whatever it is that the particular legal work, whatever it's flavor, you're gonna do better.
If you can have those periods of intense concentration, you'll be more efficient, right? Because you're not looking in all these different directions. In that sense, it will buffer against burnout. I think in terms of, because you're being more effective, you don't have to spend the same amount of time to get work done.
And it's a more of a creative space too, right? Because things are flowing, you're enjoying yourself, that sense of you and the work is not separate. Like you, you're feeling quite merged with the tasks that you're doing. That's quite energizing. Well, does that resonate, Karla? Absolutely. The benefits are very clear.
Right? It's so good to get into flow, but what do you think are some of the common barriers that lawyers, what prevents them to get there? I [00:10:00] think there is often a perception that doing the emails is their job, like. Particularly in the in-house council kind of environment where I'm in. I've had lawyers when we've dealt with this kind of topic saying, but you know what?
If I have urgent manners, like I actually have to be checking my email all the time. They see their job as responding to whatever comes in. So I think that plus the pressure of just, you get so many emails often, and I was talking to one of my colleagues a little while ago, and they were talking about getting 60 to a hundred emails a day.
When you're getting that kind of volume, it can get overwhelming, and I think that keeps people switched on so that they don't make that time to do the deeper work. I think for lawyers, particularly if they're in a private firm environment, they're likely to have to bill. Now. Often that billing is done as six minute increments that can pull your cycle, pull your attention away.
That same kind of pressure that we talked about with the [00:11:00] emails can also lead to that task switching, where you're going between cases and clients and admin work. Boredom from repetitive tasks and feeling overwhelmed as well can be an issue. So look, I think it will be different from, for different lawyers, but say they're some of the common themes that I think what frequently come up in for lawyers in this space.
What do, what do you find in your coaching? Yeah, very similar, right? Like a lot of the struggle today is with focus. It is with a lot of high completing priorities. And how, where, where do we put the energy? What do we do first? And the achievement, like wanting to be very good at, in all of the different things that we are doing.
And in the course we go, we go in a lot of more details into that is how do we set our environment to be more flow? Inducive can things about like setting clear goals, matching the challenge with the skill level that you [00:12:00] have, making sure that the challenge is not too over, too overwhelming. So how do we create smaller goals to deal with bigger challenges, chunking down with teaching how to minimize distractions.
What can we do to be able to minimize, to increase the focus as well? And playing around with finding your optimal time to, to work and taking care of your own wellbeing as well. Yeah, so it's, there is so much that it can be that it feels outside our control. It's so much that is within our control. Like it's, and a lot of it is how do we apply?
What can we change? I was sharing this in the beginning of the course today, like just the environment, something so simple that took me a couple of hours. It has created, I feel that the focus is better. I'm more excited to come into the office now. A lawyer right now, if they wanted to take one step, right, Nick?
To increase their kind of flow. [00:13:00] What, like what's something practical that you would say as a starting, I would start with the distractions, right? If you can minimize your distraction and look in this, it requires some sort of experimentation. Like it's not, depending on how you work and what you're required to do.
And then for lawyers is a bit different. How can you structure your day when you can have distraction free, focused time? Like the objection that you're likely to get is that I get all of these emails, I have to respond. There's almost this constant being switched on that has become normal now, and people don't even realize that they're being impacted by this.
I think we've just become so. Used to these mobile phones, the emails on our computer, the distractions, the teams messages that pop up. Yeah. And I know is that reality for a lot of people, right? But to [00:14:00] created those changes is like within your control, within your environment. When can you do your deep work?
When are you on and when are you not on? Are you required to be responding to emails within 10 minutes as it pops in? Or is a half an hour of or 60 minute time. Okay. I don't know. Like it depends like some, for some people they are required to reply right away. It is urgent. How many channels of communication do you have?
Popping messages all the time. It's emails, it's teams. Is the mobile phone, do you need them all sending notifications constantly? It, sometimes it's just, I remember like when I put my phone now on do not disturb because I'm not required to have it on when I am work, but I have other channels of communications.
