You Can't Hear Yourself at This Speed

I want to help you be present for your life. For those times that really matter.

I remember sitting at the kitchen table, who knows how long I'd been at the computer, reviewing a brief on my laptop, my daughter pulling on my sleeve asking to watch her do cartwheels, and my phone lit up with emails that couldn’t wait (of course). I looked at all of them: the brief that’s due, my daughter, the emails, and felt my stomach clenching into knots (as usual) and my body do that thing where I forget how normal breathing works.

So I did what I always did: Multitask. Twenty minutes later, the brief had a couple of half-written new sentences, the emails weren't answered, and my daughter had stopped asking and moved on to bothering her little brother.

THE PROBLEM

If you're an attorney (plus a parent!), you know this scenario. Something’s almost due, something else urgent, and someone small needs you, all pulling at the same time. You end up giving each a third, and that’s not enough for any of them. Your work goes slower, the email reads wrong, and the kid gets, at best, the distracted version of you.

And underneath it, there's a quieter cost. When every moment’s triaged (or worse!), you stop hearing yourself entirely. Life starts to feel like something happening around you. You're not part of it. You’d love to be on the floor laughing with your kids, but all this work...

THE USUAL ADVICE SUCKS

The usual advice: Manage your time better. Wake up earlier, batch your tasks, get a better system. That advice assumes the problem is supply, as if somewhere in your calendar there's hidden time you haven't found yet. There isn't. Time's the biggest commodity you have. And no one understands. No one gets it. And when you say you're “fine,” everyone believes you.

The other advice is to just suck it up because “it” will get better. But “it” doesn't change; only you can. I understand the idea, but that’s old school thinking, and your mental health really does affect your physical health.

BUT THIS WORKS!

Here's what I've learned the slow way. Pausing sounds like you’re losing time, and it actually creates it.

When I stop for sixty seconds instead of bouncing between the brief, the email, and the cartwheel, two things happen:

First, I stop losing my place - Without the pause, every switch is like closing a book without a bookmark, and when I come back, I waste time rereading pages I already finished. With the pause, the work I return to goes faster than the frantic version ever did.

Second, in the quiet, I can actually hear myself. What needs me first. What can genuinely wait. What do I need in this moment? What I want this evening to feel like when “it's” over.

The pause isn’t a break from your life. The pause is how you get back inside it. There’s real peace in the pause, and there's information in it too.

THREE THINGS TO TRY THIS WEEK‍ ‍

1. Take the 60-second stop before you switch tasks. Before you jump from lunch to email to phone call or text, stop. Feet on the floor, one slow breath, and one question: what actually needs me first? Then do that one thing with both hands.

2. Say the pause out loud. To your kids: "I need ten minutes to finish this, and then you get all of me." Kids handle a named wait far better than a distracted parent. To yourself, it works the same way. Name it to tame it.

3. Anchor one deliberate pause to a trigger you already have. Mine is the car in the driveway, and it’s this week’s Recess below.

THE TAKEAWAY

You will not find more time by moving faster. The pause is where your time comes back, and your own voice with it.

THIS WEEK'S RECESS

In court, a recess means everything stops, and everyone breathes. So each newsletter ends with one small recess of your own, a single quick practice you can actually do.

This week's recess is the one I mentioned above: the driveway pause. Once this week, before you walk into the house, sit for sixty seconds. Engine off, phone face down. One question: how am I, really? Whatever answer shows up, let it. Sixty seconds of honesty out here usually means more of you makes it inside. That's the whole practice. Let me know how it goes!

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