Stress Management for Lawyers

The ABA (Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion) Jour­nal has a good arti­cle titled Law Hacks: 101 tips, tricks and tools to make you a more pro­duc­tive, less stressed-out lawyer, com­bin­ing tips on email usage, soft­ware, and some brain tips from us:

• 67 “The Web site Sharp­Brains sug­gests self-improve­ment exer­cis­es. Try this one: Take five-minute visu­alization breaks with deep and reg­u­lar breath­ing, pic­tur­ing beau­ti­ful land­scapes or pleas­ant or suc­cess­ful mem­o­ries, espe­cial­ly after fin­ish­ing a tough task.”
• 68 “Improve your men­tal acu­ity by sub­tract­ing num­bers, i.e., 7 from 200 (200, 193, 186, 179 …) or prac­tic­ing an expo­nen­tial series (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 …). The point is not to become a math genius or be smarter than a fifth-grad­er, but just to keep your mind sharp.”
• 69 “It takes a sys­tem to be pro­duc­tive, but it’s also use­ful to try some­thing dif­fer­ent every day to stay sharp. For exam­ple, try com­mut­ing dif­fer­ent­ly or talk­ing to new people.”

Some more tips? 

• Here is our full post on Brain Exer­cise FAQs.
• And the notes from a Stress Man­age­ment Work­shop we run at Accen­ture recently.
• You may also be inter­est­ed in this arti­cle on Ten Impor­tant Truths About Aging: How we age is at least par­tial­ly under our con­trol, pub­lished by The Com­plete Lawyer, where you can learn why stress man­age­ment is impor­tant, and more tips.
• And a Best prac­tice for peak per­for­mance: emwave biofeedback