I Try to Live A Version of My Whole Life Every Day

UPOA #8

I’m a corporate lawyer.

It should be illegal for the words “corporate” and “lawyer” to exist alongside each other in the English language. These two words mean everything and nothing at the same time.

When I describe to people the type of lawyer I am, I tell them everything I do is outside of the courtroom. This is where I lose most people. For those I don’t lose, I lose them as soon as I tell them I know nothing about traffic stops or how to get out of a DUI.

Growing up, it was never my dream to become a corporate lawyer. I barely even knew what it was until a few years ago.

Now it’s my career, and I’m not even really sure how I got here.

I Joined The Family Business

I grew up in a family of trial lawyers. When mapping out my career path, this led to two foregone conclusions : (1) I would follow the family’s footsteps and also become a lawyer, and (2) I would have to practice a different type of law than my dad, uncles, and cousin, because I was too scared of trying cases in front of judges and juries.

This narrowed my options pretty quickly. But once I came to these realizations, I just started following my interests.

I Followed My Interests

I’ve always been obsessed with entrepreneurship (thanks in large part to the How I Built This podcast). Entrepreneurs are optimists at heart, and they progress society forward by finding innovative solutions to important problems. So I wanted to surround myself with entrepreneurs to feel as if I was contributing to that progress in some way.

In addition to this keen interest, however, business and entrepreneurship were also simultaneously a huge mystery to me. This dragged me even further into this world of corporate law. I wanted to try and make sense of it all.

To this day, my practice revolves almost entirely around helping entrepreneurs form business entities, raise investment money, and navigate the contracting process with their customers and suppliers.

I find this work intellectually stimulating, but what I really enjoy is demystifying the world of corporate law for clients (primarily because I often find it so confusing myself).

But don’t worry, this post isn’t about corporate law. Or even my job.

Instead, it’s about how I search for meaning and structure my life around my job.

I Narrowed In On The Things That Are Meaningful

I don’t have traditional career aspirations like most people. Don’t get me wrong, I have aspirations… they’re just not traditional. I’m not driven by money, the stability of a 9–5 job, social status, or professional acclaim.

I’m driven by one thing: living a meaningful and present life.

1. Meaningful: I want to do things and spend time with people that have significant meaning in my life; and
2. Present: When I’m actually doing the things that are meaningful to me, I want to be as present and mindful as I can when doing them.

I’m sure this sounds like something most people would want, but not everyone takes the time to think about what this actually means for themselves. It looks different for everyone, but here’s what it looks like for me:

At age 28, I have a general idea of the types of things that will bring me significant meaning for the rest of my life. For example, I want to spend quality time with my wife, family, and friends; drink good coffee; be intellectually stimulated; exercise; challenge myself; laugh; watch TV; eat good food; and have engaging conversations, just to name a few.

I’m certain these will evolve over time. But for the most part, I want to spend as much time as I can balancing differing variations of these activities for the rest of my life.

I’m not in pursuit of any prestigious job title, promotion, or any particular dollar amount accumulated in my bank account. In my view, these types of goals are pointless, provided of course, that I can maintain some level of comfort with my chosen lifestyle and spending habits.

I Choose to Enjoy My Life Now — Not Later

I sometimes question whether my current career path is set up for what I want out of life. It often feels nicely charted for someone who is willing to sacrifice a certain level of physical and emotional well-being to maximize wealth and professional recognition. So, where does my version of a meaningful life fit into this equation?

The traditional advice would be to “grind” and “put in my time”, so that “one day”, I can retire with enough security to do whatever I want with my time. Only when I reach age 65 can I then begin doing the things I’ve been wanting to do all along.

I hate this advice. A lot.

Life is too short and unpredictable to wait that long. There’s no guarantee that someday I’ll get to enjoy the fruits of my labor with the person I want to spend it with.

Even if I am able to, grinding away at a stressful career for 40 years often results in neglect of the mind and body that jeopardizes any dream retirement scenario I could envision.

So, what’s the alternative? I choose not to wait. I live my version of a meaningful life today. And tomorrow. And the next day.

The idea is to take the types of activities I want to do for the rest of my life and find a way to incorporate them into my day-to-day life.

Every day, I want to live a version of my entire life.

Here are some examples of what I’m currently doing:

I challenge myself and actively seek out intellectual stimulation at work, but the moment this veers into people-pleasing that starts to deteriorate my life outside of work, I pull back. I start saying “no” to more things and re-establishing my boundaries. This might be an appalling admission to most lawyers, but I put my phone on Do Not Disturb starting at 6 pm to disconnect from work as much as I can while at home. This frees me up mentally to have quality time with my wife, cook dinner, and enjoy 1–2 hours of my favorite TV show or the NBA playoffs.

On days I work out, I’ll make the time to exercise by working from home to cut down on commuting time, or sometimes I’ll just leave the office 15 minutes early for an extra sliver of time to get it done.

I don’t burn the midnight oil and regularly get 7–8 hours of sleep. I run away from people who tell me “You can sleep when you’re dead”.

In the mornings, I take my dog for a walk in the morning sun while listening to my favorite podcast, and on occasion, I’ll show up to the office a few minutes late when my wife and I get caught up in conversation. I try to cherish these small moments as much as I can, because I know how easily they can slip away when I’m caught up in the busyness of work.

On weekends, I’ll hang out with friends, go to the dog park, have a few adult beverages, and do mini vacations with my wife, which are always revolved around food and coffee.

Each day should be a microcosm of how I want to live forever. I want to tell my wife how much she means to me today — not at some point in the future when I arbitrarily convince myself that I’m less stressed.

At the end of the day, it’s mainly about not letting my work dictate my life. I create boundaries where necessary to let my personal life flourish, with the hope that my employer gets the happiest, most productive version of myself.

Sure, making it to retirement with a lavish savings account would be nice. However, I refuse to sacrifice my day-to-day health and happiness waiting around for it. The small pockets of joy I experience on a daily basis are too precious to ignore.

I want work to enhance my life — not control it. You can call this work-life balance, but I think this is the way people should’ve been living all along.

Thanks for reading. For a free legal consultation, call my toll-free number at…

Just kidding.