Tag Archives: time

This Fable about Time Management Is Great for Busy Lawyers

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Founder’s Note: I wrote this book review years ago on a different blog, but I thought about it recently because I am in the process of finalizing my own fable on mindfulness. After reading this book, I reached out to Laura Vanderkam via email and her response and encouragement stayed with me for many years. I am sharing this post here because Laura’s work is essential for busy lawyers and we all sometimes need a good story to help us see the possibilities for change. I hope you enjoy it.

If I suggested that you read a “time management fable”, you’d probably think I was losing my mind. A phrase like “time management fable” calls to mind a litany of business-speak phrases or the holier-than-thou preaching of someone offering “hacks” offered to help you achieve more in a day than you have time to do.

Though it is indeed a fable intended to offer insights as to time management, Juliet’s School of Possiblities by Laura Vanderkam avoids those issues. Rather, it is just a story about a young professional who, like many of us, needs a mentor to help her figure out how to manage her time.

An Expert on Time Management

I’ve liked Laura Vanderkam since I read I Know How She Does It years ago, when I was an overwhelmed new working mom. Her approach, in this most recent fable and in the wider variety of content she offers, is practical and based on facts. She isn’t holier-than-thou. She doesn’t pretend time management is easy. But, she also refuses to fall into the trap of throwing up her hands in disgust at how daunting it can be to manage a professional and personal life in today’s world.

In all honesty, when I read Vanderkam I am reminded more of the ancient Greek philosophers I studied in college than the business self-help gurus available now. Just like Aristotle offered ideas about how to find “the good” in life, Vanderkam offers practical solutions that one can use to live a good life. Her suggestions tend to be good ones because, like many of the ancient Greek philosophers, she is a scientist as much as she is a theorist.

An image with a question "what is a business fable?" and an answer that says "A business fable is a fictional story told to teach a business, corporate, or leadership lesson. Business fables motivate and inspire by inviting the reader into a story, instead of persuading with facts, figures, and arguments."

Time Management Is Seeing All Possibilities for Life

Vanderkam does not merely think about time; rather she has studied the use of it for several years. As she’ll tell you in her books, articles and podcasts, she has tracked her own time in 30-minute increments and has studied the time logs for thousands of professionals, including busy lawyers. In other words, her philosophy on time management is rooted in a painstaking study of countless uses of it in a variety of contexts.

Knowing that Vanderkam has studied time in this way, it makes sense that she sees it as an array of possibilities, rather than the obstacle against which so many busy professionals rage.

How a Fable Can Teaches Time Management

That view comes through in Juliet’s School of Possibilities where the smart, ambitious, but overworked protagonist, Riley Jenkins, meets a mentor, Juliet, who shows her the divergent possibilities created by each decision she makes as to the use of her time.

It is by seeing this divergent path that Jenkins learns she needs to think more about expectations, setting good personal boundaries, and rethink priorities. She sees the divergent path on a beach (rather than a yellow wood), but still you’ll see it makes all the difference.

An image with a 5-star book review of Juliet's School of Possibilities by Laura Vanderkam as shared in the post as a great read on time management for lawyers.

Why This Fable Is Ideal for Lawyers

I’m sure there are lots of books out there competing for your time. This fable from Laura Vanderkam is a quick, charming read with a good message and more heart than you’d expect. In fact, the book at times is deeply spiritual since it forces the protagonist, and in turn the reader, to examine the merits in how we spend our waking moments.

This theme comes through when mentor Juliet offers readers the following prayer: “Expectations are infinite. Time is finite. You are always choosing. Choose well.” Though new book choices seem to be infinite and time certainly is finite, Juliet’s School of Possibilities is a good choice for lawyers or any busy person looking for practical and worthwhile insights about time management.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, for a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.

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Meditation Is Not a Time Suck; It’s a Time Saver

I never ask anyone to explain themselves to me when it comes to meditation. Even so, I give talks about mindfulness a lot and people tend to volunteer why it can’t/won’t work for them. I never mind this because it’s an opportunity for both of us to learn something. The number one reason that people, especially other lawyers, tell me they can’t meditate is insufficient time.

For lawyers, this is surely a believable excuse. We are a notoriously time poor profession. There are significant financial incentives for using any extra time we have to bill hours or market and network to get the next client in the door. And then we might want to actually, hey, have a life to do things besides bill too. Trust me. I get it. I have no intentions here of telling lawyers that they have more time than they think.

Here’s the thing, though. Meditation is not a time suck. It’s a time-saver.

I’m a lawyer, a community leader, a blogger, and a mom. Do you really think I sit around meditating because I’m just bored? Even if you thought that, do you really think I’d pick the single most boring activity on the planet to fill my time? Of course not.

I don’t meditate because I have nothing better to do. I meditate because I have tons of other better things to do besides overthinking, reacting to every little thing in life with anger and hostility, and rushing so much that I miss those tiny joyous moments that creep into life unexpectedly.

Sure, over the last 10 years, I have probably spent hundreds (if not thousands) of hours meditating. That’s a lot. But what I have not done or done far less is spend hours agonizing over some thing in the future I am worried about that never transpires. Or fretting for days about something awkward I said at a happy hour last week. Or scheming endlessly about the best way to handle a situation.

Instead, now I see when I am stuck in thought mode, regret mode, or perfectionist planning mode and I disrupt the loop. I make a decision to write down a few notes to get the idea out of my brain, talk to a friend, apologize, or just let it go by doing something else. The hours saved alone here is enough ROI for my practice, but the impact on my life by remaining engaged in the world rather than lost in thought is even more significant.

And can we talk about the sleep that I haven’t lost when I am dealing with a stressful situation? Or the fatigue or frustration that didn’t derail my work because I had a quick and reliable way of resting and recharging? Or the physical signs of stress I recognized early on and knew how to care for so I could avoid a disaster?

Look, I don’t write this piece to make you feel bad if you tried meditation and struggled with it because you are busy. The truth is that I have too. I have missed a ton of sessions over the last ten years. I have had to restart and reenergize my meditation habit multiple times. Sometimes it feels like a slog when I do.

I keep coming back to it though, not because I magically find extra minutes, but because I want to be present and content in the minutes I have. So, if time is the thing that sticks in your mind when it comes to meditation, maybe try thinking about time in a new way. Don’t just focus on the few minutes that it will take to meditate. Focus instead on the minutes that meditation might save you and the minutes of your life that meditation might improve.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, for a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.

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