Restriction vs Restraint: Finding Freedom Through Intentional Choices

I’m Melissa Shanahan, and this is The Law Firm Owner Podcast Episode #301. 

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Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode. Before we get started, I just want to say thank you to each of you who messaged me or reached out or that I've seen on calls or otherwise about hitting the 300 mark with the podcast. Thanks for your excitement. It definitely has felt exciting and it's great to connect on that milestone. And so yeah, here we are, 301. We're on the other side. So here we go to the next milestone, right? But it was great. We did take a pause to celebrate and that felt good.

Okay, today we are digging into the difference between restriction and restraint. And I'm excited to dig into this. I consider myself in many ways a word nerd in that I expect a lot of myself, if I'm not able to use the exact words for the exact meaning that I have, it means that I haven't thought through it, if I'm not clear enough mentally. And so in order for me to be able to articulate something with clarity means I have to be very clear about it in my mind.

If I'm very clear about it in my mind, it helps me sort through in order to make decisions. It helps serve as a filter or a lens at which I look through. But if I, generally speaking, believe certain things, but I don't have a lot of clarity, I can't speak explicitly about those things, then I find that I'm a bit foggier in how I show up around that.

This concept of restriction versus restraint offered me when I was first really considering it and geeking out on it and preparing for this episode. I didn't know I was going to do an episode on it at the time, but that's what I was doing. I was pulling together information. I was looking at the different ways to use these two words, and when one is appropriate versus the other.

And so through my research and through me getting clear, I had some realizations that I thought would be really great to share here on the podcast. Because I think sometimes with a way that we look at something really holds us back and we have our own blind spots. So I'm hoping to, with this information, be able to maybe you can be onto yourself where you do have a blind spot and maybe something in this episode can shift your approach or how you're thinking about your work or your planning or what you're aiming for, etc. And maybe produce a bit of an unlock for you.

Okay, this episode was sparked by a conversation with a law firm owner who said that Monday Mapping felt restrictive. And I've heard this idea before, like this thought before. People say it feels too rigid. I did that at the firm I left. There was a lot of rigidity about my schedule and about keeping hours and keeping pace, nd when I do Monday Map now, it's very reminiscent of that, and it feels like a bunch of rules that I have to stick to and I'm working too hard. And so I get it, it feels restrictive. It feels like you can't, you don't have the flexibility to do what you want to do in a moment or what you're led to do in a moment. You actually have a plan and you honor the plan, but that can feel restrictive for people who haven't exercised that well or haven't approached that well.

I think we can all agree that having a plan and honoring the plan generally sounds like a good idea, but there's reasons why we don't do it. And sometimes we want to rebel against it for this reason that we feel restricted by it. So we don't want to do it. That means we will buck the system, so to speak.

Many law firm owners and many business owners, I am in this camp, tend to have all-or-nothing thinking. They tend to adopt extreme plans and those extreme plans feel restrictive, they feel unsustainable. And so it leads to burnout and to failure.

So this episode is gonna explore the difference between restriction and restraint, how to shift your mindset from feeling restricted to practicing restraint, when restriction is necessary, because there are times, especially in extreme business scenarios, we'll talk through those, and how Friday Wrap, you know, we talk a lot about Monday Map/Friday Wrap, you can use that to help you assess whether restraint was practiced effectively.

And then we'll talk through some practical applications for shifting from restriction to restraint. And I'm going to start with the psychological difference between restriction and restraint. So we're going to start with our head and we'll move down.

Restriction. Restriction feels imposed. It creates frustration, it creates rebellion, it usually leads to abandoning the system after some period of time. Restraint is self-imposed. It's much more empowering. It allows for thoughtful discipline without rigidity. Restriction, it feels rigid, that's how we identify. It's like this rigid thing that we are gonna exit stage left. But restraint, there is space within restraint. So when you're really thoughtful about what you're approaching and you're practicing restraint, rigidity typically doesn't accompany that, doesn't accompany practicing restraint.

All-or-nothing thinking leads to restriction. I was starting to allude to this earlier, so we're going to get into this a bit. All-or-nothing thinking creates cycles of extreme commitment, and then followed by abandonment. Flame up and flame out is how we describe it often. If you're familiar with Colby and you have a high quick start, you have this tendency more than maybe others to flame up and flame out.

And it's a cycle because when you flame up and flame out, that means that you abandoned the thing. You didn't have follow through with the thing. And so whatever it is you're focused on gets dropped and the next, and then next, and then next. And it's never really creating a lasting result from your efforts. It doesn't mean you aren't successful and you don't make some headway, but it's a very inefficient way to make headway.

