What’s the number-one complaint I hear from lawyers?

“I’m too busy,” they say.

This comes from lawyers young and old, rich and poor, experienced and new. It comes from lawyers in busy practices and from those just starting their practices. Everyone is too busy.

What’s that about? Some of it is that lawyers want to be busy. Some like the way it makes them feel. Some like the way it makes them seem to others. Some set up their lives so they’ll always be too busy.

Of course, some of it is that we’re legitimately busy. Between doing client work, running our businesses, and managing our families, we’re on overload. We’re committed on steroids. We’d stop if we could, but we feel like we can’t. We’re in high gear, and it never slows down.

Before it’s possible to solve the busyness problem, you’ve got to decide whether you really want it solved. Some of us define ourselves by being busy. It helps us feel useful. It gives us an identity. We’d be lost without it. Do you want free time? Do you want empty space? If you find it, will you then rush to fill it?

Your Action Plan to Get More Down Time

If you’re ready to just be instead of running from thing to thing, task to task, and responsibility to responsibility, then try some or all of these approaches.

1. Just stop.

Let it happen. Don’t do it. Let the client be upset. Let the employee go without. Let the child miss the activity. Just stop. Pretend you already had the nervous breakdown and are in the locked ward. Just sit down and take a break. Stop, stop, stop. It’ll all be right there when you go back to it. Once you break the cycle and realize that stopping for a short while isn’t a disaster, you should go ahead and build it in. Schedule more down time. Put quiet times on your calendar and save them for yourself.

2. Stop comparing yourself to others.

So much of our belief about what we should do comes from our beliefs about what others are already doing.

• She’s making more than me.
• She’s doing more than me.
• Her clients are happier than mine, and they’re paying her more.
• She’s getting treated better by the judges.
• She’s moving up faster than me.

Some of that is an illusion deeply rooted in your psyche. Some of it is that she’s better, smarter, and more capable than you. So what? Let it go. There will always be someone better than you, regardless of whether that’s real or imagined. Live your life, not hers.

3. Adopt a system.

Read a book (I like Getting Things Done by David Allen) and implement a system—any system will do. Use software if you like software. Use a legal pad if you prefer. Personally, I use Wunderlist and my own personal variation of the Getting Things Done approach. Of course, you might not want to imitate me since I don’t get that much done. Just having a system helps you slow down and feel less overwhelmed. Knowing what’s left to do helps you feel more in control.

4. Eliminate and delegate.

Stop doing what doesn’t need doing. Do you really need to read every e-mail that your paralegal sends before it goes out? Is reviewing every client bill essential? Is proofing your associate’s brief in support of the motion in limine critical? Stop doing things that you don’t need to do yourself and delegate a bunch of the rest. Use your team and find outside help with virtual assistants and paralegals to take up the slack. You’ll be busy until you let it go. Let someone else be busy.

5. Decide what matters.

Anne Lamott says it best: “100 years from now? All new people.”

That puts it in perspective for me. Whatever seems so critical, so meaningful, and so important right now just isn’t. It’ll all work out for better or worse and—fast forward—“100 years from now? All new people.” Nothing on your to-do list is going to matter in 100 years—nothing. Stop. Don’t give me your “but…” Get some perspective and decide what matters. Focus on the thing that you decide matters. Don’t let the rest crowd out your priority. Don’t let the busyness take over. Once you decide that all that “important” stuff isn’t important, then guess what? Suddenly, it’s not important.

Your busyness will end at some point, and your contribution will be replaced by others. Things will still get done without you, and the world will keep on spinning (probably). You’ll be missed, but not for long and not by many. You can stop being busy now, or you can do it later. It’s going to stop at some point, so you might as well do it now while you can enjoy it.