From Frenzy to Focus: Claire E. Parsons Wood On How We Can Cancel Hustle Culture And Create A New Sustainable Work Paradigm
An Interview With Drew Gerber
1 . Cultivate self-awareness.
2 . Cultivate self-compassion.
3 . Honor all your needs and respect the needs of others.
4 . Move and create.
5 . Grow and expand outside of yourself.
“Hustle Culture” is an ethos often propounded by young self-proclaimed internet gurus that centers around the idea that working long hours and sacrificing self-care are required to succeed. This mentality may have gained popularity in the mid-2010s, but it has peaked, and now it has been sardonically renamed “Burnout Culture.” So why exactly is Hustle Culture the wrong path to take? What damage can it cause? What is a viable, sustainable alternative to hustle culture? How can we move from Frenzy To Focus? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders, mental health leaders, marketing experts, business coaches, authors, and thought leaders who can share stories and insights about “How We Can Cancel Hustle Culture And Create A New Sustainable Work Paradigm.” As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Claire E. Parsons.
Claire E. Parsons is Partner at Wood + Lamping LLP in Cincinnati, Ohio where she practices in the areas of employment, local government, and litigation. She’s also a certified mindfulness and compassion teacher, the founder of the Brilliant Legal Mind blog, and the author of How to Be a Badass Lawyer. In addition to law practice, raising two girls, and community leadership, Claire teaches lawyers and professionals how to manage stress, care for themselves, and lead with mindfulness and compassion.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!
Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you. I’m a lawyer at a mid-sized law firm in the Cincinnati area, a community leader, mindfulness and compassion teacher, and mom to two growing girls. Of course, I didn’t start out that way. I thought I would just be a lawyer, but life didn’t go quite as planned. I had struggled for most of my life with anxiety and overthinking, but I never understood how big this problem was until a few years into my law practice. I had a difficult first pregnancy with my oldest (who is doing great now) and I blamed myself. I had no ability to cope and ultimately suffered from post-partum depression.
After recovering from that experience, I re-evaluated my life, including my tendencies to criticize and isolate myself in difficult times. I started a meditation practice that changed my life. First it helped me stop thinking so much. Then it helped me manage stress. Eventually it helped me see the patterns in my life and change my habits. I eventually started speaking and writing about mindfulness and mental health, obtained training to teach mindfulness and compassion, then founded my blog and recently wrote my book. I still practice law, but I love having a side activity that helps make the world a better place and allows me to be creative.
Tell us about your typical day!
Wherever possible, I try to start off the day with a workout and then I get my girls off to school and myself to work. During the week, most of my time is devoted to my law practice but I can’t say I have too many “typical” days. My practice includes litigation and general counsel work, so some of my days are planned and some of my time is spent counseling clients on the issues that happen to arise. I like this mix because I get to use many skillsets to do my job.
So long as I can manage it, I also spend a small amount of time each day doing social media posts for my blog and myself. Most of the blog work and writing happens on the weekends, but I usually take a few minutes each day to write social posts and do other routine engagement for the blog. Frequently during the week, I also attend community or networking events or speak at events on mindfulness or on legal topics to market my law practice. At the end of the day, I enjoy cooking dinner for the family and relaxing with a book or some TV. I meditate at night before bed.
What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?
I’d tell myself to worry less about fitting in and focus more on doing the things that make me happy. I used to struggle a lot with being different. I’m an introvert and a deep thinker but I crave connection and community. I tried for too long to look like I was professional, smart, and competent instead of trusting myself and the people around me. I was so focused on living up to a standard that I often never asked and had no clue what I wanted to be happy. After I started meditating, I really didn’t have the option to look away. My patterns became apparent and the whispers of the things I wanted to follow (like writing or focusing more on my friendships) grew louder. Gradually, I started to follow them, and I built some confidence and over time every aspect of my life improved.
Ok, thank you for sharing your inspired life. Let’s start with a basic definition to make sure that all of us are on the same page. How do you define Hustle Culture?
Hustle culture is a culture built on external validation rather than internal satisfaction. It’s where achievement is prized over fulfillment and can even take precedence over human needs for rest, connection, and self-care. Hustle culture in general is focused on short-term gains more than sustainable long-term stability and it assumes that growth and productivity are prerequisites to worth.
Now let’s discuss an alternative to Hustle Culture. To begin, can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority on the problems that come with Hustle Culture?
The legal profession of which I am a part is currently reckoning with its own history of hustle culture. Many firms and attorneys are working to transform the profession, but our work is cut out for us. I speak on topics of mental health, stress management, and mindfulness frequently because so many lawyers continue to struggle with the effects of hustle culture. One of the things I regularly discuss is the importance of self-compassion because it is so easy for lawyers and other service professionals to forget themselves as we serve clients. Personally, though, I know what it’s like to feel like you must hustle for your self-worth. It’s painful, demotivating, and often leads to poor mental health and a loss of personal growth. The path out of this trap for me has been self-compassion and prioritizing my own needs.
The specific term “Hustle Culture” may have been popularized in the 2010s, but the concept behind it and the behaviors that come with it can be traced back hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years. From your vantage point, experience, or research, what were the main drivers of Hustle Culture?
