Practical Tools for Keeping Your Head While Navigating a Changing World (Latest Iteration on an Ongoing Theme). Some ideas for attorneys, about how to manage change and uncertainty by adopting habits and routines (mindfulness, meditation, exercise, getting quiet) to build and maintain attention and focus.

1. Creating Space:
Practical Tools for Keeping Your Head
While Navigating a Changing World

2. Getting Stuck in Distress
• Something is going to happen
• That Happening is going to be awful
• That Something is Going to Be My Fault
• (Repeat)
• Distress is Not Wanting What We Presume
is Going to Happen

3. Tools of the Trade
• Uniqueness of the Practice
• Seek and Present Information
• Work on Your Own
• Avoid Risk and Find Certainty
• Think Criticially (With Skepticism, Pessimism)
• Compete
• Follow the Rules

4. How Do You Use the Tools?
• Seek Compensation, Clients, Advancement
• Get Affirmation (from Clients, Decision-makers,
Higher-Ups)
• Avoid Blame in a Zero-Sum Game

5. How Are The Tools When
Things Don’t Go As “Planned”?
• How Do Those Tools Work When The
Rules Change (Or There Are No Rules)?
• How Do Those Tools Work in Your
Personal Relationships?

6. And The New Tools?

7. Responses to Distress
• The need to try and control it
• Resist, React, Kill the Pain
• Things get stuck in that endless cycle

8. What is Missing?
• The Capability to Manage Emotion
• Space to Consider What is Happening and How to
Respond And Adapt Rather Than React
• Context/Awareness/Bias
• Cooperation/Collaboration/Communication
(Listening)
• Creativity (Curiosity > Fear)

10. One Tool to Help
• Building the ability to seek out, create, and
actively notice new things
• Actively notice new things -->puts you in
the present -->makes you aware of context
• Can assist in managing the fog of emotion

11. Business and Mindfulness
• Mindlessness is the application of
yesterday's business solutions to today's
problems
• Mindfulness is attunement to today's
demands to avoid tomorrow's problems
• If you want to change it, you have to see it
for what it really is.
- Ellen Langer

12. De-Bias Yourself

13. De-Bias Yourself

14. Change Your Mind
• Put some space between stimulus and
reaction
• Get quiet
• Get outside
• Get on a different schedule

15. Adopt a Growth Mind-Set In Order to
Make Space for Change

16. A Plug For Work-Life
Integration
• Treat yourself, at work or play, the same
way
• "You must have work-life balance"

17. Create Space in Your Day
(Build Energy)
• Exercise
• Leisure Time – Flow
• Reduce Distractions
• Allow for Rest and Recovery

18. Attention and Computer
Technology
• Attention Is Fuel
• Attention is Fallible
• Attention is Finite

19. What Fuels/Preserves Attention?
• Fewer Decisions
• Fewer Distractions
• Sustained Focus/Awareness

20. Preserve Attention and Time for the
Good Stuff
• Document a Process Well One Time,
Never Have to Document it Again
(Repurpose)
• Documenting a Process- ?
• Accept coaching and criticism

21. Benefits of Checklists
(Documented Processes)
• Delegates
• Reduces Mistakes
• Promotes and Standardizes Best Practices
• Stays with the Organization
• Encourages Revision and Improvement
• Capable of Application in Other Areas
• Rewards Input and Collaboration

22. Some Common Criticisms
• I Don’t Have Time
• I Am Not Any Good at It
• It is Not Working
• It is a Fad
• It Will Make Me Lose My Edge
• It is Isolating and Self-Indulgent

23. Find Some Space By Giving Time
• Be Generous of Your Time and Your Knowledge- Without
Expecting Anything in Return
• If You Are Taking Care of Yourself, You Will Take Care
of Others
• Build Empathy
• Get Out and Play -
http://pringlepracticeblog.blogspot.com/2015/05/in-
celebration-of-play.html

24. Questions?
Jack Pringle
Adams and Reese LLP
(803) 343-1270
jack.pringle@arlaw.com
@jjpringlesc
http://pringlepracticeblog.blogspot.com
1501 Main Street, 5th Floor
Columbia, SC 29201
www.adamsandreese.com

25. Resources
• Baba Shiv, How Do You Find Breakthrough Ideas?, Stanford Graduate
School of Business, http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/baba-shiv-
how-do-you-find-breakthrough-ideas
• The Resilient Lawyer http://theanxiouslawyer.com/rl-23-jack-pringle/
• Farnham Street https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/
• One You Feed With Michael Taft http://www.oneyoufeed.net/michael-
taft/
• Tim Ferris with Brene Brown
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/08/28/brene-brown-on-
vulnerability-and-home-run-ted-talks/
• On Being With Ellen Langer http://www.onbeing.org/program/ellen-
langer-science-of-mindlessness-and-mindfulness/6332
• You Are Not So Smart http://youarenotsosmart.libsyn.com/062-naive-
realism-lee-ross-0

26. More Resources
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, by Atul Gawande
http://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/dp/0312430000
Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better,
by Clive Thompson
http://www.amazon.com/Smarter-Than-You-Think-Technology/dp/1594204454
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D
http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Success-Carol-
Dweck/dp/0345472322
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, by Adam Grant
http://www.amazon.com/Give-Take-Helping-Others-Success/dp/0143124986