The document discusses the challenges of navigating discomfort in a rapidly changing world, particularly in the legal profession, and highlights the tools and mindsets that can help manage emotional responses. It emphasizes the importance of mindfulness, collaboration, and self-awareness to improve personal and professional resilience amidst uncertainty. Additionally, it underscores the need for genuine engagement with the present and a balance between work and life, advocating for a shift away from mindlessness to foster growth and adaptability.

1. Getting Comfortable with
Discomfort:
Practical Tools for Keeping Your Head
While Navigating a Changing World

2. This Ever Happen To You?
• 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 We Picked Up in Law School
• Taught That the Law (and You) Were Unique
– “Law School is Different”
– “The Law is a Jealous Mistress”
• How to seek (and present) information
• How to work on your own
• How to avoid risk and crave certainty
• How to think criticially (skepticism, pessimism)
• How to compete (Get a job)
• How to Follow the Rules
– what does the law say?
– bound by precedent
– Bound by the BlueBook and the Manual on Style

4. What Tools Are You Using Now?
• All of the Above
• Seeking Compensation
• Seeking Clients
• Seeking Advancement
• Craving affirmation (from clients,
decisionmakers, higher-ups)
• Living in a zero-sum world- Seeking to
Avoid Blame

5. How Are Those Tools When
Things Don’t Go As “Planned”?
• Ever thought your way out of a painful
emotional situation?
• How Do Those Tools Work in Your
Personal Life?
• How Do Those Tools Work When the Pace
of Change Picks Up?

6. And The New Tools?
• “The Real Problem of humanity is the following:
we have paleolithic emotions, medieval
institutions, and god-like technology.” – E.O.
Wilson
• An Information God and a Dopamine Dispenser
• Saps your attention, and momentarily assuages all
that discomfort.
• And often you don't even notice.

7. Responses to Distress
• The need to try and control it
• Strike back, numb out, bliss out
• Things get stuck in that endless cycle

8. What is Missing?
• The Capability to Manage Emotion
• What to Think
• Space to Consider What is Happening and How to
Respond Rather Than React
• Cooperation/Collaboration/Communication
• Context/Awareness
• A Reminder from Time to Time that Things Are
Relatively Easy

9. Sidebar: Quit Whining, Pringle
• Rules and Structure necessary
• The Impassive, Professional, “Stoic” Ideal
• There are more things, Lucilius, that
frighten us than injure us, and we suffer
more in imagination than in reality.
-Seneca

10. Summing This Up
• Most of us live mindlessly all of the time-
– we don't perceive everything that is important.
– Our brains and emotions don’t always make sense of the world
• "Everyone who drives slower than I do is an idiot. Anyone
who drives faster than I do is a maniac." - George Carlin
• Using the Tools We Have means we don't see the whole
picture and miss what is right in front of us
• Not there and not there to know we are not there

11. Another Way of Putting It
We are “problem solvers”, but often
• unaware of the problem (especially when the problem is
us)
• Unaware of any clue how to solve it;
• But absolutely certain that we do know or unwilling to
admit otherwise.

12. One Tool to Help- Mindfulness
• 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--
• Without judging
– letting go of the illusion that we are in control
– Beginner's mind and the ability to listen or
evaluate without preconceived notions

13. More on Mindfulness
• Never attribute to malice what can
adequately be explained by stupidity. -
Hanlon's Razor
• Get aware of what you pay attention to
• Whatever you are doing can be done in
many different ways
• Turn rampaging thoughts into next actions.

14. 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.

15. Why Do Lawyers Resist Change?
It is very difficult to change the wheels on a moving
car. – Richard Susskind

16. Hesitancy and Fear
• “Drive out fear. No one can put in his
best performance unless he feels secure.”
– W. Edwards Deming
• Pause and Plan, Don’t React

17. Strange Sort of Impatience

18. Change Your Mind
• Put some space between stimulus and
reaction
• Get quiet
• Get outside
• Find the flow

19. Adopt a Growth Mind-Set

20. A Plug For Work-Life
Integration
• Treat yourself, at work or play, the same
way
• "You must have work-life balance"
– this is mindless because we make this binary
distinction mindfully but then use it mindlessly
– you don't stop being human at work, and you
don't stop being organized or task-oriented at
home

21. Paradox: You Have to Ignore Technology
to Plan How to Use It
• Technology is a Distraction
• Lawyers Require Sustained Attention-
– Minimize Your Beeps and Notifications (and
your Interruptions and Meetings)
– Guard Your Attention Jealously
• It’s Not What You Read, It’s What You Ignore

22. The Checklist Manifesto
• Why Use Your Head as a Storage Device?
• Document a Process Well One Time, Never Have to Document it
Again
• Benefits:
– Delegates
– Reduces Mistakes
– Promotes and standardizes best practices
– Stays with the organization
– Encourages revision and improvement (Productivity)
– Capable of application in other areas (Innovation)
– Rewards input and collaboration
• Accepting coaching and criticism

24. Create Space in Your Day
(Energy)
• Exercise
• Leisure Time – Flow
• Reducing Distractions
• Rest and Recovery

25. Create Some Space in Your Life
– Hack It
• Amazon
• Dollar Shave Club
• Blue Apron
• NatureBox
• Boxed

26. Build The Profession and
Contribute To It
• 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/i
n-celebration-of-play.html

27. Conclusion
"I didn't come down here to change your mind
about anything, but to ease my own mind
about everything." - Todd Snider

28. 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

29. Resources
• 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

30. More Resources
• City Yoga http://cityyogasc.com/site/
• 10 (Ok 11) Books for Getting
Better http://pringlepracticeblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/10-okay-11-
good-books-for-getting-better.html
• 5 Must-Reads for Graduates (and everyone
else) http://pringlepracticeblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/five-must-reads-
for-graduates-and.html

31. 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

32. Resources - Tools
Basecamp https://basecamp.com/
Camtasia http://www.camtasiastudiosoftware.com/
Evernote www.evernote.com
Freedom www.macfreedom.com
LeechBlock http://www.proginosko.com/leechblock.html
Mindmeister www.mindmeister.com
Ommwriter www.ommwriter.com
TheForm Tool www.theformtool.com
WikiSpaces www.wikispaces.com

33. Resources- Websites
ABA Law Technology Resource
Center http://www.americanbar.org/groups/departments_offices/legal_technology_resources.html
Attorney at Work http://www.attorneyatwork.com/
Clio http://www.goclio.com/
Law Office Guru http://legalofficeguru.com/
Law Practice Matters http://www.lawpracticematters.com/
Lawyerist http://lawyerist.com/
Legal Ease http://legalease.blogs.com/
Legal Productivity http://www.legalproductivity.com/
MyCase http://www.mycase.com/blog/
MyShingle http://myshingle.com/
Paperless Chase http://www.paperlesschase.com/
SC Bar PMAP http://www.scbar.org/MemberResources/PracticeManagementPMAP.aspx
Technolawyer http://www.technolawyer.com/