The Red Velvet Lawyer

Enhance Your Willpower  and  Reach Your Goals Robert Hatch, owner of Human Business Works , a business coach, and an author, sent me some advice this morning on making and achieving New Year's Resolutions. I can sum it up with a quote from Wayne Dyer:  "Once you begin working on your problem areas with small, daily, success-oriented, goals, the problems will disappear." What I like about Hatch's iteration of the way you must operate to reach a specific goal is the acknowledgement that we only have a certain limited reserve of willpower. He is so in to the idea, he eats the same thing for breakfast every morning. It limits the drain of will power and reduces, by one, the decisions he must make as entrepreneur through the rest of the day.  Ok, not me.  But, interesting. For the science on willpower, take a look at this Stanford School of Medicine blog .  Two things can enhance your reserve of willpower: Meditation and regular exercise, partly because

Focus and be well-rested?  Every law student's elusive desire.  For today's class on test taking strategies and test anxiety, I asked our new 1L students to read M.H. Sam Jacobson's article: Paying Attention or Fatally Distracted?  Concentration, Memory, and Multi-Tasking in a Multi-Media World ( 2010).  She skillfully digests the science behind her thesis that students cannot be successful in law school if they do not manage distractions.  She also recommends getting plenty of sleep. Yesterday, as I was cleaning up my email box (and trying to avoid distractions), I found a web interview of Dr. Richard J. Davidson, co-author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain.    The  interview  (53 minutes) talked about the plasticity of the brain and how mindfulness meditation can help people manage distractions and shape the brain in helpful ways.  I knew some of this science from my own experience, training, and reading.  But, in one of those odd moments of synergy, this