Feeling Guilty When not Working Forum

[Anonymous User]

V50 corporate 3rd year. Title of the thread pretty much sums it up. Despite recognizing how unhealthy it is, I cannot shake the feeling that I should/could/ought to be doing and billing more. This feeling persists even when my colleagues are not overly busy (i.e., I'm not feeling guilty), on weekends, and when I've billed 10+ hours in a day. I am envious of my colleagues who are seemingly able to separate their work and life and have built (to the extent possible in BigLaw) reasonable boundaries for themselves.

I recognize that, ultimately, this is a personal issue, but wondering if anyone else out there has felt similarly and has some advice to offer.

[axolawtl]

The solution to this depends a bit on what motivates this feeling. Is it that you want to be known as high-achiever in your firm to move up? That you want to bill as much as possible to avoid being pushed out and losing your position? That you gather a significant portion of your self-worth from your achievement at work? Etc.

[Anonymous User]

This accurately describes my first 4 years at my V20. Whenever I had a lull (read: <8 hour day) I would freak out about whether I would be pushed out or whether others would think I wasn't picking up the slack. I took on more matters than I could handle and ended up with some absolutely inhumane yearly totals (and a six-month stint annualizing at 3500+).

There were a few things that helped. For one, I got married, moved out of the city, and got a dog. With those things come responsibilities that I simply can't ignore. I have to make more time for them. But I'll assume those options aren't necessarily on the table for you just yet.

More importantly, I realized that most of what I was going through had nothing to do with what those around me actually thought - instead it was actually about how I viewed myself. Hours are a shiny, easy-to-measure metric of how well you're doing at the firm. We're used to striving for the highest letter grade we can achieve, and since reviews are largely bullshit hours are the best analog at a law firm. I realized was deriving my self worth from the number of hours I billed in a day/month/year and ignoring the things people actually cared about like strong work product, a can-do attitude, etc. It took some real effort, but I tried focusing on victories that didn't involve besting a personal hours record or beating my colleagues into the office and staying later than them. Victories like an encouraging email from a partner (more on that later), a clever shortcut that saved me time at work, etc. The more I focused my attention (read: self worth) on those things rather than the easier but misleading hours metric, the less the hours seemed to matter.

Finally, I had a few really thoughtful partners with whom I had formed a personal relationship sit me down and tell me that what I was doing was unsustainable. Sure, the firm likes you to rake in more for them, but if you're in a good group they'll recognize your more valuable if they don't burn you out right away. And call me naïve, but I do believe that at least some of those partners care about my wellbeing. Even if the partners in your group don't say it, know that you can actually do more for them if you don't burn out.

Don't get me wrong, I still struggle with this. I informally set an annual goal that is still probably too high. But like anything, it's a process.

[Sad248]

I think it's one if the issues that lead to burnout in a lot of people. Don't get me wrong, the stress and hours of the actual job can be enough to ruin someone, but I think a big part of it is that even when one is not working, they can't "turn off." In essence, they never stop working. After all, even if you're not actively typing away, you're still thinking about it if you feel the pressure to check your e-mail or feel bad you're not working.

I think it would be a good idea to maybe talk to a therapist or engage in meditation or something. But honestly speaking, the people who can't turn off are either perfect for biglaw (they just give in and work themselves to the top) or horrendous (quickly become a nervous wreck and cannot have a social life to speak of). In my experience, there is a strong correlation with them and kids in law school who get hard from gunning and somehow can't help but get in conversations about how late they stayed up last night to review and those who can't help but "create one extra outline, just in case" in a paranoid fever before succumbing to another diatribe about why nobody warned them law school won't make them happy. The latter will be unhappy no matter what.

I think it will be really hard to change this, because it is hardwired in some people to want to achieve stuff and impress other people. They feel this crushing expectation they need to meet, even if the expectation isn't actually there. My advice would be to just cash out when you really can't handle it anymore and find a job you're better suited for, assuming therapy/meditation doesn't work. I'd also just be strict at turning off your phone/keeping work and life separate, if at all possible. No shame in that at all. I think quitting before it's too late is way better than collapsing in your apartment lobby from stress because you were too anxious from work.

[papermateflair]

Therapy would probably help, because you'll probably need to reframe your relationship with work and where you get your self-value from. Also, consider whether you are worried because of finances - when I was junior I was worried I wasn't billing enough and felt guilty when I wasn't working because I had no savings and six figures of debt and I just had a lot of stress generally, but work was the one thing I could control - I could ask for more work, you know? Once you have enough saved AND have built up marketable skills (so, probably by the time you're a mid-level) you may feel very differently. The stress doesn't go away all at once, but one day I realized that I wasn't living in fear any more, and I could, in fact, just not work on something until midnight even if it meant someone was a little irked that they got it a few hours later.

Also, do you have another life passion that you can focus on? I don't care what it is, but something that you look forward to enough that if your firm fired you tomorrow and gave you 6 months to find a job, you would be like "great, I'm going to spend all my time working on ______." Take up a fitness activity, get into some sort of craft, whatever it is, get excited about *that* and think about how you can move some of your need to get a gold star at work to learning new skills at your new hobby. You shouldn't base your identity at success in a hobby either, but you may need something to fill the spot in your brain that's currently devoted to hours hours hours. Maybe slowly transition to hours [pottery] hours [video games] hours [peloton].

