The tale of two scales – balancing law and life!

Tight deadlines, high pressure, long hours, demanding billing targets and burnout. These are some of the common challenges facing the legal profession. Constantly feeling the pull of these demands on your wellbeing is not sustainable in the long term. This is where our work life balance comes into play. In the New Zealand Law Society 2023 Workplace Environment Survey, two in three of participants in the survey (65%) were satisfied with their work life balance. While this statistic is over half of the participants in the survey, there is still room for improvement. It highlights that a significant proportion of legal professionals continue to struggle with imbalance and fatigue regarding their work life balance. There remains a clear opportunity and responsibility for both individuals and law firms to take proactive steps toward improving our wellbeing and work life balance. So, how can we improve?

Strategies to integrate wellbeing in the office

Recently in my office environment here at Harkness Henry, one practical wellbeing habit that we have incorporated into our daily routine is box breathing. For us, it is a way to ensure that we are relaxed, present and focused for the day ahead. Every morning at 9.00am, we have a shared calendar invite called “Two minutes breathing”. This encourages us all to stop what we are doing, tune in and focus solely on our breathing. When we first introduced this habit, it was surprisingly challenging. Despite us all being generally fit and healthy, we noticed how unnatural it felt to consciously maintain a steady breathing rhythm. A lot of us were surprisingly out of breath! Like most people, we breathe on autopilot, rarely paying attention to the quality or depth of each breath. We don’t notice ourselves breathing during the day it just… happens! However, we soon realised that when we practiced mindful breathing daily, it became easier to focus on deeper controlled breaths from our bellies rather than our chests (diaphragmatic breathing). It is incredible how good we all feel after our morning breathing. Often it can be the highlight of our day and something rewarding that we can all do together as a team.   Introducing this into our daily work routine has helped us with our posture, calming our minds and improving our concentration.  The shift from shallow chest breathing (or even unknowingly holding our breath) to continuous deep belly breathing throughout the day has made a huge difference not only for myself, but my colleagues.

A diary reminder for breathing at work may not work for you and your colleagues, however, there are many ways that you can incorporate wellbeing mindfulness hacks into your daily routine. For example, a quick walk around the block for fresh air; desk stretching or practicing gratitude. I find habit stacking helps. You could do your 2 minutes of breathing while you make your morning coffee, first thing when you wake up in the morning or on your drive to work. If you stack the habit onto another daily routine, it becomes easier to remember, achieve and continue to do. For our team, first thing in the morning works well due to our busy morning schedules. With starting the morning off with our breathing, it gives us a chance to slow down as a team, feel relaxed, fresh minded and ready for the day.

Setting boundaries

Another important aspect of work life balance is the ability to set, maintain and respect professional boundaries. For many in the legal profession, the line between work and personal time can be blurred due to urgency, heavy workloads and deadlines. Working late hours to achieve completion of tasks can become a bad habit, especially at this time of the year. With a reoccurring pattern of this routine, you have just created a subconscious habit. It should be recognised that boundaries are healthy and are not barriers to productivity; rather, they safeguard long-term performance and overall wellbeing. Setting small, achievable boundaries for yourself and holding yourself accountable, can make a world of difference with your work life balance. For example, committing to finishing off the final task at work by 5:00 p.m. or shortly thereafter, then shutting down your computer, creates a definitive endpoint to the workday. Similarly, establishing a personal rule such as “I will not check my work emails over the weekend” reinforces the separation between professional and personal time. Consistency is key. Once boundaries are set in place, it is crucial to reinforce them. However, if a regular habit of working late or replying to emails over the weekend is set, it can be hard to break free from this cycle. Informing colleagues and clients of your availability and respecting others’ boundaries, helps foster a better work life balance relationship.  If you are happy and heathier in yourself, you will be more productive, achieve higher targets and in turn, the business will perform better and clients will be happier with the service. It is all about consistency and being conscious of your current habits.

As we approach the busy festive season, it is important that we look after our own wellbeing and ensure that we are kind to ourselves and one another. This time of the year there are plenty of urgent deadlines, client demands, networking events and pressures of closing off files prior to Christmas. Not to mention if you have kids, family and friends who you still want to dedicate some of your time and energy to! I encourage you to think about what your current work life balance looks like. Are you happy with it? Does it need some improvement? What areas can you focus in on and where you would like to improve? Only you can be the judge. As the scales of law and life continue to shift, it is up to us to ensure they remain in equilibrium.

Box Breathing Link  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN8xV3Kb5-Q

This article is current as at the date of publication and is only intended to provide general comments about the law. Harkness Henry accepts no responsibility for reliance by any person or organisation on the content of the article. Please contact the author of the article if you require specific advice about how the law applies to you.