That, that I can see you. And not just that having one, there's one place that I can, that I look and creating tags as well. This is urgent. This require, uh, uh, an immediate response [00:15:00] for that. Use this, the phone or the teams, whatever that it is, it's how do we organize our environment If it's free for all, everybody's pulling our attention, right?
It's our job to set the boundaries to say, okay, my attention is going here. My attention is going there if you have multiple things pinging at you, which is the reality for a lot of people, right? And I know I'm being like mindful here that it is a different reality, right? I work from home. I'm not supposed to be answering things.
I have very clear communications with my client of my answering time. I'm not required to give an answer within minutes. But within your reality, what are the things that you can implement with the distractions? So what I'm hearing there really is that you've really deliberately thought about how you can best work and what the appropriate channels you need, and you've got some agreements there with [00:16:00] important people around you, with clients or family or others, I assume, so that they understand those boundaries and can work with them.
I think that is really easily applicable for lawyers and in fact, it's something I've been experimenting in my own work with. For example, the very simple thing of with teens talking to my colleagues and saying, at this particular time I'm going on, do not disturb status, red, do not contact, and I'm gonna be doing some deep work for the next hour and a half.
Now, I don't do that all the time because obviously being available. Particularly for my team members and clients is an important part of what I do, but having the ability to do that sometimes is really helpful. But I had to have discussions with about that and so that other people understood and didn't think that I was just trying to avoid them when I put that the red symbol up, that I was busy [00:17:00] and not contactable.
Yeah. Even to take this a step further, like if something urgent does appear, Hey, call me. Yes. I am. I'm not available for the things that are not urgent, but for urgent matters, I am available here. Please call me on the phone. Have one channel so you know if your phone rings, chances are you know that it might be important.
Absolutely. Next, in this discussion, we've given a few really practical tips. We've talked about what flow is. We know that you are very busy and this can be a difficult area, or at least challenging because. You do have to really experiment that culture of you're not gonna get it right the first time, that this is not something that you can just flip the switch with and change it.
And we recognize that and we've created a really specific one hour course, which is called Achieving Flow and Thriving as a Lawyer. We go much deeper into what flow is the stages of flow and how you can [00:18:00] trigger the different tools like environmental and social triggers for flow, the psychological triggers for flow.
We look at the challenges for lawyers and how lawyers can specifically take action to trigger flow, and it's really for lawyers like you who wanna reclaim their energy, have that focus and really reignite their love for the law if they've lost it a little bit. Would that in mind color? Would you add anything to my little summary?
Just there. Just a couple of things. I guess. It's like the course is really focused on actionable steps to get you moving. It's not about the theory. It's really practical with practical twos and the strategies that you can apply immediately. So each lesson, like the lesson sort of designed and reorder application in mind focused on lawyers.
So you will walk away with some clear, actionable steps that you can implement. Yeah, and we have some real stories and examples. To, to illustrate what [00:19:00] we are talking about as well. Yeah. So if you're ready to sign up, please visit the thriving lawyer.com au. Yeah, and I will put the link directly for it in the show notes.
You can go direct and yeah, we are super proud of this. You've probably heard from us from a little while by now. We've been running this podcast and working really hard. Behind the scenes and we're super excited to finally be at the stage where we can begin to share some of our work, which we know can make such a difference in the legal profession.
So thank you and thank you for your time. Thank you.
Kathleen: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the thriving lawyer with Kathleen Brenner and Carla Ferraz, if you like it, please share it with your lawyer friends and colleagues, and tag us on Instagram at @thriving lawyer or on LinkedIn via the links in the show [00:20:00] notes. And if you liked what you heard, please drop a review in apple podcasts.
It really helps spread the word.
If you'd like to work with us, check out our free resources and our signature course, the thriving lawyer. Which you will find at www.thrivinglawyer.com.au. You can also download our free guide, the lawyer's guide to thriving: a sustainable roadmap for success.
It's filled with great tips and ideas so that you can begin to make real change. You'll find the link to that in our show notes.
We hope this podcast has given you massive value. And that you can use it to begin to create your own thriving life. A life where you can thrive as a lawyer. And in the rest of your life.
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