How To Make Working Fewer Hours Work For You

Career Planning

By the beginning of May there will be a small army of lawyers and legal support staff with some extra time on their hands as many law firms, and others, move to 4 days a week for the next few months. For most of us, this was most certainly not one of our 2020 New Year's Resolutions! Yet, here we are. For an entire generation of business leaders, the actions they take now and in the weeks ahead will define them and their companies. As individuals, our situation is no different. We can choose to see these challenges as threats or as opportunities.

If you returned from Christmas leave this year feeling less than inspired about your current role, you now have a gift of time to set yourself up for the future. At no point in our recent history have employers been so prepared to accept a career pivot from a potential employee or that there are legimate work options beyond 9-5 in the office.

Likewise, online learning options have never been so accessible and plentiful. Maybe you are looking to add another area of expertise to your skillset. Free online courses are available from leading universities around the world. EdX is a global nonprofit founded by Harvard and MIT that is certainly worth checking out. Bioethics from Harvard? International Climate Change Law and Policy from Uni of Newcastle? Foundations of Central Bank Law presented by IMF? Bitcoin & Cryptocurrencies from Berkley? Or maybe you want to develop your leadership, presentation, time management or strategic thinking skills. Short online courses are available for all of these too. Go to www.edx.org to find your next course.

LinkedIn is also offering some free online courses at the moment and the Australian Federal Government has announced significantly discounted courses will be available from the beginning of May. Maybe you don't want to be a lawyer anymore and want to transition to teaching instead? Then head to www.courseseeker.edu.au for available teaching courses as well as many other options that are available through the Higher Education Relief Package. Coursera and Udemy are also online learning platforms worth considering, with courses from photography and astronomy through to coding.

Perhaps this period has given you time to reflect that the constant demands of full-time work in the legal industry isn't how you want your next 5 years to be filled. The opportunities to reconnect with your children (bikes, table tennis tables, boardgame sales have all skyrocketed), reconnect with your garden, cooking or even a hobby that has fallen by the wayside in recent years are available to many of us again as we no longer spend hours commuting, ferrying kids to various extra-curricular activities or because we just have less work available at the moment.

So how do you want to look back on this period? Will this be the time that you 'finished Netflix' or will it be the time that you found pleasure again in your interests outside of work? Maybe this really is the year you learn a second language, or compete a marathon (virtual, of course). Before March there were many of us who had lamented 'gee, it would be nice to be able to work from home.' Now there are just as many of us wishing we could go back to the office! However, this period is demonstrating to us all that working from home, even if not all the time, is certainly a realistic option that I think will be an accepted mainstream practice in the future. As every lawyer recognises, to be successful in this industry one needs to treat it as a marathon, not a sprint. If a different combination of working hours and locations lets you get in the comfortable rhythm of a marathon then grab this opportunity to make the change. 

We can mark time, waiting for this to pass or we can seize today like the gift it really is - after all, it is called the present!

Lisa Stockwell, HR Consultant 

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