Inside the Firm of the Future: Changing Lives . . One By One . . Until We’re All Done!
This post, from Christopher Marston, talks about an issue in the practice of law that I think relates to other professions as well: letting the nuts & bolts of the job override the story or the human element. For myself, I’ve been caught thinking, or at least behaving as if, the nuts and bolts were more important than the vision in teaching (the dubious practice of tinkering). You have control over the nuts and bolts; they are what hold the class together and directly affect learning. However, more intangible features of a class like its fun or desirability may have a larger effect even if it is less direct. Lesson: be methodical and thorough about the nuts & bolts, but don’t talk about it to your audience (students, clients, spouses). Talk about your ideas instead and give them something to be excited about. If you are talking about the nitty gritty, that’s also probably what you are most thinking about, and then where are you? Here’s a related quotation I chose from the post:
I see attorneys who are so entrenched in counting their entire lives in 6-minute increments that they go home to their loved ones and think of time with their family as an “opportunity cost.” These people know exactly how many billing units they are giving up by attempting to have a work life balance, and the very attempt to balance life is offset by a cloud of guilt and worry, knowing that they simply cannot beat the clock.
