Random thing: my biggest weakness as a lawyer earlier in my career (I have other weaknesses now I try to work on!) was, I dunno what to call it - not wanting to have the tough conversation or deal with the tough issue, or solve the annoying problem. 1/

I guess I thought that avoiding those things reduced my stress. But in fact it increased the stress I felt, because the thing just sat at the corner of my brain and worried me.

I still try to do this avoidance, but now when I get that little niggle in my head 2/

I try to stop whatever else I'm doing and do the thing (it's usually a phone call, BTW. Obviously everyone is different, but maybe this is something you also do. It's helped the stress I feel in practice a lot.

This is very elementary advice, but did you know that when you ignore problems, they get worse? But palpably - the small legal mistake that could have been fixed with an embarrassing call to OC becomes a *thing.* Or that hole in your brief you know is there, the judge sees ...

As unpleasant as doing the thing now is, every time I feel like it ended up being less bad than I imagined.