Obviously, political, culture, and economic systems all play a part in this, but I think hustle culture has some roots that go back even further into human history. Connection and community are ingrained human needs. We want to feel stable and supported and like we have enough resources. Human beings naturally desire feeling esteem from our community and the security of having enough. We learn early on to associate good feelings (being safe, loved, protected, etc.) with achievement and so we seek that out more. When other structures add incentives like compensation, titles, status, attractive work projects, or other benefits to the equation, hustle culture can and will emerge unless it is checked with awareness and good leadership.
I work in the marketing industry, and so I’m very cognizant of this question. What role do you see that marketing and advertising has played in creating the frenzy caused by Hustle Culture that many of us feel?
It’s great that you are asking this question. Yes, in my opinion, marketing and advertising contribute to this. Both are often targeted at exploiting the human cravings I mentioned before. Those cravings drive us to want things and believe they are essential to our happiness, when they often distract us from what we really want: connection. One of the biggest problems with this is that marketing and advertising are more pervasive and subtle than they used to be. Many of us may wish to believe we are not affected by these forces but for many us this idea may make us even more vulnerable to them.
Can you help articulate the downsides of Hustle Culture? Why is this an unsustainable work paradigm?
I have already alluded to the fact that unsustainability is one of the major flaws of hustle culture. That, of course, is because business requires human beings with human needs to do the work. Humans cannot work without rest and nourishment. They have physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. Though we can delay gratification of some needs, sometimes for a very long time, most of us experience serious consequences for doing so. Hustle culture is unsustainable because it is built on the lie that human needs aren’t a priority and can be ignored.
Let’s now discuss Focus, the opposite of Frenzy. Can you please share one area of your personal or business life where you simplified things and then felt less frenzied and more fulfilled? Can you please explain?
As my profile reveals, I do a lot of things so you may wonder where simplicity comes in with me. The most fundamental force of simplicity in my life is my meditation practice. I sit most days for about 30 minutes and most of that time I literally just sit. This allows me to check in with myself with no filters. I let thoughts arise and bounce around. I notice the sensations in my body. I often get a chance to notice subtle emotions, longings, or worries that I might have missed during the activity of the day. Very often my mind relaxes enough to offer me some good ideas for life, work, or a writing project. Meditation for me is the simplicity in a busy and full life. It helps me avoid the frenzy because I stop at least once a day to check in with myself and see what’s inside and what I need.
What life experiences have you adopted in your business or personal life that have left you more satisfied? Can you please explain?
I have built in time for creativity. People often tell me that they think I am disciplined and impressive because I have a blog and wrote a book while practicing law. I appreciate those compliments, but the reality is that my writing isn’t motivated at all by discipline or the desire to be impressive. I write because it’s fun and therapeutic for my brain. As I said, I have always struggled with overthinking. When I started meditating, I saw that some of my thoughts were ideas. I eventually started writing those ideas, not because I expected anyone to read them but instead because I wanted them out of my head. Over time, though, some people did read them. They told me that my stories helped them. It also helped me to own my story bit by bit. I eventually built confidence and developed a bigger community than I ever could have imagined. In short, creative work was the thing most missing from my life in the early years of my law practice and it transformed everything once I brought it back again.
Okay, fantastic. Here is the main part of our interview. In your opinion, how can we break the addiction to being busy or trying to find the next big thing? How can people truly focus on tasks that make THE difference to their business and lives giving them satisfaction or life purpose alignment? Based on your experience and your area of expertise, can you please share “Five Ways To Move From Frenzy to Focused”?
1 . Cultivate self-awareness.
2 . Cultivate self-compassion.
3 . Honor all your needs and respect the needs of others.
4 . Move and create.
5 . Grow and expand outside of yourself.
How would you describe a work paradigm that is a viable alternative to Hustle Culture? What would it look like, and what would you call it?
The Surgeon General’s new framework on workplace wellbeing is a great place start. It combines public health knowledge with workplace practices and compliance requirements to build a framework for a human-centered work culture.
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you about working differently?
I wrote my book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, with this goal in mind because I wanted to show people that being compassionate and a lawyer weren’t antithetical. I also have really enjoyed and benefited from Laura Vanderkam’s many works (including her podcasts and books) on time management. For an excellent read on building a meaningful professional life, check out Thomas Moore’s A Life at Work. Finally, I tell everyone I know to read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert to inspire more creativity in life and work.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can inspire.
If I could inspire a movement, I would convince everyone to take really good care of themselves first. This would help them get much clearer about themselves, their actions, and the needs of their workplaces and communities. Everyone would still work but we’d be working from love and with our own needs met and that would change everything about the way we did it.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
You can follow my blog Brilliant Legal Mind on Wordpress or social media, you can follow me on LinkedIn, and you can find my book on Amazon.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About The Interviewer: For 30 years, Drew Gerber has been inspiring those who want to change the world. Drew is the CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a full-service PR agency lauded by PR Week and Good Morning America. Wasabi Publicity, Inc. is a global marketing company that supports industry leaders, change agents, unconventional thinkers, companies and organizations that strive to make a difference. Whether it’s branding, traditional PR or social media marketing, every campaign is instilled with passion, creativity and brilliance to powerfully tell their clients’ story and amplify their intentions in the world. Schedule a free consultation at WasabiPublicity.com/Choosing-Publicity.
