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The Top 20 [legal] Tweeters to Follow on Twitter

Someone e-mailed me with this list of legal-related Tweeters. Looks like you need to be a subscriber to Texas Lawyer to see the full list so here's a teaser:

THE TOP 20 TWEETERS TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER.
Texas Lawyer (Sept 28, 2009)

Byline: D. TODD SMITH

Since I last wrote about Twitter, the microblogging platform and social media tool has continued to gain popularity among lawyers. Last time, I focused on the ways lawyers can use Twitter to market their practices.

This time, I identify 20 "tweeters"; listed alphabetically according to their Twitter usernames, along with any text from their respective profiles; who provide content that is interesting and useful to Texas lawyers.

1. @ABAjournal: "Continuous news updates from the United States' most-read and most-respected legal affairs magazine and website."

2. @AmLawDaily: "The source for daily legal business news and analysis of leading law firms."

3. @carolynelefant: "Cool FERC lawyer (fercfights.com <http://fercfights.com>). Marine renewables expert. Avid blogger at MyShingle, author Solo by Choice, mom. All at once."

4. @chucknewton: "Husband, father, lawyer, Third Waver, carpet commuter, spare room tycoon that likes crooners."

5. @glambert: "Law Librarian (BigLaw), Blogger, geeklawblog, Competitive Intelligence, Social Media, Knowledge Management (KM), Speaker, not Adam."

Blog Glob: Tales of the Recession's Effect on the Legal Profession

Excerpt:

This is the year the recession hit the legal profession. Lawyers and support staff were cut by the hundreds. Law firms went belly up. Court dockets burst with foreclosures and bankruptcies while budgets everywhere went bust.

Buried under the statistics are those most affected by it all. The overworked judge, the unemployed paralegal, the laid-off associate and the law firm manager focused on damage control.

The National Law Journal reached out to people across the profession to find out how the downturn changed their lives.

Click to read the rest of "Tales of the Recession's Effect on the Legal Profession" (National Law Journal).

"Elderly" is getting redefined: An article about people working in their 70s, 80s, and even . . .

This article features 101-year-old practicing lawyer Jack Borden about whom I have blogged before. "Workers thriving at 70, 80, and even 100" (CNN) also includes a 70-year-old policeman (he joined the force at 51) and other stories of the careers of "seniors." I am hoping mindsets are changing about the concept of aging.

Be sure to read this related post: Should we change our assumptions about elders? Do we know as much as we think we do? Should we say no to aging?.

5 reasons why your brain may like procrastination

Do you know why procrastinating may make your brain comfortable? Timothy A. Pychyl, Ph.D. lists five at his blog Don't Delay (Psychology Today) in the post Quirks of the brain: Procrastination's perfect storm. The method he uses is to list the five reasons many self-help books sound alike as presented by David Rock at his blog Your Brain at Work (Psychology Today) and comment on each from his expertise on procastination. Kind of a clever idea.

Examples:

2.    Too much uncertainty feels dangerous. It feels like possible pain so we avoid it.

Task uncertainty is a major correlate of procrastination. As David put it, "it feels dangerous." We want to avoid this feeling, and we do. We procrastinate. The thing is, we can strategically reduce uncertainty rather than just run away. The uncertainty in our modern world isn't a predator lurking, but our stone-age brain doesn't know this, we simply feel the potential for disaster.

3.    Our conscious processing capacity is small, which makes us terrible at a lot of things, including predicting what might make us happy.

The planning fallacy and our poor ability at affective forecasting creates a very difficult situation for accurately setting realistic goals and sticking to them. We can enhance skills like "time traveling" to improve our predictions, but this takes practice and conscious work.

Click to read three other reasons we procrastinate. Well, at least some of us do. You?

Self-control is not unlimited but Robin Williams can help when you need more

Research has shown that self-regulation is depletable. Here are some studies that show that inducing a positive affect in people can restore their self-control strength. The positive mood stimuli included getting an unexpected gift or watching a comedy video. Abstract:

Previous work has shown that acts of self-regulation appear to deplete a psychological resource, resulting in poorer self-regulation subsequently. Four experiments using assorted manipulations and measures found that positive mood or emotion can counteract ego depletion. After an initial act of self-regulation, participants who watched a comedy video or received a surprise gift self-regulated on various tasks as well as non-depleted participants and significantly better than participants who experienced a sad mood induction, a neutral mood stimulus, or a brief rest period.

Do you know what causes in you a positive mood? Might be a good idea to have it around when you just can't seem to get back to work. Or resist that next piece of candy. Or listen instead of drift off.

