Motivation

At the moment, I am trying to juggle preparing for a closing argument competition, writing an article for my school's news website which is due next week, doing my reading and outlining for all my classes, doing a big legal research and writing assignment on the Americans with Disabilities Act, looking for a summer job and submitting lots of applications, preparing for a legal research exam, attending a bunch of meetings and career workshops, and trying to still maintain a social life and have some time for myself. Like to sleep. Or do pleasure reading. Or go to the gym. Next week, to add to the fun, the spring Moot Court competition for 1L's will start (not the competition itself, but signups begin and I'll think we'll be receiving the problem then).

It is a very busy time of year, and there's always so much to do and a plethora of things to keep track of. People often say that when they are busiest, they find that they actually do better in school, in keeping up with friends, etc. This may seem counterintuitive, but I have a theory that I think explains it, at least for me. I feel like if I drop the ball in one area, it then becomes really easy to kind of give up and start being lazy and slacking off on everything. But, the reverse is also true: if I am really keeping up with my responsibilities in one area of my life, that tends to spill over into every other area of my life. It's kind of like the observation that when you have it together in something, you tend to kind of have it together in everything. I call this theory the "anti-compartmentalization of motivation," which really makes it sound more complicated than it is. The idea is that you can't compartmentalize motivation. It's very hard to get incredibly motivated in one area of your life without finding that motivation spilling over into a lot of other areas of your life. Have you ever wondered why, for example, going to the gym very consistently makes you want to also get all your school responsibilities under control too? It's because that motivation from having one area of your life--exercise and taking care of yourself--under control makes you want to take responsibility for other areas of your life too.

I try to take advantage of this theory during incredibly busy times like right now. By necessity, I've had to be incredibly motivated to prepare for the closing argument competition, because we just got the problem and the information on Monday and we have one week to prepare and basically memorize 10-minute arguments for both sides. There has been no time to waste, so every day this week I've been going to the library after class and preparing for that competition. That in turn has made me be really motivated to get on top of my classes, and so forth, so in spite of the busyness of this week, I've actually been meeting deadlines better and feeling more on top of things than I have in awhile. Maybe I need more crazy-busy weeks to help me get things done!

And now I need to stop blogging for the moment . . . and go read contracts . . . and meet with my career counselor to go over my resume . . . etc.!