Someone once said, “Nothing makes a person more productive than the last minute.” But what if you want to avoid the stress of the last minute and consistently utilize better habits.
This month’s edition of Inc. has a helpful article entitled “7 Things Highly Productive People Do.” Here are three of the tips.
First, work backwards from the goals you set to the tasks needed to accomplish those goals. If your goal is to increase treatment acceptance rates in 2012, for example, you and your dental team may need to accomplish the following tasks: utilize the intra-oral camera to aid co-diagnosis, review pending treatment in the morning huddle, present treatment recommendations in language the patient understands, and guide patients to schedule without using yes/no questions.
Another habit identified in the Inc. article is to stop multi-tasking. Switching from task to task more than ten times per day lowers a person’s IQ, according to the article, which means our brains quickly reach an overload point. This is a constant challenge with the dental front office team: how do you manage time when you are faced with a barrage of interruptions? It’s critical for your front team to plan tasks in accordance with the schedule, meaning time consuming tasks are completed during longer procedures when they have fewer interruptions.
And that leads to the final point I want to share: have a plan for the day. Otherwise, you are reacting to what comes your way—calls and emails for example—instead of working on priority items.
We can all learn from the habits of highly productive people. And the end result is we will be productive throughout the day, and not just at the last minute.