"For the past three or four months, I've noticed that my work product hasn't been up to my usual level and my motivation in general is dipping. I read, about the "itch" after two years in big law. I am in my third year now, and definitely can relate to a lot of this, I find myself just disengaged from the work and losing interest. I thought I was burnt out from the end of 2020, but I went on two vacations in January and it just seemed to turn me off even further. How do you push through? How do you keep yourself engaged and motivated? I wanna pursue partner and see how it goes but it's so far away, it doesn't drive me day to day."That's a great question. And I've got a pretty sad answer for you. So I've come to the conclusion at this point in my life, after decades of trying to do things that I didn't wanna do, that you should either say, " hell yeah!" - you wanna do something. If it's not hell yeah then you probably shouldn't be doing it. If you wanna set an example of it, if you wanna marry someone, a lot of people get married because they're like, oh, it's the right thing to do. Or I can't do any better. No, it needs to be - if you wanna do something, you should be 100% convinced. Like 100% convinced, this is the person for me. This is what I want. This is great. I have no doubts. I'm totally sold. This is great. And it's the same thing with a job. What I'm doing, I think, hell yeah, I love this. I don't wanna do anything else. But if I was practicing law, I wouldn't be hell yeah. So you need to do something that motivates you to do something where you say hell yeah every day. You need to be, everyone needs a career where they're saying, hell yeah. And it's just the way it works. And if your work product is suffering, how are you gonna make partner with bad work product and no motivation?
You don't have that hell yeah factor. So there's something that you're interested in doing that's probably not this. Now, it could be the firm. It could be where you're working. But if you're not saying hell yeah, you're saying, I don't know. And that's like dating someone they don't like. Oh, this person is okay, but they're not, whatever. That's, the issue is your self-esteem. And I'm not saying that in a negative way, it's just like - your self esteem should tell you, you deserve better. That's just the way it is. And you do deserve better. You should be doing something that motivates you and gets you excited and not something where you're just saying I don't like it. Now, maybe that's practicing law in another firm. Maybe it's doing something else altogether. But nothing ever good happens if you don't say, hell yeah.
The attorneys that I know that are the best, you know what they do? They're insane. They're up at 4:00 in the morning or, if they're not up at 4:00 in the morning they're up at, 7:00 and they're working until midnight. You have to love what you're doing. And if you don't love what you're doing, you're not gonna be able to push through. Now, there's nothing wrong with, if you need to, doing something you don't like, but it sounds to me like you're in a fricking prison camp. And what's the point? You're not, nothing good happens to people that are not excited about what they wanna do. And I just, I don't like it. And it could be an itch. The other thing is too, and I will bring this up because it's important. There's a lot of people that are dabblers. So people are dabblers in a lot of things.
So people dabble at practicing law, they dapple at hobbies. They dabble at all sorts of things. They dabble with relationships, they dabble at health, at fitness. And so nothing good ever happens to dabblers. So it's not good being a dabbler. You need to commit. But you don't commit to something you don't like. So if you're gonna be like really good at tennis, then you practice tennis every single day and you get good at it, then you're no longer a dabbler. If you're gonna be really good at anything, you have to do it consistently and you have to do it all the time. And then you're not a dabbler. But the problem with dabblers is they never get good at anything. So I'm not certainly suggesting you become a dabbler or not do this, but I am suggesting that if you're gonna be good, you have to do it all the time. And you have to love it.
And if you don't then it's not good. And you have to be excited about whatever you're doing. And I apologize for that. Maybe you have, you maybe you're not well or something, or maybe you need to reorganize your life, but you need to get excited about what you're doing.