Liam Porritt’s YouTube videos have racked up over 5 million views
Like many magic circle trainees, Liam Porritt has productivity on the mind. The only difference is that Porritt has nearly 90,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Porritt, a first year IGNITE trainee at Clifford Chance, joins the new class of self-starting, side-hustling, productivity influencers, sharing their practical time-saving tips, motivation methods and life hacks with the masses. If they can do it, so can you — or so the thinking goes.
If the YouTuber, who boasts 85,700 subscribers, isn’t sharing anti-procrastination techniques, minimalist habits to make you happier or guides on getting better sleep, he can be found offering a tour of his desk and home office set-up (organised for optimal productivity), or vlogging his way through a stress-reducing 100-day cold shower experiment.
Popular videos also see the University of Cambridge graduate offer an honest look at corporate lawyer life. In a recent video, embedded above, remote working Porritt explains how he divides his day as a transactional trainee between “five buckets” of work — transaction management, drafting, legal research, training and learning, and pro bono and admin. Overall his videos have racked up over five million views.
However, managing an active YouTube channel alongside a hectic work schedule is “tough”, Porritt tells Legal Cheek. One way around this was finding another editor online that could create videos “that are better than anything I could edit myself”, using “a library of all the footage we’ve ever taken so when I’m crazily busy, we still have footage we can use.” The key is efficiency. “We’ve created a clear process for taking a video from a script all the way through to what goes up on YouTube,” he said.
Still, Porritt isn’t afraid to speak openly about times he feels anxious, unmotivated and overwhelmed. According to a recent video, embedded below, a manic week at work saw the influencer stray from the healthy habits he encourages. “I didn’t eat particularly well, I lost all routine, I didn’t do hardly any exercise, and by the end of the week I think I felt just exhausted and just generally pretty down about myself,” he tells viewers. It was only after Porritt forced himself to follow his own advice that he began adjusting his expectations and re-prioritising self-care.
Such videos which emphasise the value of having downtime somewhat separates Porritt from other influencers whose obsession with grinding 24/7 has created a culture of toxic productivity — leaving followers feeling guilty about doing less, comparing themselves to others and doubting their own self-worth. Having experienced the unhealthy side to hustling during his undergrad studies, Porritt tackled this emerging trend head-on in a recent video, commenting:
“This is a problem. It’s unhealthy because we begin to see ourselves as inadequate, and begin this vicious cycle of feeling less motivated, putting even more pressure on ourselves, and at least for me becoming more anxious and insular.”
While we can still expect productivity tips from Porritt’s channel in the future, he’s also planning to produce more candid videos about money, finding balance and his experiences as a junior lawyer, as well as interviews with other professionals across a range of industries.
But even Porritt recognises that during busy periods at work it will be a “struggle to put out insanely highly produced videos”. “And that’s OK,” he explains. “I’m very much still working out how my channel, my job and my life all fit together, but I’m putting my health and wellbeing first, and trying things out around that.”