November 11, 2025

Doing the Things I Don’t Want to Do

By Emily Poler

In a recent post, I talked about how I dislike conflict despite working in a profession built on adversarial relationships — and how I’ve learned to manage obnoxious opponents on my own terms. Doing that well is a super important skill. You know what skill is equally valuable for us litigators (and really, everyone)? Effectively dealing with things that feel hard or uncomfortable to do and that, as a result, we procrastinate over, ultimately making them even harder to accomplish. 

It’s a topic that doesn’t get a whole lot of attention and is certainly not taught in law school, which is really about legal theories, statutes, and precedents. Of course, after graduation you can take courses to learn how to write a good brief, handle a difficult witness, or trawl the darkest depths of the Federal Rules of Evidence, but there’s very little institutional knowledge about how to handle the non-legal tasks, like managing nervous clients or promoting your own firm, that don’t come easily — and, for everyone, there’s always something that doesn’t come easily. 

(Side note: While I haven’t been able to find any recent statistics, there have been studies suggesting that alcoholism is pretty common in the legal profession. It’s not crazy to speculate that there’s some causal relationship between the lack of training about how to manage the stressful aspects of being a lawyer and heavy drinking.)

Ok, so boozing aside (which I don’t do), what are the techniques I’ve learned to help me when I have to do something, whether as a lawyer or business owner, where I don’t feel comfortable? It comes down to two steps: Identifying the problem, and then determining its source.

The first step is critical because I can’t deal with headaches that I haven’t identified. The difficulty I had producing this blog is a perfect example. Before I started regularly writing this blog, I spent a long time wanting to do it. I had mental plans to do it. Plenty of good intentions. I just didn’t get started. Every morning I would come into the office believing that day was going to be the day, and everyday I would skulk home under a cloud of failure. Facing what was making me avoid this task was a crucial part of doing it. 

More recently, I’ve implemented a strategy to avoid this problem, or at least minimize it. Pretty much the first thing every morning I write out, by hand, a list of what I want to get done that day, copying items from the previous day (or days) that I haven’t yet completed. For whatever reason, writing this by hand seems to be the key for me to focus and internalize information. 

Obviously, there are days where things don’t get done because I’m on a deadline on another matter or in court. However, this list lets me see the things that have carried over for a couple days (or, sometimes more, more!) and ask myself why I haven’t completed those tasks. Is it because there’s something about the work that feels hard or scary? Is it because doing something is going to require a difficult conversation with a client? Is it because it might reveal that I was wrong and might have to change my position? 

I can also flip back through my lists to see if there are common factors among the types of projects I tend to avoid. 

So, staying with my struggle to start this blog as an example. Once I realized the pattern, I asked myself, why am I not doing it and what’s stopping me? Asking this question, I realized that I didn’t feel comfortable with my writing voice and there was a good dose of imposter syndrome lurking. This let me get some help and figure out ways around the problem. (Thanks Gregg Lieberman.) 

So, now that I had a clue about why I was avoiding this particular task, I did it! Why? Because the easiest way to get me to do something is to tell me I can’t do that thing. I love a challenge.

These steps have been incredibly helpful. More than that, I’d say that by repeatedly going through this process and finishing tasks I had avoided, I’ve learned that things I thought were scary or hard weren’t actually scary or hard. And, even more importantly, the results have proved to be a lot more positive than I ever thought they would be. 

And with that, I’m off to write something else I’ve been avoiding!