Patryk Zamorski (Leadership Consultant & Executive Team Coach), Zsofia Varnai (Senior Consultant, Legalis Global), and Antoinette Moriarty, psychotherapist & psychoanalyst; Director of Solicitor Services at the Law Society of Ireland) led a three-part mini-series that landed a simple, practical chain — energy → focus → meaning — with a core message that felt both obvious and overdue: the legal profession obsesses over time, but sustainable performance is driven by something more fundamental, namely energy.

Zamorski put it bluntly, calling energy “the real currency of legal work”, and the sessions traced where that currency gets drained or mis-spent, then mapped concrete ways to reclaim it through clearer boundaries, deliberate recovery, and more intentional attention.

Session 1: Energy Architecture — Stop Paying for Hidden Drains

Zamorski began by asking participants to check their energy “right now”, shifting the focus from productivity guilt to awareness. His point was simple: two identical hours can deliver very different results depending on energy, and most lawyers don’t have a time problem; they have an energy problem.

Varnai mapped the most common (and most normalised) drains in legal work:

• Strengths that become costly: perfectionism, control, meticulousness, and zooming in so tightly that the bigger picture disappears — “extremely energy sensitive”.
• Organisational waste: meetings with no real decisions or missing information, where effort is spent without progress.
• Stop–start waiting: delays from departments or clients that keep files mentally “open” and burn attention.

She also broke down the ranks by seniority:

• Junior: self-doubt, impostor syndrome, overthinking, and people-pleasing.
• Mid-level: external pressure plus home-role switching — the “double performance standard”.
• Senior: the emotional weight of transition, succession, and exiting well.

The session’s anchor line was Zamorski’s: “Become an expert in recovery.” Recovery isn’t weakness — it’s professional maintenance. Varnai shared how, during Covid, she reduced overload by building a small team and a simple audit process — improving both outcomes and morale.

Practical “Monday-ready” recovery tools included: closing loops, micro-recovery between calls, pausing before reacting, and returning to basics (hydration, movement, physical maintenance).

Session 2: Ensuring Focus, not Fatigue — Stop Calling Task-Switching “Multitasking.”

Gannon recapped the prior day: law isn’t really about billable hours; it’s about energy — and day two linked that energy to focus. Zamorski offered a tight connection: if energy is the currency, focus is how it gets spent — “where the focus goes, the energy flows.”

The enemy wasn’t busyness. It was task-switching. Zamorski stressed that the brain can focus on one complex thing at a time; “multitasking” is largely an illusion. Each switch forces the brain to drop one context, load another, and rebuild momentum — and that rebuild is exhausting.

Two workplace behaviours received special attention:

• How meetings start: even 1–2 minutes of check-in helps people “arrive” and improves the quality of focus — teams can even synchronise breathing and settle.
• Phones as leadership sabotage: when one person checks a phone, attention collapses; when a leader does it, people disconnect immediately.

Zamorski’s practical antidote was “chunking” focus into blocks — do one type of task, finish that phase, then move on. He also returned to a favourite tool: the Pomodoro technique — 25 minutes of deep focus with distractions off, then ~5 minutes reset (stand, breathe, move), repeated in cycles, followed by a longer break.

The deeper cultural point was sharper: lawyers don’t suffer from a lack of discipline; they suffer from excess availability — the instinct to be constantly reachable because it feels professional, even as it destroys focus and accelerates fatigue. The alternative is boundaries and communication: emergencies happen, but normalising permanent urgency is the real danger — because exhausted lawyers don’t deliver the “smart, cognitive” advice clients actually want.

Session 3: Digital Detox — From Attention to Intention (and Meaning)

The final session widened the frame: digital overload doesn’t just make people tired; it fragments attention so deeply that reflection becomes difficult — and without reflection, meaning fades. Zamorski opened with context: billions use social media, averaging roughly two and a half hours a day — a full waking day each week — and our nervous systems were never designed for that level of stimulation.

Moriarty (who works primarily with lawyers) shifted the conversation away from simplistic advice (“just put your phone away”) and towards what distraction is doing for people psychologically. A standout line captured the premise: we don’t reach for our phones because we’re bored; we reach because stillness asks questions we’re not sure we want to answer. Distraction, in this framing, is often an unconscious strategy for soothing, avoiding, or regulating what feels too complex to face.

Moriarty also broadened what “distraction” can look like. Phones matter, but so do socially acceptable versions: excessive working (particularly common among lawyers) and even “healthy” behaviours pushed too far (for example, excessive exercise or rigid food control) as ways of “controlling the controllables” and masking anxiety. Her therapeutic aim was not perfection, but a more even sense of self, accepting limits and managing “things that aren’t going perfectly well” without needing to flee into distraction.

The closing emphasis was reassuringly practical: habit change works best when it starts small, but with intention — and succeeding at small commitments builds self-trust and momentum. Across the weekend, the through-line became clear: energy is protected through recovery, focus is protected through fewer switches and cleaner boundaries, and meaning is protected through intentional space — enough stillness to hear what matters.

Takeaways to Try this Week

• Treat recovery as part of the job, not a reward after it.
• Reduce invisible drains: pointless meetings, open loops, and chronic waiting.
• Stop calling task-switching “multitasking”; protect focus blocks.
• Use structure (Pomodoro) and micro-resets (breathing, movement) to prevent fatigue.
• If digital distraction is your default, get curious: what would stillness make you notice?