I grew up in a house next to a cornfield in the middle of Indiana. The winters were cold with gray skies from November through March. By late December, our family was desperate to flee the state and follow the migration of Midwesterners to the warm weather of Florida. In my teen years, we would load six of us into an orange Cadillac Eldorado and head south on I-65. 

My stepfather was like a man possessed on these trips. You knew to control fluid intake before starting the drive, because there would be no unnecessary bathroom stops. Gas stops were like a NASCAR pitstop. While the pit crew was refilling the tank, we would run into the gas station for snacks and a bathroom break. I’m pretty sure that, if we had lingered in the store too long, we would have been left behind like Macaulay Culkin. 

Once we set out on these journeys, there was no turning back. Snow in the mountains of Tennessee just meant that we had to slow down a little. Tornado warnings in Georgia required us to keep a close eye on the sky. We were able to avoid bad traffic jams with our trustee CB radio, which blasted in the car for the entire 24-hour drive. The CB was entertaining. My parents would sometimes let us get on and ask for a police report. My CB handle was “Crabcakes.” In my best trucker voice, I would take the mic and ask, “Hey any a y’all truckers out there, this is Crabcakes and I need a smokey report.”  I might get a reply from a trucker warning me that there was a plain brown wrapper (unmarked police car) just outside of Chattanooga or a fly in the sky (police helicopter or plane) tracking cars on I-75 in Valdosta. This and fights with my brothers in the backseat helped to pass the hours.  

This “get there at all costs” mentality was deeply engrained in me and my siblings. We learned that you do not let obstacles get in the way of a goal. You push through. Whether they knew it or not, our parents were conditioning us to face the hardships and obstacles that awaited us in the “real world.” I am eternally grateful to them for giving me this can-do attitude. Whether it has been my own 24-hour drives or the challenges of law school,  work, and life, I have been able to survive and succeed without giving up at the first sign of difficulty. 

I suspect that most lawyers are like me. They like challenges. Facing difficulty and overcoming obstacles is like a badge of honor for us. There is a hormone cocktail of endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and adrenaline that we get from facing and walking through a challenge. I have fantasies about going on survival shows like Alone, Man vs. Wild, and Naked and Afraid. I imagine in my mind how I would make fire, find food and water, and build a shelter.

Sometimes, we need to be this way for our clients. Whether we are litigators or transactional lawyers, clients depend on us to do what it takes to protect them. When we’re in trial, we might need to work 14-hour days. If we have a complex transaction that is closing the next day, this could require an all-nighter. We do what we have to do to protect our clients’ freedom, rights, and financial security. What could be more admirable than that? 

As I have grown older (and hopefully a little bit wiser), though, I have learned that it is sometimes okay to put limits on how far we will go for our clients and others in our lives. There are times when we should stop and turn around when there is snow in the mountains of Tennessee or tornados in Georgia. I was reminded of this recently when my wife and I were traveling to see our daughter and son-in-law in Charlotte for the holidays. We set out on the trip knowing that we were going to drive into thunderstorms. After an hour of driving, though, we started getting serious storm warnings. The old me would have seen this as a challenge and driven straight into the eye of the storm. I was excited to see my daughter and her new house. However, I also knew that we could make the same trip the following weekend. And so, I turned around and called my daughter and told her that we were going to reschedule. She had been worried about us and was relieved that we weren’t going to drive through the storms. 

Stopping or even taking a rest can feel like failure. However, the long-term implications of this “get there at all costs” attitude can be harmful to our physical and mental health. We have seen this in sports.  When athletes train too hard, they crash and burn. This happened to Olympic swimmer Simone Manuel. Manuel won gold at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. The swimming world had high expectations for Manuel in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. However, Manuel pushed herself too hard and failed to even qualify for the event in which she had won gold several years before. She was diagnosed with overtraining syndrome, a serious medical condition in which your body doesn’t recover from, or adapt to, the training you’re doing. She had pushed too hard.

Like athletes, lawyers and other professionals can push themselves too far and pay the price. When a lawyer pushes too hard or fails to set healthy boundaries, this can result in a condition known as burnout. Burnout is a chronic condition marked by exhaustion, cynicism, and feelings of inefficacy. Burnout is often the result of a failure to set healthy work boundaries. As lawyers, we know we need to work hard to be successful. But how hard is too hard?

Overtraining syndrome and burnout are tricky conditions to avoid. An athlete must train hard to achieve peak performance. But how much is too much? Lawyers must often work long hours on short notice to protect their clients. How does a lawyer know when to say no and when to stop and take a break? The answer is inside you. It is your body. Your body will tell you when you are pushing too far. If you feel chronically fatigued, suffer from constant headaches or digestive issues, have debilitating pain, suffer from frequent illness, or have tightness in your chest, your body might be telling you to slow down, stop, or take a break. Your ego will tell you to keep going. Your ego will tell you that, if you stop, you are a quitter and a failure. Your ego will tell you that people will think less of you if you don’t push through. Your ego will keep telling you this right up until you crash. 

When you crash, you are not the only one who suffers. Your clients, colleagues, friends, and family are often casualties of your burnout. The irony of this is that these people are the very ones you intended to benefit with all your hard work. Now, you are in no position to help them or protect them. And the road back from burnout can be long and difficult. 

You don’t have to wait until you crash to make changes in your life. I am not suggesting that you quit working hard or that you give up at the first sign of difficulty. The best things in life often come from hard work and overcoming obstacles. There is nothing better than the massive adrenaline rush and dopamine hit you get when you cross the finish line in a marathon. But if you limp across the finish line of that marathon with a permanent injury to your knees, that high will not last long. Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot. And your body knows where that is. You just have to listen.