Dear Student,
Welcome to The Law School Playbook! I’m Halle Hara, a professor of academic success and personal skills coach to law students and attorneys. I’m glad you’re here! So far in the mind matters series, we’ve discussed having a growth mindset, grit, and using resilience to overcome difficulties. In this episode, I want to focus on habits.
My guess is that you’ve heard a fair amount about the ideal habits for law school, which include: maintaining a daily routine, engaging in a healthy lifestyle, and prioritizing for effective time management. I’d like to move away from those general ideas and focus on a more practical approach in this podcast. To do so, I am again turning to a book; specifically, James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. What I like about this book is its message that massive success doesn’t require massive action. Instead, Clear says that “few things have a more powerful impact on your life than improving your daily habits.” So even if your daily habits aren’t what they should be, Clear offers a manageable approach to changing them.
Clear explains that making meaningful change is tied to your identity. That is, to change your habits, don’t focus on what you want to achieve but on who you want to become. To me, this is a perfect starting point for law students. You don’t want to think “I’ll do better. I’ll get As.” A better way to think about making change is to focus on becoming a critical thinker, a committed law student, or a student dedicated to be an effective lawyer. Clear states that “the more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it.” To Clear, “true behavior change is identity change.” He explains that “the only reason people stick with a habit is because it becomes part of their identity.”
Naturally, your ability to do this is tied to Carol Dweck’s mindset research. A fixed mindset, for example, that you’re “not good at law school,” is a real impediment to meaningful change. In order to make meaningful change, you need a growth mindset that, with diligent work, you can become what you want to be. So if you’d like to be a more critical thinker, it’s a matter of believing that through your habits you can become one, even if you don’t believe it now. So how do you come to believe what you don’t believe now? Clear says it simply: you “prove it to yourself with small wins.”
These small wins are rooted in changing your daily habits, and Clear gives you steps to make those changes. Let’s start with a definition of a habit, which is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic. Clear’s understanding mirrors that of other behavior experts when he says that any habit can be broken into a feedback loop that involves: a cue, a craving, a response, and a reward. Becoming cognizant of your habits is crucial to changing them.
One way of adopting a new habit is by engaging in what Clear calls “habit stacking.” Habit stacking involves tying your desired behavior to something you already do every day. An example would be if want to spend time reviewing and revising your class notes on a daily basis. You know that this would benefit you, but you just can’t find the time. If you have an existing habit of working out every morning, you can tie that habit to your desired habit of reviewing and revising your class notes. Thus, habit stacking is building on a current habit you already do each day by tying to a new habit to it.
Another approach, called temptation bundling, involves pairing an action you want to do with an action you need to do. This makes the new habit more attractive than it might be on its own. So if you want to watch sports but need to review and revise your class notes, tell yourself you can only watch sports after you’ve reviewed and revised your notes.
Clear explains that you can combine habit stacking with temptation bundling using the following formula:
1. After [current habit], I will [habit I need].
2. After [habit I need], I will [habit I want].
So, for our purposes, the formula could be:
1. After my morning workout, I will review and revise my class notes.
2. After I review and revise my class notes, I will watch sports.
An important component of changing habits or adopting new ones is the network of those around you. That is, you want to be engaged with people who desire to have the same behavior. For example, it is better for you to associate with a group of friends who also wants to increase the amount of time they spend reviewing and revising class notes, as opposed to the friends who just tell that you are wasting your time. Just as workout partners help people to be accountable, find a study partner who will keep you sticking to your new habit.
The idea is that adding habits to deliberate practice will give you mastery. Getting to mastery requires grit, which we talked about in the last episode, because it is important that you stick to your goal even when your immediate motivation wanes or you find the material less interesting. Clear refers to “habits” as “the compound interest of self-improvement”—a little bit adds up to a lot over time. And as a relief to busy law students, he says that “the amount of time you spend performing a habit is not nearly as important as the number of times you have performed it.” I think that bears repeating: “the amount of time you spend performing a habit is not nearly as important as the number of times you have performed it.” Thus, small habits repeated over time can lead to big changes.