And I'm sticking with this all-or-nothing mentality because I think a lot of us have that. There's something about when you have an all-or-nothing way of thinking. I mean, in some ways, some people are wired for that more than others, but that was bred in you. As you grew up, there is a reason that you tended to adopt that way of operating. And when I think about all-or-nothing, I think back to the times where I can clearly see the all-or-nothing mentality come out. One example is when I did 75 Hard. I have nothing against 75 Hard. I mean, but that is restriction. And you could maybe argue, well, you're practicing restraint. Yeah, but it was very restrictive.

And I loved it. I wanted that. And I will tell you, and I think we'll talk about this later, there's a time and a place for restriction. There's a time and a place to like really push a reset button that kind of helps you create a new normal. And from there you could practice restraint. But if you have all-or-nothing thinking, you do the thing that you're supposed to do. You follow the rules. You abide by the restriction. And then when you come out the other side, it tends to be like, well, now I'm going to go do nothing.

And when I did 75 Hard, in some ways this was the case. You know, I followed it to a T and actually it was 68 hard for me, cause I got COVID. But I digress. The challenge, 75 Hard, was really good for me. It pushed a reset button for me in a way that was meaningful after it had my son and for mental health purposes and all that jazz. It was very, very helpful. But when it was over, I didn't approach anything with any sense of restraint. I thought I would, especially, you know, I got COVID. I said I will once COVID lifts, but I didn't.

Part of that's because I didn't plan. And that ties in also with what we'll talk about today with planning and how to think about your plan in terms of restraint versus restriction. So all-or-nothing thinking can be dangerous with this. You really have to watch it. You have to be onto yourself so that you are able to make good calls and able to approach this thoughtfully and be honest with yourself about, is this full-on restriction? And restriction means it's sort of being imposed on you versus, this is restraint that I'm practicing and it feels good and it feels right. It doesn't feel like I'm boxed in. It feels like there's hope attached to it and positive feelings for the outcomes that you know you're creating. And that can be a bit of a difference between restriction and restraint.

So instead of feeling restricted by systems, habits, boundaries, choose to view them as tools of restraint that serve you and your business. And you still get to decide if you're going to practice that restraint or not. And that's the empowering part of it all.

When you think about Monday Mapping and time management, a restricted way of looking at that, which I do hear from people who this is brand new to, is I feel boxed in, this is a rigid schedule. But the people who are successful with Monday Map, and it's not like, when I say successful, it's not like you are trying to get an A at Monday Map. That is not the point. It is a practice. You don't get an A in practice. You just keep showing up and you keep doing your best and it starts to get easier and you start to have more of a flow and you start to feel the effects of managing your time very well and how you move through time very well.

So someone who thinks, I feel boxed in by a rigid schedule, will never do what it takes to create a framework and a structure that gives them the best output and the best chances of success and freedom and whatever all the things you want for your firm are.

So having more of a mindset of thinking to yourself instead of your being boxed in, that you're creating a plan to guide your time intentionally and that you can adjust when necessary while staying disciplined. That's the whole point of Monday Map. But people totally miss that because they are focused on the sense of restriction and that's how they're viewing it. Like Monday Map is something that's happening to them. No, no, no, no. Monday Map is a tool to practice restraint, and practicing restraint, if done intentionally, will give you the things that you are saying that you want.

When you think about financial discipline and profitability in your business, there is a restrictive mindset that says, I can't spend money the way I want, I feel deprived. That's the vibe. But there's another mindset that aligns more with practicing restraint, which would be something like, I choose to be intentional with spending, so my firm stays profitable and grows.

When you think about work life boundaries, there is a restrictive mindset. I'm not allowed to work on the weekends, sort of this harsh tone about that. It's probably cause you're so sick of working on the weekends. But the truth is, and this kind of goes back to Monday Map and time management, planning to protect your personal time is very important, but you have the power to work when it truly serves you. So yeah, every weekend, no one wants to do that. No one wants to work every night of the week and work on the weekends. But when you make a good plan, and you're really intentional about this, and you stick to the plan to the best of your ability, it reduces what you're going to have to do at night and on the weekends.

Next week, probably next week, I'm going to publish an episode about choosing to versus having to and the observations I've had with the clients that I've had and the shifts that they've made, it's tied very closely to restraint versus restriction, but it is different. So I'm gonna have that conversation next week because there's all kinds of things we think we have to do. And we need to check ourselves on that. And sometimes when we're living on our own heads with our own stuff and our own thoughts, we don't do a great job of checking ourselves.

So I'm hoping that episode can wake some of you up just like me. I need the same wake-up calls. It serves as a wake-up call for where you're feeling trapped versus no, that's not it at all. You are choosing this. How can you recognize that? Where can you take the reins?

