“Perhaps eating three healthy meals a day should be one of your Autumn goals,” my boyfriend thoughtfully pointed out yesterday, while we were discussing this very essay. Since he is the archetype of the overly-polite British man, you can imagine how much unpleasantness he had to endure with my consistently hangry state for him to mutter those words.
Wow, I’ve really let myself go. This was a realization I had recently, two years after I passed the bar exam, which were two years of the most chaotic and fulfilling years of my life, and left me as a non-practicing Oklahoma-qualified lawyer living in London (not sure how many of us exist!). Studying for the bar exam was one of the most peaceful times of my life.
I am writing this because I am currently undergoing a career transition, one where I am pulled in multiple directions, and my mind is swarming with endless goals and possibilities which I am struggling to narrow down. I currently have around seven things I want to focus on and little clarity on what takes priority. These areas of focus fall into different categories: some social life, some career, some personal fulfillment. I currently wake up without clarity on where I will channel my energy for the day. Speaking of energy, that is all over the place too. I am not even eating 3 regular meals a day.
Just two years ago I was in the best shape of my life, training for a half-marathon and studying for the bar exam, on top of other things I was juggling too, which I’ll get to later. And yet I somehow did not feel that overwhelmed. Looking back, I actually quite enjoyed it all. I remember some of my runs as the most freeing moments of my life. I also did not lose motivation in studying, even though I did not find it particularly fun or meaningful. I slept a normal amount every night, woke up naturally without an alarm, ate 3 meals a day, and was able to maintain solid energy throughout it all (except for the couple of times I almost fainted after long runs in the heat — whoops).
So how did I manage this? Here’s what I think it came down to.
During the bar exam I had structure, focus, and clear goals. In real life these things are not handed to us on a silver platter like the bar study courses do for us. Yet, I think there is a way to achieve this in our normal lives—in a way that involves the realities of juggling many things. I have a brain which focuses on many things at once, I can get excited by shiny new projects instead of finishing old ones, and I am quite scattered. I am also quite an ambitious person. I care deeply about solving world problems, specifically, my passions sit with ending animal factories and achieving animal freedom. In order to succeed, I must develop the qualities of a high-functioning person. I am going to write about my journey here.
I am not so interested in what people do, but rather how they do it. If given the right tools and insights, I believe we can do anything. If this resonates with you, you’re in the right place. For those of you who are in chaotic life transitions, I would love to connect and hear your experiences and thoughts.
The Obvious Point (that still needs to be said)
First, let’s start with the obvious: studying for the bar exam gives you a lot of structure. It’s a magical feeling to wake up and have the tasks you need to do already laid out in front of you: the lectures you need to watch, the study questions you need to answer, and the essays you need to write. You mark it when it’s complete, and if you fall behind, your bar study course (mine was Themis) reorganizes it all for you.
Additionally, your results metrics are based around doing the plan, not the outcome of it. I was able to see the whole plan laid out in front of me: watching some lectures, answering questions, writing some essays. Themis told me that if I completed all the steps, there was a very high chance for success on the exam. I had to do the task to move on, and how well I did was much less important. I could clearly see that if I slacked off early on, my tasks were going to stack up later, and my life would soon become quite stressful and miserable.
Aiming for consistency naturally breeds results. Aiming for results breeds self-doubt and loss in motivation.
This meant that for 3 months of my life, my goal became NOT to pass the bar exam. Instead it was very simple: follow the learning plan that Themis Bar Review created for me, show up, and try.
My first takeaway: goals should be incremental and rooted in consistency, not outcome.
The Golden Ticket We Should Apply to Other Areas of Our Lives
The bar exam gives you a golden pass to block out a lot of distraction in your life, and for those lucky enough, to have people accommodate their lives to help you achieve this goal. It is incredible how understanding people became when they knew I was studying for the bar. I missed birthdays, parties, and dinners. I also had meetings regarding initiatives I was getting involved in after the exam, and the post-casting process for 90 Day Fiancé (the reality show that follows long-distance couples trying to merge their lives across countries), which were all happily put on hold for me to focus on accomplishing this goal.
I didn’t have to explain to people why this goal mattered. Thankfully, American culture did that for me. I would just tell people I was studying for the bar exam, and they would have a look of awe, pity, and shock on their face, and suddenly it felt like everything in my life could be excused or accommodated for.
Of course, we need to weigh what actually matters in life, helping others, solving world problems, to understand how seriously we should take our goals and what we should expect from other people when trying to achieve them. But what we can learn is that if you have a goal you are serious about accomplishing, and a clear plan that you can meet as long as certain boundaries are met in your life, communicate to people why this goal matters and what you would appreciate from others!
Since passing the bar exam, I have been doing things that I find much more important than passing the exam, but I have failed to communicate these goals and what I need from others the same way the bar exam did for me. Once I figure out what these new goals are, I am going to try it. I’ll let you know how it goes!
We Need to Create the Structure and Clarity Ourselves
Of course, we can’t just purchase software that has the steps to our goals all laid out for us in a very detailed and structured plan. We have to create that structure ourselves, and it must be created in a way where we actually stick to it.
And we must first figure out what our goals should actually be.
All of this is coming in future essays. This will be a series where we will learn together. My hope is that we will become better functioning, fulfilled, and more at peace. Our energy will be channeled in the places that matter most. Our lives will be both simple and ambitious.
Thanks for reading! This post is public and was written by me (a human-being, not AI). Feel free to share it.