Urgency is the most reliable thing I know for getting work done.
Give me a deadline and I'll hustle. A brief due Friday, a closing on the 30th, a client call at four that I haven't (yet) prepared for. The pressure is fuel for speed, and speed feels godlike.
Which is why it's so hard to notice what it does to a career that has no sharp edges. Deadlines end. A practice doesn’t.
There's no closing on the work of being a lawyer. The store never closes. At any hour there is something on the list that a careful person would agree needed to be done no matter where you are or what you are doing.
Urgency doesn't have an off switch in this profession. It has a dimmer, and we're the ones holding it.
The same drive that got you through law school, that made you the person a partner calls at 8 PM at home before Thanksgiving, that built whatever you have built.
It's also the reason you can't remember the last evening you spent without the quiet tension of unfinished matters.
No one is coming to lock up for you. At some point, you have to reach for the dimmer yourself, turn the little sign on its chain to Closed, and let the store sit dark until morning.
The work will keep. You might not.
