"Time is money." "Work smarter, not harder." How many times have you heard a helpful little quote on time? But you know the problem with advice on time, right? It doesn't work! You know that you should work smarter. You know that wasted time in your practice is wasted money. Yet the clock is still your biggest enemy. The only quote on time you truly believe is, "There's just not enough time in the day..." Don't worry. We aren't offering you any silver bullets on time management today. We want to tell you what you already know (That time management is hard.) and start a conversation about how we can try to rein in our schedules for the sake of a more enjoyable career. So here we go! A few short and admittedly oversimplified thoughts on how we can better manage our time. Create a Plan
President Abe Lincoln once said, "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax." President Lincoln could have meant several different things when he said this, but our assumption is that he was stressing the importance of tools. In those days, an ax was the most important tool a man had. Unfortunately, we don't cut down trees. If we did, we could just buy a few more axes or pass ours to a staff member. Instead, our minds are our best tools and they can only be effectively used with a good plan for where we will be, when we will be there, and what we will be doing. The good news for us is that our days and weeks are often cyclical. Most of us see patients at the same times on the same days every week. When a pattern develops in our personal or professional lives, things become easier to plan around. Though our weekly plans may be tight from a time standpoint, developing a daily plan and making our staff aware of it is the first step toward proper time management. You should have set tasks (such as office appointments, paperwork, etc.) and set time allotments for each one. Put them all on your calendar and you will know exactly what needs to happen each day. Use the word "No" Everyone knows creating the plan is easy. But if you don't learn how to master the art of saying "no," you will get to watch your plan rapidly disintegrate each and every week. You need a steadfast rule for when and how you add things to your calendar. If a proposal or request breaks your rule, you simply and respectfully turn it down. As a doctor, you can't run a practice, have a social life, be involved with your family, and add to your calendar at random. Last minute meetings, lunch requests, and random favors (outside of emergencies) need to be tabled for the next week. One option is to develop the Monday rule. You plan out your entire week late Sunday night or very early Monday morning and any requests that are made after Monday, you respectfully decline. This keeps you proactive and enables you to attack what is on your schedule each and every week. Unfortunately, most of us are bad at telling others no. But trust us here! They will understand and you always have next week for that random lunch request. Have an entrance and exit plan Meetings and appointments are like war in that they can end in disaster if we don't have a proper entrance and exit plan. If you have 30 minutes slotted for each appointment, you cannot afford to be 10 minutes late and then spend 45 minutes with a patient. Sure, there will be emergencies or extenuating circumstances from time to time, but you have to have an entrance and exit plan. Here's the entrance plan: Be on time. Few things will result in higher praise for a doctor than punctuality and it just so happens that it will keep you on track for the day. That's a win-win! Your exit plan takes a bit more awareness and thought. If an exam ends up being more challenging than you anticipated, let a staff member know so they can be aware and plan accordingly for the patients that follow. Outside of a complicated case or an emergency, you need to be able to navigate the exam in a timely manner and gracefully exit the exam room. This will often mean that you must work your way out of a conversation with a talkative patient. As you become more aware of the clock on the wall, start trying to wrap up a conversation with five minutes left in the exam in order to make your next appointment. When it comes to your office meetings, write your agenda, pass it out to your team before the meeting starts, and stick to it! The main reason meetings go off the rails is that people go on tangents. It is impossible to have an efficient meeting if you allow your staff (or yourself) to consistently veer off course. Your agenda should be reasonable and you should stop any tangents in their tracks by holding your hand up and politely saying, "I think this is a conversation that needs to be had (Or that doesn't need to be had.) but let's table it for a future meeting." You can simply assign a staff member to keep up with all of the tangents and then begin addressing once each week. Your staff will feel respected by you remembering their concerns and this will become easier and easier to avoid. Utilize your staff Things will go faster if you do everything yourself. At least for now, anyway. The problem with doing everything is that it is not sustainable. It is almost a guarantee that we are all doing things that our staff is both capable and available to do. And this is likely one of the easiest ways to lessen the burden on your schedule. What are you doing that your staff could be handling for you? An added benefit here is that delegating tasks also gives you the opportunity to elevate your staff. Imagine how one of your staff members will feel when you tell them, "I have been doing this particular task my entire career. I think you are more than capable of handling it for me from now on." After you plan out your week, review all of your tasks and see if you can't find multiple ones that should be delegated to a talented staff member. As you can see, these aren't simple tasks. One of the biggest reasons people struggle so much with time management is that the topic has been grossly oversimplified. The real key to time management is intentionality. It isn't going to happen on its own and the steps typically required to create efficiencies in the workplace are rarely ever fun. How do you make better use of your time in the office? We would love to hear your tips!
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AuthorThe staff and doctors at VisionAmerica are committed to providing relevant information for you, your patients and your practice. We hope you find the information in our blog post helpful. Archives
August 2019
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