Why Do I Work So Hard? | The Time Peace Sessions Part 3

Why Do I Work So Hard? #3

Here's a transcription of this episode:

Have you ever done any of these things, my friend?

• Tell yourself that you’ll just bang out a bunch of work this week-end, and then you’ll feel better only to find yourself in a cycle of working nights and week-ends no matter how hard you try to get out of it?
• Fallen asleep on a date because you were so tired, you literally couldn’t keep your eyes open?
• Told yourself that this is the year you’re going to be better about time management. You’ll delegate more, take time off, exercise regularly, then none of that happens? Or maybe it happens for a couple weeks but you fall back into your regular habits?
• You keep telling yourself you’re going to hire someone, but there’s never a good time
• You’ve tried reading self-help books and listening to podcasts, and even though you feel good after you listen, you don’t really change things all that much.
• You tell yourself you need to get EVERYTHING done in your caseload to feel caught up

If you recognize yourself in any of those examples, you are over-working.

And I have been there, my friend.

Here’s what I know was true for me and is true for 99% of the clients I work with:

When we over-worked, it wasn’t just because we had an objectively large caseload. 

There were a few things that led us to this place of over-working. It didn’t happen overnight.

1. Saying yes, when we should have said no because we wanted to make people happy. We wanted them to think good thoughts about us.
2. Staying late at the office, so that the big bosses would see us working hard and would give us their approval even though we really should have gone home hours ago (this was me too)
3. Not delegating because we were afraid to relinquish control over a matter and that no one else could get it done as well as we could do it. And even if the latter were true, it didn’t always matter that it was done as well as we would do it.
4. Not delegating because we told ourselves it would be faster if we did it ourselves even if it meant staying up past our bedtime to do it.

5) Not communicating realistic timelines to people because we were afraid of what they would think about us even though we knew that’d mean staying up late nights and maybe working week-ends.

In these moments we’re seeking validation, control, approval.

And in the moment, we believe we’re doing the right thing, but as the consequences start piling up, we begin to recognize the problems.

Problems like…

Overpromising and underdelivering. This looks like promising a client you’ll have documents back in 2 weeks because that’s what you think they want to hear, but having so many projects due in the meantime, that you can’t actually get those documents back to the client until more like 5 weeks.

Resentment towards the people we work for. This looks like getting annoyed every time you get an email or voicemail from someone. Then you avoid that email or voicemail. Which means you have that email or voicemail on your mind all the time. Or even worse, you forget about it, and you create an unhappy client.

Inconsistent work product. This can look like literally having poor work product at times, but it can also look like you working 18 hours days for 4 days in a row then not working at all for 3 days and not getting to important matters because your brain is drained.

As I look back on it, overworking was really a form of self-sabotage.

As long as I kept myself busy, I could completely disconnect with myself and my feelings. I could avoid my low-self esteem and drown that voice telling me I wasn’t working hard enough or I couldn’t cut it. I could avoid the shame I felt for not being further along in my career. As long as I kept myself busy, I could justify my failures by thinking that I was working as hard as I could and blame the work, the people instead of looking at myself and taking responsibility for what I could in my practice.

Does any of this resonate with you?

To change, I needed to stop distracting myself with work and finally face myself.

I needed to build self-confidence, so I could say yes to what I wanted and no to what I didn’t want.

I needed to face the truth that no matter what other people may thing about me, that the only person that I needed to think about was me. And what I wanted. This felt foreign to me because I’d built my life around caring what other people thought. And the way I controlled how other people thought about me was by working hard. If I was working hard, that meant I was successful or at least that I was morally sound. Very Protestant way of thinking, right? That’s the society we’re brought up here in the US for sure.

To keep over-working means continuing to stay disconnected from yourself and what you truly want. To never create the space you need to ask yourself what you want and need and then give it to yourself. To never feel truly you.

Think about this. If we’re lucky, we get to live until we’re 90 years old. That’s about 32,850 days on this planet. Depending on how old you are, many of those days are already behind you. How do you want to live those other days?

The work I do with lawyers is making you more you. Making you the best version of yourself based on what YOU want and not what you think other people need you to be.

I have a brand new 12 week program called Time Peace for Lawyers™ where you can do this work with me and a small group of like-minded lawyers.

When you join, you’ll get:

• 15 calls with me where we’re going to rewire your brain, so you’re not over-working and instead working intentionally. Saying yes and no intentionally instead of reflexively.

• You’ll also get next level bonus trainings like how to raise and communicate your rates confidently, creating stellar SOPs for your employees to take the weight off you, and how to hire your dream employees.
• PLUS, you’ll get so many more bonuses that I can’t even list them all here.

You’ll easily make back 10x your investment in Time Peace for Lawyers™.

You can get all of the details including the dates of our classes at dinacataldo.com/timepeace

Enrollment is closing soon, so be sure you head over now. I’m capping enrollment at 15 lawyers.

Thank you for being here today. I appreciate you.

Talk to you soon.