You know, a lot of this restraint versus restriction, it is about taking the reins. It is about understanding the power that you have versus feeling like there's a bunch of rules imposed on you. No one likes to feel that way. No one. Not anyone. I don't care if you're a rule follower. You don't like to have a bunch of rules imposed on you. You like to make choices for yourself.

And I think sometimes when we go back to the Monday Map example, I think sometimes people look at that practice, they're almost allergic to it. They have this idea allergy to the practice of Monday Map because it is striking a chord that they do not want struck. They have this mental trigger, this trip wire, so to speak. I mean, sometimes this comes from trauma, like traumatic work experiences that you, whether it's because you put yourself through it or because it was imposed on you, but you have to really understand, like stop and pause and understand that a practice like Monday Map is just a tool for restraint. And restraint is a very good thing for us humans, to practice as we see fit.

So when you are sitting down to practice Monday Map, it is a guide that you create for your week as you see fit, not as the world sees fit, as you see fit. And that will change your life. If you sit down to do this, it will change your life. You will change your experience to work, your relationship between work and life, and the delineation there, a lot will change. And there are byproducts of those things with what I'm saying. More margin of time and money for you as an owner and for your firm.

Okay, let's talk about when restriction is actually useful. Because restriction isn't always bad. It's sometimes necessary in extreme situations to turn things around. There's someone I love listening to and of course it's eluding me right now. I recently heard this, this also isn't in my outline, I'm speaking off the cuff here, but they were talking about how great it can be to swing your pendulum the other way entirely for a set amount of time, because then coming back to middle, like center, is where you want to be.

So you don't have to live at the restricted end, the extreme end, but you do so for a period so that the middle feels easy after that. And I agree. In my own life, this is, I have seen this work, but the thing that you have to be careful of is if you aren't intentional with once the extreme part is over, if you don't have a plan to execute on for balancing the middle, for staying at the middle, you will revert back. Your pendulum will swing back the other way to the other extreme, which is where you started and is really not where you wanna be. That's why you kicked yourself to the other side, right?

So though I do agree that swinging the pendulum to one end, which can be restrictive by certain people's definitions, like 75 Hard. I used to have a live web show with Joey Vitale and Christopher White, and that was a lot of fun. It was during that time that I was doing 75 Hard or I was getting ready to do 75 Hard. And Joey in particular could not understand why I would do that. Why is it necessary? Why are you doing that to yourself? I don't remember the exact conversation, but we had a lot of fun going back and forth.

And I'm like, because I want to. So in many ways, yes, it was very restrictive, but it was a choice. I was choosing to do it. What I wish I would have done is I wish I would have had a plan for when it was over so that my new normal was in the center. It wasn't at one end or the other. It was finding a sustainable path forward in this new normal that wasn't extreme. And I didn't do that. It was a huge lesson for me, huge lesson.

Since then, every time I go with something like full boat and that all-or-nothing tendency that I have, I know enough to make a plan for when that's over so that I'm happy with where things stay. I'm happy with the normal that I have created for myself.

Okay, okay. Let's talk about when restriction is useful. If your firm has little to no profit margin and that's not strategic, right? I can think of some instances where a business would get close to very little profit margin, but it's strategic knowing that the next year they could be profitable and the years after that, right? Well, if not strategic, then putting strict financial controls into place is important because it serves as a tourniquet. You have to turn off the faucet to the best of your ability. There's going to be expenses you can't turn off. There are definitely expenses you can turn off. Being restrictive about that can help give you some breathing room to make some decisions about your spend.

Also, yes, if your business is not profitable, you also need to focus on generating more income. So you're under-earning, in many instances people are under-earning and over spending. So you have to address both. It's not just about the expenses side, but restriction is a healthy thing when that's put into place. And you will feel relief from that when you exercise it. So cutting off all non-essential expenses for even just 90 days, it'll help stabilize cashflow and of course, focusing on income.

Okay, when if your firm is giving too many discounts, restrictions are healthy. If too many discounts are given, you are probably going to struggle to get ahead or to stay afloat. I actually just had a conversation with a private client about this. They are giving discounts, you know, they feel for their clientele, and so they end up giving discounts a lot.

But the truth is, that is hurting their business. They have real goals for themselves. They will not meet it as long as they keep discounting their fees. So enforcing a zero discount policy for like six months just to push the reset button that is somewhat restrictive, right? Like you could you could argue that that's restrictive, but absolutely, that is the way to go.

If your firm is overloaded with the wrong clients, you are heavy on one case type that you don't want to keep doing in the future. If too many wrong cases are being taken, the firm's not going to have capacity for ideal clients. So if you can, in those instances, temporarily ban low value cases while building a pipeline for better fitting clients, that is restrictive, but it's strategic.

