A practicing lawyer is 3.6
times, 3.6 times more likely
to suffer from depression than other
similar professions. Why does this happen?
What can you learn about it and how can
you apply this to have more happiness
and a better life in your own life
regardless of whether or not you're a lawyer?
Now, contrary to a lot of stereotypes,
lawyers are not actually more likely to
get divorced than other people, but I
think looking at math, there could be
some other factors protecting them on
this side such as being, people being
terrified of getting divorced from a
lawyer. Yet, this depression number is
still there, three point six times more
likely to get depressed. So, why does that
happen? You might think it has to do with
longer working hours or stress, work
conditions, ambition, things like that, but
even when you equalize for those factors,
the depression still stays there. So, why
does this happen?
Well, before we can get into
why it happens, you need to understand a
phenomenon that happens with our brain
in terms of our pathways and elasticity.
So, for the longest time, scientists
thought that our brain stayed put. You
had your brain, that was it. Nothing ever
changed. It wasn't until fairly recently
that researchers discovered that our
brains were elastic, that things could
change and the more we did certain
activities, the more we would think
differently, and that part of the
brain would grow. One such study looked
at London taxi drivers, and they found
that the part of the brain around
spatial skills, you know, navigation,
direction, all that sort of stuff was
significantly larger in taxi drivers and
no, it wasn't that people who had a you
know real good sense of direction became
taxi drivers, but actually being a taxi
driver especially in a city like London
which has such strict requirements for
them actually led people's brains to
change. Another experiment shed some
light on this where they had monkeys
repeat a very similar movement over and
over and what they found is that over
time, as the monkeys
kept repeating, that the part of
their brain responsible for that
movement grew new pathways, and they
thickened and thickened and thickened
until the monkeys could actually not
stop doing this, it had become such a
repetitive action that they train
themselves to do it and they could not
stop doing that. So, now that we've got
that out of the way, I want to introduce
you to the Tetris Effect, and this effect
explains why depression is so high in
lawyers, and how it can also impact other
professions such as entrepreneurs. Now,
the tetris effect is named so because
what they found is that people who would
play this game Tetris, after hours and
hours of playing, would be walking around
at their city and they would start to
see shapes and everything. You look at a
building and think, "Hey, could I take that
building and turn it and put it there,
and then we could turn this," and they
would basically have changed their brain,
changed their way of thinking because
they were playing Tetris for too damn
long. Now, how this relates to lawyers, is
that as a lawyer, what do you start to
train your brain to do? First, you start
to train your brain to spot errors, to
spot things that are wrong. Next, you're
training your brain often to argue with
people or catch them in a lie. Or, sadly,
even if you know someone is telling the
truth, to argue with them anyhow and make
them look bad or prove that you're right
even if you know you're not. Last thing
that comes up as a lawyer is billable
hours. Show me the money. You are working
in a big law firm. You need to be billing
a set amount of hours, and you're always
thinking, "Can I be billing for this? Could
I be making money for this?" Like,
"Should I be charging for this?" "Hey, out
for lunch, is this a billable hour?" Now,
think about these three things here,
right? Looking for flaws and other
people's arguments, finding out that people
are liar, always trying to be right, and
then thinking about your time in terms
of money, billing constantly. So, you're
doing this at your office ten hours a
day, 12 hours a day, and then you come
home. Now, think of the Tetris Effect. Do
you think it's going to be easy to turn
off that part of the brain, the part of
the brain that always sees the flaws, the mistakes,
sees people as lying, catches what is
wrong? No, of course not. And so, what's been
found is that lawyers will tend to have
a lot of issues with their family and
with their spouse because they will have
trained their brain so much to always
look for these things, look for what's
wrong, look for an argument. And then, the
other thing that comes in and this really
applies to entrepreneurs, as well is the billable hours.
One of the things that's really important whether you are a
lawyer or an entrepreneur is to start to
think of the value of your time, right?
That you're not wasting time, that you're,
"Okay, I am worth a hundred dollars an
hour," right, and so you've structure your
days that way, and that's great in the
professional environment, but what
happens when you're trying to disconnect
from work becomes really hard to spend
time with your significant other, with
your kids, with your friends if you're
thinking in the back of your mind like,
"This dinner doesn't cost me twenty
dollars, this dinner cost me two hundred
and seventy dollars, because if I was
with a client right now, that's how much
I would earn," and unfortunately it's
really hard to initially get away from
this belief. So again, you're training
your brain to think a certain way in the
professional context, and it's very hard
to turn off that way of thinking because
you're strengthening those ties right,
you're growing those connections in your
brain. And as they grow, it becomes harder
and harder to stop that behavior. So, what
can we do about it? So, the first step is
an easy one for you, it's just awareness
of this. Now that this has come to your
attention, you'll start to notice these
thought patterns. Maybe you're hanging out
with friends and you start to think, "I
could be working now," and you'll be able
to catch yourself with it. Now, a more
active thing you can do is just start to
train your brain to see the positive
things. So, one easy practice to do this
is gratitude practice, where you
essentially make a list of all the
positive things in your life. A lot of
people do this on a daily basis and it's
very effective for retraining your brain.
If you start to make a list every day of
five things you're happy about from that
day, what you're doing is you're training
your brain because it's thinking, "Alright,
at the end of the day, I'm going to
have to make a list of five good things,"
so you'll start to notice the good
things more, and that will actually retrain
your brain and help counteract the
tendency to focus on the negative.
Now, in terms of the "Time is money" attitude
which can be so destructive to
relationships, what I've personally found is
helpful for that, is just to shift my
beliefs. If you believe that you could
always be working, then you're going to
have this in the back of your mind, right?
"I could be working now instead of this,"
and then you start to become more
impatient with people, your partners,
your family start to have a lot of
trouble enjoying the moment because
you're thinking, "I could be working, I
could be making money," so for, you know,
whether or not it is true, and I do think
it is, one of the things that has helped
me is just changing my belief and
acknowledging that you only have a
limited work capacity, that I have maybe
six or eight hours in a day, that if I
don't take weekends off, I don't recharge
and my work suffers the next week. True
story, this is actually true, so if I
don't take weekends off, I notice my
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday really suffers,
my creativity goes and I'm not as sharp.
Whether or not that is true for you,
acknowledging this belief basically,
creating this belief for yourself where
you say, "I have to take a day off," or, "I
have to take two days off," and in that
moment then, you're not thinking, "I could
be working," because you've shifted your,
your thought system, your belief so that
you don't work in those times. You take
weekends off and that way, you're not
having these beliefs about, "I could be
making money, I could be working," and that
should allow you to relax in the moment
and enjoy it more. How could I possibly
be expected to handle school in a day
like this? Now, i'm going to make follow
up video on this, so do subscribe if
you're interested in this topic and
you've enjoyed this, where I'm going to
explore more about the Tetris Effect in
other areas of our life and how our
day-to-day little actions or habits
that we might not even notice can
actually be having a huge impact on our
lives, because we're retraining our
brains. And I'm going to go through some
areas that you might be doing this and
some of the consequences that you may
not even realize are happening because
of these small repetitive behaviors. So,
subscribe for that. Again, I publish new
videos every Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday and I would love to
see you in them. In the comments section
below, let me know if you've experienced
this Tetris Effect before in your own
life, and if so, how did you experience it
and did you do something about it to
change it? Thanks for watching, catch you
in the next one.