debrief with cece xie

debrief with cece xie

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debrief with cece xie
debrief with cece xie
a tale of two schedules

a tale of two schedules

the corporate grind vs. the creative still-grind-but-a-different-grind

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Cece Xie
Dec 08, 2023
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debrief with cece xie
debrief with cece xie
a tale of two schedules
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When I was in law school, the thing I most wanted to know was: What is billing 2000 hours a year *actually* like? As in, do you still have time to get dinner with friends? See Broadway shows? Exercise?

The U.S. talks so much about the 9-5, which by virtue of its name suggests the ability to engage in outside-of-work activities (unless you have a two-hour commute or are too demoralized by work to engage in those activities). But all the jobs I’ve ever been interested in—lawyer, event planner, crisis comms, writer—are never categorized as 9-5s. If they’re not 9-5s, though, then what are they?

Well, I’m not an event planner nor do I work in crisis comms (although I would love to try out both)—but as a Big Law lawyer for many years and now a writer/content creator/self-employed lawyer, I’ve noticed a few interesting points of comparison.

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My schedule when I was a Big Law associate looked roughly like this:

A few notes:

  • The red blocks of “Work” are not always filled with work. They’re simply the times I expected to work. If I woke up on Thursday, for example, and didn’t have any pressing assignments, I might decide on a morning workout class and then roll into the office at noon. Conversely, I did not always clock out on Fridays at 6pm—when fire drills come up, I obviously would just stay in the office (or go out for a bit and then work from home later). If you’re curious about how the days veered between non-stop to straight-up relaxing, check out my latest YouTube video going over the three types of work days I had while in Big Law.

  • I blocked out evening periods (9:30-11:30pm) for work because a Big Law associate can’t simply leave the office at 6:30 and never look back until the next day. That’s just not the job. So in order to make up for the fact that I would take a break from work in the evenings, I had to ensure that emails/asks sent during that period were triaged and dealt with before the next day.

  • Not sure if this was due to working in Big Law or simply being in my twenties (probably both), but I prioritized partying hard and spending hard a lot when I was an associate. Looking back, I think I needed some sort of justification/release/catharsis from working, which manifested in compulsively shopping and attending events that represented “fun” on a superficial level. (Many events were, in fact, fun, but that’s beside the point.)

In comparison, my self-employed writer/content creator/lawyer schedule nowadays looks like this:

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