I guess that's the thing here. Restrictive, but strategic. You don't wanna be restrictive for restrictive sake. You wanna be restrictive because it's part of a strategy, and you don't need to stay there forever, but you're gonna be restrictive for a short amount of time and then you can practice restraint in ways that you want to as you move forward.

If your work life balance is totally out of control, meaning like if you're working 80 plus hours a week and you don't have time for things that are really important to you, like really meaningful to you, family or personal relationships, the stuff that matters, then being restrictive can be a very healthy thing. So blocking non-negotiable personal time until the balance is restored, it doesn't get touched. You can work any other time you want to, but you cannot ignore the non-negotiables time that is really what life is about. It's really what matters and you're shoving it to the side for work, then find a way to be restrictive with your personal time.

Restriction is, it's a temporary tool to get out of crisis. And then restraint should take over for more long-term sustainability. So if you are in a spot where you really need to push the reset button. It's meaningful and you're still choosing to do it, but you're going to be more restrictive. It's not just restraint. There is hardcore rules in place for a short amount of time that gets you to a better spot and then you can practice restraint in the ways that you see fit. So when you think about this for yourself, there's a few points that I'm going to give you that I hope sum this up in a great way for yourself so that this can be a useful episode.

The first is to identify where you feel restricted and then ask yourself, is this truly restrictive or am I just viewing it that way?

The second thing is to reframe restriction into restraint where you can. So instead of I have to follow my plan perfectly, it's, I choose to honor the plan while allowing for adjustments as necessary. That's a different vibe in your approach.

Another takeaway I hope you have when practicing restraint is thinking of restraint as building flexibility within structure. So you can, for instance, you could set ranges versus hard limits. So when your approach to something, practicing restraint, is staying within a range. It's not sticking to a perfect path.

And this does go hand-in-hand with the rules episode that I did a few weeks ago, just a really great teaching from Shane Parrish, because he doesn't recommend a bunch of rules for yourself. There's some core key rules. And so I wish I had thought this all the way through before I done the episode. I'd be curious how I would think about the episode or what I would have shared differently, but it's very, very similar.

Like I think of the rules that he's referencing, and restraints, as very similar. He has a rule that he works out every single day because he doesn't negotiate with himself if he does that, but he doesn't say when every day. It was a tool that allowed him to practice restraint in a way where he still has flexibility within the structure, right? That's what I think the important thing about rules is, it provides flexibility within a structure. The important thing about restraint, it provides flexibility within a structure. And as long as you can identify those things and work with those things, you are going to stay on a course that you appreciate.

The last thing I'll say is using Friday Wrap to reflect and adjust. Friday Wrap is not about looking back and just seeing all the things you did wrong. You know, in there we talk about, extract a lesson learned and the importance of processing lessons from your week so that you can apply them moving forward. And one of the things you can look at in your Friday Wrap as you evaluate the week that you just had, you can ask yourself, how well did I practice restraint?

What would you change about how you practice restraint? Is there anything you do differently next week that might allow you to practice it in a better way, in a healthier way, in a more successful way? Bottom line, restraint is about choosing the right constraints rather than feeling trapped by them or by a set of circumstances.

And a few final thoughts just to kind of close out and try to pull some of the big nuggets from the episode. All-or-nothing thinking creates restriction and that can lead to burnout. So it's very important that if you're going to go extreme with something because it feels right and you're choosing to do that, you need to have a plan for once the extreme part is over so that you handle this coming back to center, so to speak, in a way that's sustainable and lasts, where your pendulum doesn't swing back the other way to the other extreme.

Restraint is about making intentional, sustainable choices. Monday Map and Friday Wrap are not restrictive. They're just tools and they're tools to create freedom through structure. So this isn't an episode about Monday Map/Friday Wrap. But it's one of the easiest things to point to when you're thinking through the concept of restrictive versus restraint.

And have a look at for yourself where you need to practice restraint. Where in the past you've tried to be really restrictive but you can't stick to it, so then you've, you know, it's like flame up, flame out. Where instead can you practice restraint? And what does that look like? If it's not extreme, but you're putting up some guardrails, you are allowing some flexibility within a structure for yourself so that it allows you to practice restraint well, which will give you the things that you're looking for.

All right, everybody, thank you for tuning in. I'll see you here next Tuesday.

Hey, you may not know this, but there's a free guide for a process I teach called Monday Map/Friday Wrap. If you go to VelocityWork.com, it's all yours. It's about how to plan your time and honor your plans. So, that week over week, more work that moves the needle is getting done in less time. Go to VelocityWork.com to get your free copy.

Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. If you're ready to get clearer on your vision, data, and mindset, then head over to VelocityWork.com where you can plug in to quarterly Strategic Planning, with accountability and coaching in between. This is the work that creates Velocity.