From the conclusion:

For a short time, reduced fee on the attention, awareness, and brain training for lawyers

On November 13-15, Scott Rogers and I are hosting in Santa Fe a unique event for lawyers from around the country. I spoke with Scott this weekend and we made a decision about the fee for the event. Due to the economy and its challenges for people, both financially and emotionally, we want as many lawyers as possible (up to the number of places we have reserved) to learn the skills being taught in the workshop

So . . .

We have created two special offers on the fee, good until October 8 . . .

You can either get 30% off  -- or bring a friend for a dollar!

The fee is all-inclusive; in addition to the retreat and learning, it includes all meals and two nights and days at Santa Fe Ghost Ranch.

More info and registration here.

I hope to see some of you in Santa Fe. This is going to be quite a wonderful experience!

Image credit: julesnene.

"I read Playboy for the articles": Justifying and Rationalizing Questionable Preferences

A chapter from The Interplay of Truth and Deception: New Agendas in Theory and Research is available from Harvard Business School.  Executive Summary:

We want others to find us good, fair, responsible and logical; and we place even more importance on thinking of ourselves this way. Therefore, when people behave in ways that might appear selfish, prejudiced, or perverted, they tend to engage a host of strategies designed to justify questionable behavior with rational excuses: "I hired my son because he's more qualified." "I promoted Ashley because she does a better job than Aisha." Or, "I read Playboy for the articles." In this chapter from a forthcoming book, HBS doctoral student Zoë Chance and professor Michael I. Norton describe various means of coping with one's own questionable behavior: through preemptive actions and concurrent strategies for re-framing uncomfortable situations, forgoing decisions, and forgetting those decisions altogether. Key concepts include:

Because people do not want to be perceived as (or feel) unethical or immoral, they make excuses for their shameful behavior—even to themselves.
People cope with their own questionable actions in a number of ways, from forgoing certain experiences to rationalizing, justifying, and forgetting—a remarkable range of strategies allowing them to maintain a clear conscience even under dubious circumstances.

Read the chapter here [pdf].

An excellent essay: "The Power of Mindfulness"

For those interested in meditation and mindfulness, this is a very, very good essay. it's titled "The Power of Mindfulness An Inquiry into the Scope of Bare Attention and the Principal Sources of its Strength" and it was written by Nyanaponika Thera. The Table of Contents:

Introduction

Four Sources of Power in Bare Attention

1. The Functions of "Tidying" and "Naming"

Tidying Up the Mental Household
Naming

2. The Non-coercive Procedure

Obstacles to Meditation
Three Countermeasures

3. Stopping and Slowing Down

Keeping Still
Spontaneity
Slowing Down
Subliminal Influences

4. Directness of Vision

The Force of Habit
Associative Thought
The Sense of Urgency
The Road to Insight

Notes

Further Reading

Latest news on the lawyer mindfulness retreat.

R.I.P. William Safire

Each Sunday I would copy and paste William Safire's New York Times “On Language" column in an e-mail to my dad. (His e-mail device does not allow him to get online.) It has been a father-daughter ritual for a long time now. I just called my father to tell him of the death. He was sad. I am, too.

From "William Safire, Nixon Speechwriter and Times Columnist, Is Dead at 79" (New York Times):

William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times who also wrote novels, books on politics and a Malaprop’s treasury of articles on language, died at a hospice in Rockville, Md. on Sunday. He was 79.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Martin Tolshin, a friend of the family.

There may be many sides in a genteel debate, but in the Safire world of politics and journalism it was simpler: there was his own unambiguous wit and wisdom on one hand and, on the other, the blubber of fools he called “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”

Click to read the rest.

Image credit: New York Times.

From the Wall Street Journal: "Congress Needs a 72-Hour Waiting Period"

Excerpt:

Polls show overwhelming agreement outside the Beltway that it's more important for Congress to get health-care reform done right than done quickly. A Polling Company survey conducted last month found 95% agreeing that members of Congress shouldn't vote on any bill they haven't read in full.

That's why the bipartisan duo of Rep. Brian Baird, a Washington Democrat, and Rep. Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican, came up with the "72-hour resolution," which would require all non-emergency legislation to be posted online, in final form, for at least 72 hours prior to a floor vote. "Members of Congress are too often asked to make decisions on bills that can be longer than telephone books and are only given a few hours to actually read them," says Rep. Baird. "Both parties are guilty, and both should stop doing it."

Click to read the rest of "Congress Needs a 72-Hour Waiting Period."