This tells us that a desire to change is not enough. You must have a system in place to implement the change. And as you engage in the deliberate practice of small but powerful changes over time, remember to focus not on the end goal (the achievement) but instead on the person you want to become (your identity). Finally, don’t allow your vision of who you want to become to be static. Like a good hypothesis, you will (and should) edit your beliefs as necessary to fit the identity that you currently desire.
Change isn’t easy and, as we’ve discussed again and again, law school isn’t either. So if there is one takeaway you have from these mind matters episodes, I want it to be these four words: BE KIND TO YOURSELF.
As an academic coach, I am committed to having judgment-free conversations with my students to ensure that they feel comfortable asking any questions they have or expressing their concerns about law school. So my role sometimes warrants (what those in academic support refer to as) “small c” counseling. Many law students (I’d say nearly all law students at one time or another) have unexpected issues arise that make law school even more stressful than it is. Because “real life” doesn’t stop when you go to law school, I see students facing undiagnosed learning differences, work issues, health issues, childcare issues, marital issues, or the death or serious illness of a loved one. I have students who are primary caretakers and students who are food insecure. To be honest, it breaks my heart when these students (and any law student for that matter) add to that stress by coming down on themselves. Psychology has a term for this: it’s called negative self-talk and we humans are prone to it. It is not uncommon for my students to catastrophize (for example, “I’m doomed to fail”) and filter out the good (for example, “I know I got three Bs but I am devastated by the C+”). There are mental health resources available to help you counter this type of thinking. For example, working with a cognitive behavioral therapist can be immensely helpful for reducing or eliminating the damaging self-talk. I encourage students to support themselves in the same way they would support a friend, a co-worker, or a future client. You wouldn’t tell those people (as you may tell yourself) to just give up because they are a failure. You wouldn’t catastrophize or focus on the negative. Chances are when you find those people in a difficult situation, you are kind. Please extend that kindness to yourself—you deserve it.
I’ll close this episode by saying that if you are need of help for a mental health or substance abuse issue, please take advantage of the resources available to you. I will list those under references and further reading for this episode on www.lawschoolplaybook.com. Thurgood Marshall stressed the importance of receiving the assistance of others when he said, “None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody . . . bent down and helped us pick up our boots.” Be kind to yourself and allow others to be kind to you.
If would you like to read this episode or to request individual skills coaching with me, please visit my website at www.lawschoolplaybook.com.
As always, do your best, and I’ll be rooting for you!
References and Further Reading
James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones (2018).
Jennifer M. Cooper & Regan A.R. Gurung, Smarter Law Study Habits: An Empirical Analysis of Law Learning Strategies and Relationship with Law GPA, 62 St. Louis U. L.J. 361 (2018).
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (10th ed. 2005).
Lawrence S. Krieger & Kennon M. Sheldon, Ph.D., What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, 83 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 554 (2015).
Guy R. Loftman, Study Habits and their Effectiveness in Legal Education, Vol. 27, No. 4 Journal of Legal Education 418–72 (1976).
Don Macaulay, 5 Productivity Apps for Lawyers, National Jurist (Feb. 5, 2018)
http://www.nationaljurist.com/smartlawyer/5-productivity-apps-lawyers.
Andrew J. McClurg, 1L of a Ride: A Well-Traveled Professor’s Roadmap to Success in the First Year of Law School 155–77 (3d ed. 2017).
Mayo Clinic Staff, Positive Thinking: Stop Negative Self-Talk to Reduce Stress https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/positive-thinking/art-20043950 (accessed June 28, 2019).
Pamela Bucy Pierson, et al., Stress Hardiness and Lawyers, 42 J. Legal Prof. 1, 57–63 (2017).
Martin E.P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (Reprint ed. 2004).
Martin E.P. Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life (Reprint ed. 2006).
Mental Health or Substance Abuse Resources
ABA Mental Health Resources: https://abaforlawstudents.com/events/initiatives-and-awards/mental-health-resources/
Law Lifeline: http://www.lawlifeline.org/
ABA General National Resources: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/lawyer_assistance/resources/links_of_interest/
ABA Resources for Law Students and Law Schools: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/lawyer_assistance/articles_and_info/law_student_resources/
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline
Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation: https://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/treatment/models/specialized-programs/legal-professionals
Suicide Prevention Lifeline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/