One of the most valuable things in life and business comes from managing time since time is unforgiving. Handling time is a critical step in gaining productivity in what you do. No matter how hard you try, you have only twenty-four hours in the day, and time is a non-renewable resource. Want to do more at work and grow your practice? You will need to make the most of your time to make that happen. Want to spend more time with your family while having a comfortable lifestyle? Managing your time and balancing it for personal and professional goals becomes paramount. Several options are available for an orthodontist who desires to be a time lord and control time.
Measure
Tick tock, measure your clock. As a time lord, it is essential to understand where you consume your time. As I mentioned, it is a non-renewable resource, so review your relationship with time before you even plan how to improve your time management. Have you ever taken stock of where you consume your time? Time sinks are around every corner. In orthodontic practice, many things are urgent but not necessarily important. Everything needs to be taken care of, and time becomes a valuable commodity with additional distractions such as email and social media.
It is critical to understand and measure where you spend your time daily. Measure your time with tasks, digital workflow, clinical procedures, and consultations. All of these tasks keep us occupied each day. Analyze the time used on these and review where your current priorities lie. Are those priorities aligned with the things you hold important and valuable personally and professionally? The amount of time you spend on each task will make it clear. In a business sense, your productivity per hour dramatically depends on your expenditure of time on what gives you and your practice the greatest output.
Find a Fix
For every problem, there is a solution. Once you have determined where you spend your time, find a way to fix the tasks that waste time and don’t contribute to your professional and personal goals. Many of us can easily save time by delegating tasks or outsourcing them. As orthodontists, we should allocate our time to clinical care and productive tasks that lead to the most significant returns. Time is a non-renewable resource, but money is renewable. There are many opportunities is delegating and outsourcing tasks so you can gain productivity in what you do best and where your passion lies. Invest wisely, and know your worth.
Automate
Automate to augment your time. Machine automation leverages technology to remove mundane tasks so we can focus on essential tasks only we can perform. Maximizing your unique abilities and the human touch would be best by using machines to enhance human capabilities. Recent innovations such as machine learning and AI engines can maximize human potential. Productivity apps and software platforms that relieve you of menial tasks are powerful for a time lord.
Optimize
Build powerful routines. Some tasks cannot be delegated or automated with AI engines. Optimizing your skills to get things done in a shorter time frame is vital in those circumstances. Optimize what you do to gain productivity and save time. By building routines, you gain time decreasing mental loads to redistribute brain function into higher-level tasks.
Clear
Clear your head to clear the time. Creating headspace can be achieved by clearing your mind of tasks and ideas that clutter your mind. Mind dumps help to relieve mental overload by taking information into reminder apps, lists, and journals. Voice AI engines such as Siri and Alexa allow for dumping those ideas and mental assets into a holding jar, much like a notepad or journal could hold those thoughts for you.
You can also clear your mind by renewing and refreshing your mind and body. Proper rest is critical; you must ensure you disconnect from the hustle and bustle to improve your performance and resilience. Allow time for rest and renovation.
Focus
Slow down time by sharpening your focus. Prioritizing which areas need your guide comes down to filtering data. Information is plenty these days, and we need to break through the noise in life. A time lord can utilize recommendation engines to personalize the experience and leverage filters to cultivate higher-quality attention at scale. A recommendation engine is a filter for content: a software platform that learns pattern recognition and focuses human attention. These engines understand our personalized preferences and narrow the focus to a smaller number of suggestions based on our unique experience. Google’s decision engines are a prime example of pattern recognition, and other platforms have followed suit. The future holds increased utility of recommendation engines in niche markets such as orthodontics. A time lord augments its focus by leveraging recommendation engines to narrow the abundant possibilities into a personalized and custom experience.
In a world of abundance, the only scarcity is human attention.” Herbert Simon, Nobel prize-winning social scientist.
Keep Improving
Rinse and repeat. Constant and never-ending improvement is another tenet of a time lord. Time is a continuing cycle, and we should continue to gain control of time and develop our habits. Keep measuring, continue finding time sinks, and renew your commitment to finding solutions.
