To be fair, this is a problem that is commonly encountered by barristers.
What is it? The inability to say ‘no’. And I am the worst offender.
By Rachel Chan, Barrister, 42BR Barristers
When I looked back through my diary for this article, I found multiple examples of weeks where I had clearly overstretched myself. One such week looked like this:
Monday- Canterbury
Tuesday- Milton Keynes
Wednesday- London
Thursday- Dartford then to Manchester for the Association of Lawyers for Children annual conference
Friday- Manchester to Milton Keynes, to teach advocacy for the Inn
Saturday- Milton Keynes
Sunday- Milton Keynes, then back home.
I then did a little brainstorm of what I actually do other than barristering in the day job and being a mother to 5 children. A summary looked a bit like this:
Sitting (as a magistrate and as a Deputy District Judge)
Writing for various texts
Volunteering for the Inn
Family Law Bar Association National Committee and being on the Children, Fees and EDI sub-committees as well as being the FLBA representative on the MoJ Child Focused Courts various stakeholders reference groups, Central Family Court and Royal Courts of Justice users groups
South Eastern Circuit Executive Committee (where I also represent the FLBA), and
Mentoring
Obviously this summary doesn’t give nearly half the picture of what I actually do in real terms, or the hours I put in.
Why do I do so much? The truth is, I just can’t say no. Most of the time, I enjoy helping out. Sometimes I help because no one else has volunteered or stepped up. At other times, I feel pressured into saying yes.
I am not alone in having difficulty with saying the word ‘no’. But what actually is the problem with saying yes all the time?
The problem with saying yes all the time
- People become accustomed to you saying yes. You then become top of the list of people to ask, and the go-to person first and foremost. I mean, why bother to go to anyone else when you know 9 times out of 10 x or y will say yes? This then forms a vicious cycle because you have fed into the narrative that you are helpful and given people permission to ask you first. That cycle, once formed, is hard to break.
- It denies others the opportunity to step up. I organised Chambers’ London Legal Walk team for three years. There wasn’t a lot to do but involved organising barristers, aka. herding cats, cheerleading and encouraging people to donate and took up a lot of energy. Eventually, it got too much along with everything else I was doing. A former member of Chambers asked why I kept doing it. I expressed my fear that no one else will want to take it on. ‘Rubbish’, she told me, ‘there are lots of others in Chambers and you remaining on as organiser denies others the opportunity to step up. People aren’t offering to help because you’re not giving them the chance’. Interesting take, I thought. Nonetheless I took her advice, gave up the role and asked if anyone else wanted to do it. Guess what? Others stepped forward. And every year since my stepping down, Chambers has fielded a team of walkers on the London Legal Walk and have continued to raise lots of money for charity.
- It has a detrimental effect on your well-being and mental health. Constantly spinning plates and juggling the demands of work, together with life, cumulatively takes its toll. There are only so many hours in the day. And time has to come from somewhere to manage all those tasks. Where does it come from? More often than not, it comes from what really should be your downtime, time when you should be relaxing or resting. Sometimes, that time comes at a detriment to your family or social life or other matters you should be attending to. Saying yes all the time can also build resentment over time. People who do so may hate themselves for being unable to say no, or in some cases, harbour a sort of resentment for doing so much or the tasks themselves. Exhaustion leading to burnout is almost inevitable.
- The constant yeses also means dilution which may mean that the task(s) is/are not completed well or not at all. It can lead to ‘ball-dropping’. Despite being so organised, I recently missed a meeting because I thought the day was a Tuesday not a Wednesday. I had never missed a meeting up until that point. Looking back to that week, I was in middle of a difficult trial, was away from home and had far too much on. It would have been much better for me to have simply given my apologies in advance. However, the consequence of not having done so was the panic that I had missed the meeting, the guilt that I had done so and the frantic emailing of apologies and explain why I didn’t even know what day of the week it was. How utterly embarrassing! Another recent ball-drop? I missed a meeting because I had diarised it on the wrong day, i.e. the day after the meeting. Conclusion? I am doing too much.
Rescuer/Coach?
A friend once shared the terms ‘rescuer’ and ‘coach’ with me, which I had not heard of before. In fact, loads of books and essays have been written about this area. In short, a ‘rescuer’ is someone who helps others and take pleasure from being able to be helpful while a ‘coach’ is an enabler, someone who supports, provides scaffolding and helps others to solve their own problems. Someone who constantly says yes, takes on the role of a rescuer. This in turn trains others to depend on the rescuer. So those who constantly say yes, need to learn skills to help them become ‘more coach’ and ‘less rescuer’. This means having the tools in your armoury to support others to perform tasks themselves. Much more information is readily available on the internet for those who want to know more.
To those who still cannot say no, having considered all the above, what is available to help the barrister who has taken on too much?
Here are my own practical tips:
Hard copy diary
Some people use their phones to make notes and for reminders. I prefer to use a hard copy diary so I can annotate what has been cancelled, vacated or relisted. My personal recommendation for a diary is the Mum’s Office Big Family Planner which is available online. The left side of the diary belongs to me, the right, with its columns, my family members. That way, I can see what everyone is doing over a week view.
Colour coding
Colouring pens are my best friends. By way of example, in my diary, black is for work, blue is for personal, red on the right is for expenses. Two ticks on the court name tells me I have sent an attendance note. Green highlighter over the court name tells me I have billed it and the date in brackets after the case name tells me when. Orange highlighter tells me I have been paid. If all attendance notes have been sent or all cases have billed or paid in that week, I have great satisfaction drawing a great big diagonal line across the page in whatever colour highlighter it merits.
Lots of lists
Like others, I rely on a lot of lists. They are presented in a spider diagram. With dates and numbering. And a colour coding system.
Eat that Frog?
Someone once recommended a book to me. It is called Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy. An earlier edition of the book is available for free in PDF online. There are many lots of useful tips in the book but the biggest takeaway is, erm, yup, how to eat a frog.
What is a ‘frog’? Tracy explains that this is ‘your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.’
He goes to explain the rules of frog eating. First, if you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest first, i.e. if there are two important tasks (‘frogs’) in front of you, tackle (i.e. ‘eat’) the hardest and most important one first. Don’t get distracted and finish eating the ugliest frog before you do anything else. The second rule is that ‘if you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.’
Identifying and eating your biggest and ugliest frog actually means you clear the path for other tasks to be done and minimise procrastination, which mainly occurs because you don’t want to eat the biggest and ugliest frog!
The four D’s of time management:
This is also known as the Eisenhower Matrix, named after President Eisenhower.
Delete- not urgent and not important. Delete all non-essential tasks and learn to say no!
Defer/delay- important but not urgent. These are tasks that can await another day
Delegate- urgent but not important. Get someone else with a better skill set to do it!
Do- both urgent and important. Actually do the task and get eating!
This week at the International Advocacy Training Conference, I, together with another barrister, was challenged to say no to 10 separate things by the end of the year. Given the acknowledgement I am doing too much, I say, challenge accepted!!
Credits-
Mum’s office- https://www.mumsoffice.co.uk/
Eat that Frog- Brian Tracy, Berrett-Koehler Publishers 2017
Rachel Chan, Barrister, 42BR Barristers