Look Away: The Need to Unplug, If Only For a Little While
Contributing Author: Brian P. Dassero, Assistant District Attorney, Erie County (NY)
Raise your hand if you’ve done this. It’s been a long day in your office talking to victims and law enforcement, preparing for upcoming hearing & trials, and reviewing piles of evidence. You’ve been alternating between phone calls, meetings, and staring at your computer screen. After your commute home, you wolf down a quick dinner, spend a little time with your family, and then you fire up your laptop, cell phone, or other screen and dive right back in to emails, evidence, motions, etc. Your head hits the pillow far later than it should and your alarm goes off far too early in the morning. Rinse and repeat.
Did everyone’s hand raise? Mine sure did. I am guilty of this far more often than I should be (in fact, I’m working on this after the rest of my family has gone to sleep). As prosecutors, our commitment to seeking justice isn’t just an empty phrase, we embody it every day. But it is that commitment that can become all-consuming and can counter-intuitively make us less effective at work and in the courtroom.
Don’t get me wrong, there are times where work will absolutely need to take up the majority of your work-life blend. When you’re in the middle of a trial, working a long-term investigation, or massive appeal this level of dedication is necessary. I’m speaking more of the other times, where the work is ever-present, but it’s not at the level where it has to be done that minute.
I practice in New York State. We have the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which are similar to the American Bar Association Model Rules. Rule 1.1(a) states “A lawyer should provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.” Thoroughness and preparation can be betrayed by too much focus on work. Constantly inundating your mind with nothing but work can only lead to one conclusion: burnout, both short-term and long-term.
If you’re too burned out on work, you will be less prepared when you’re standing there in front of the judge despite your spending an extra three hours in the night before preparing. You may treat that victim more harshly than you meant to when interviewing them. Your mind will not be as sharp as it could be if it was allowed to reset now and again. And if it goes on long enough, you may become burned out on the job itself.
Adam Grant wrote in Hidden Potential: Relaxing is not a waste of time- it’s an investment in well-being. Breaks are not a distraction-they’re a chance to reset attention and to incubate ideas.
Some of my best work has come after I’ve stepped away from the screen and done something different than our high-level cerebral thinking. Examples that have worked for me (feel free to use what works for you):
- Playing a board game with family/friends
- Taking a walk/hike
- Reading a book that isn’t true crime
- Watching an episode of a favorite television show (I’m currently working my way through the new season of Severance)
- Playing a video game
I’ll close with a quote from Oliver Burkeman in his excellent book, Four Thousand Weeks:
The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control — when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about. Let’s start by admitting defeat: none of this is ever going to happen.
There’s no way that you’ll ever be at the top of the mountain of your caseload. There will always be something more to do, the next motion to file, the next piece of evidence that needs review. It can be like trying to drink from a firehose; it can’t be done. But that’s okay. The work will be there tomorrow. Take a few moments for yourself and make sure your batteries are charged up for the journey ahead.
Brian Dassero has been an Assistant District Attorney with the Erie County District Attorney’s Office in Buffalo, New York since October of 2007. Since July of 2010, he has been assigned to prosecute white-collar crimes: embezzlements, check fraud, credit card fraud, and identity theft. If you happen to meet him at a conference, he will gladly talk to you for hours about any and all kinds of scams and frauds. He has been involved in the NDAA Wellness Committee since 2023 and he can be reached at Brian.Dassero@erie.gov.