And I don't know how helpful this is, but when I get super into the grind and start feeling guilty about not working more, I think about three things: (1) the job doesn't love you back, (2) the people you work with will move on within 3 months when you are gone, regardless of how key you think you are to them, and (3) "winning" at biglaw means doing as little work as possible.

[Anonymous User]

I'm a self-guilter as well. I billed 2400 as a first year and got absolutely glowing reviews (which I think adds to the problem), but now find myself extremely burned out and with pretty insurmountable anxiety almost all the time. Literally, every email that comes in gives me an anxious feeling in my chest/pit of my stomach and I find myself making really dumb mistakes or missing things even if I am going slow and checking twice... my brain feels some version of broken. Since I also take criticism/my own mistakes very harshly, (I know it's illogical/this is just a job but for some reason I can't shake it), this has added to the burnout.

I have a psychiatrist appointment soon to see if maybe medication is a good route (I've been in therapy since undergrad), but honestly I think I'm starting to realize that being a corporate associate in biglaw is probably just not a viable long-term path for me because of my people pleasing/guilt/fear of letting people down, even if I'm "good" at it. Coming from a CCN it's kind of a weird pill to swallow since it feels like failure, but my ultimate goal was to work in house anyway, so right now I'm just trying to figure out what to do to get the necessary experience to make that transition sooner/create a more sustainable day to day for myself (oh, and pay my loans). I worked in house (in legal) prior to law school and absolutely loved it so I know there are definitely greener pastures, it's just a bummer that those pastures seem to require 3+ years of experience.

[glitched]

This one's tough - just got to not care. Worst case scenario is you get fired and you'll be okay if that happens. It might even be a blessing.

[Hutz_and_Goodman]

I’ve never been that big of a biller (highest year was 2300 and a couple years were 1900-2000) but I can relate to feeling guilty not working. I agree with the poster above about therapy which I have found useful personally. I would also throw out there that I’ve seen a lot of partners in big law who are working crazy hours even though they have enough $ to retire and think it has to be something similar where their identity is so tied up with work that they push themselves to do that. At the end of the day, it’s just a job and it opened my eyes when I lateraled from my firm (big law NYC v50) where I had glowing reviews and people were very friendly with me and when they heard I was leaving the tone and everything was quite different. IMHO it’s a mistake to put too much emphasis on work life, even though it is important to give it a good amount, because the people who actually care about you are your parents, siblings, children, and long time friends not work colleagues who can easily morph into strangers.

[Anonymous User]

Not OP, but as someone who pushed too hard and is also burning out hard. This is a super enlightening and helpful thread so thanks to everyone’s responses.

One question to you all — how do you deal with the pressure to bill more and constant staffing requests? Here’s my internal struggle: I generally aim for billing 45 a week. But then I would regularly get staffing requests (presumably because I’m not at something like 50 a week). I try pushing back on these requests but feel the pressure to “cave” every now and then, wondering if I will be deemed as lazy if I keep saying no. I can do solid work (and have a somewhat healthy WLB) at 45-50 a week, but any new matters will push me to closer to 60 and my work quality and mental health plummet. Is the right answer to just say no without any guilt?

[Anonymous User]

Not OP, but as someone who pushed too hard and is also burning out hard. This is a super enlightening and helpful thread so thanks to everyone’s responses.

One question to you all — how do you deal with the pressure to bill more and constant staffing requests? Here’s my internal struggle: I generally aim for billing 45 a week. But then I would regularly get staffing requests (presumably because I’m not at something like 50 a week). I try pushing back on these requests but feel the pressure to “cave” every now and then, wondering if I will be deemed as lazy if I keep saying no. I can do solid work (and have a somewhat healthy WLB) at 45-50 a week, but any new matters will push me to closer to 60 and my work quality and mental health plummet. Is the right answer to just say no without any guilt?

You're not going to get pushed out with those hours. I don't think you should feel guilty either - assuming you have some sort of an hours minimum, they are paying you for that and nothing more.

With that said, whether or not you should say no depends a lot more on whether you want to make partner and less on how you should feel about saying no.

[Anonymous User]

V50 corporate 3rd year. Title of the thread pretty much sums it up. Despite recognizing how unhealthy it is, I cannot shake the feeling that I should/could/ought to be doing and billing more. This feeling persists even when my colleagues are not overly busy (i.e., I'm not feeling guilty), on weekends, and when I've billed 10+ hours in a day. I am envious of my colleagues who are seemingly able to separate their work and life and have built (to the extent possible in BigLaw) reasonable boundaries for themselves.

I recognize that, ultimately, this is a personal issue, but wondering if anyone else out there has felt similarly and has some advice to offer.

Once I went to a dog racing track & saw greyhounds chasing a mechanical rabbit that couldn't be caught.

I returned a few years later and saw different dogs chasing the same rabbit.

Hope this helps,

CanadianWolf.

[ghostoftraynor]

This is similar to an eating disorder. Understandable and not that rare, but definitely an unhealthy way to think. Stoicism, Buddhism, CBT, or just plain talking to a therapist are all ways to get out of disordered thinking. Admitting you have a problem is always a good first step and honestly being cognizant of the issue is halfway there to recovery.