Hello, and welcome back to the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast. I'm Stacey Ishman, and today we're gonna be talking about why your calendar is the most powerful academic tool that you have. Now, when I first started my career, I really thought I was gonna be right on track.
I had a plan, I had a little bit of dedicated time. What really happened is I had a lot of leftover calendaring that had nothing to do with me. Somebody told me what day my clinic was.
I had OR time when it was available, and quite honestly, it wasn't available, so I was kind of taking it in dribs and drabs where I could find it. And then as I started going through, there was meetings that were set, there was grand rounds, there was all kinds of things. And at some point I realized I had no control over my schedule, like it was full, and I don't think I had intentionally set any of it.
And so, as I started to think about where I wanted my focus to be, I realized it wasn't necessarily where my calendar suggested my focus was. So I was busy, I was running around, but I really wasn't building something that definitely was not intentional. And so, as I started looking at that, and quite honestly, it was pointed out to me by a mentor and a colleague, I started to realize that I needed to be in charge of my calendar so that I could be in charge of my academic life.
And so the next step was really to figure out how do I do that? And I didn't have a framework at the time. I have a much better one clearly now. But what I did figure out is whatever I thought my top priority was, wasn't right.
And so, it sounds like I've got it all figured out. I figured it out 20 years ago. Well, I just looked at my calendar the other day, quite honestly, again.
And I said, I'm not in charge of my calendar. I really wanna grow the coaching part of my business. And I looked at where I'd spent most of my time over the previous three or four weeks.
It was in the real estate part of my business. And I love that part of my business. I wanna keep it going.
But it wasn't the area in which I was trying to see growth right now. And so it made me realize that there was a misalignment between where my calendar said I was spending my time and where my heart said I wanted to be spending my time. And it led to conflict and frustration and this feeling that I wasn't moving forward because I wasn't moving forward the things that were my priority for this time period.
And so it really made me think, how do I make sure that my calendar matches my vision? So, one of the most important things is to structure around the things you cannot control. And those are those things I talked about earlier. When are standing meetings that I don't get to set? When is my clinic? When is my OR? Are those flexible? Is there a day I can get rid of? Or is this really the only time I have? And for many of you, if you have procedures in your schedule, there's some set block time you probably cannot work around.
So use those fixed things as anchors in your schedule. And the reason this is important is there is good data showing that if you're in control over your time, you have less burnout and more productivity. It makes sense.
If I can decide when I'm gonna try and get my academic work done, how much more likely to make it happen? And so open or unstructured time that you can plan with the things that you care about in your academic life are really important. And if you don't have them in your calendar from the start, then this is the time to go there and look at that and figure out where those things can be fit in. And it may not be between eight and five.
It may be that you're like, you know, my best academic time, the best time for me to think clearly is between six and eight in the morning. So set it then. Or you might know, like I have this incredibly productive period from three to five in the afternoon.
So set it then. And if you even think about optional meetings, voluntary meetings, I work with an administrative assistant. And what I tell them is like, I am so smart in the morning and I'm not quite as good at doing my independent work in the afternoon.
And so what I'd like is for you to schedule any optional meetings from 5 p.m. and then go from 5 p.m. early, which means if there's not a 3.30 meeting, there should be nothing before that. And those should just sort of march their way backwards from the end of the day. So I'm much more likely at the beginning of the day for you to do what I want to do.
Now, the reason this matters is because intentionally scheduled time really helps us with output. So how do we do that? Plug those times in. If you have procedure times, if you have clinic times, administrative time, make sure that you put it in there.
And if there's things you have to do, if there's mentoring meetings, if there's planning time, and then make sure you have some bigger blocks, if you can, half-day blocks to really get some academic work done. The other thing I would really tell you is planning time is critically important. And I, just in the last couple of years, I've started taking half an hour on Sundays and sometimes it doesn't take that long to look at my week, to plan it out, to figure out where there's overlap or conflicts and really mitigate those ahead of time so people can tell I'm ahead of my schedule and really set the time to plan.
Now, the other thing that I think is critically important as you set up your clinical life is also making sure that you finish your notes at work because then you're not taking or stealing some of that admin time or academic time to do things like finishing your notes and not stealing time from your personal life either. So some of the ways to make sure that this happens is to really have some tips and tricks around your EMR. Now, there is documentation, an article from JAMA and General Medicine that physicians often spend one to two days, well, it feels like days, but one to two hours after work finishing documentation.
And the reason that's important is this is absolutely not a good use of your time. And a lot of it has to do with the fact if you document something in real time, it may take an extra minute or two, but if you have to go back and remember it and reinsert it and go back into the record, that could take an extra five minutes, 10 minutes. You add that up over a number of different notes and it's a ton of time.
Even if it's just two minutes per record and you saw 20 people today, that's an extra 40 minutes when maybe it would have taken 30 seconds for me to do it in real time. The other thing that's important is that your job satisfaction is gonna be much higher if you're doing this during the workday and not taking at-home time or administrative time in order to do it. Some of what I recommend is to actually add things like 30 minutes before or after, maybe it's at lunch, maybe it's at the end of the day, but take that time to just clean all that up and finish it.
The other thing is if you have an EMR that uses smart phrases or some kind of automatic templates, bulk documentation strategies, I really recommend using those. I also would tell you if you have something new, if there's a new complaint, a new template, a new procedure, never have to do that more than once. The first time you have a new one, make sure you create a template, not create a note, and then use that to write your note that day so that every time you see a new thing, you're writing it only one time and it's the first time that you need it.
The other thing is aim for clarity and complete list but not perfection. A misspelled word, if it's perfectly understandable, doesn't have to be fixed. You do not need to have perfect punctuation.
You do not have to worry about whether or not you've written in paragraphs. Bullet points or those kinds of lists are perfectly fine or fragments of a sentence. There is no extra credit for making sure that it is the most beautifully written prose.
You just need to make sure it's understandable, it gets across what you need to, and it's complete. And doing that in clinic can really make that happen. I oftentimes will take a few minutes to look at the patient, to make some report, to get some eye contact, and then I tell them, I'm gonna be doing this so that I can make sure that we have this documentation for you and your physicians.
I'm gonna be putting in orders in real time so we can make sure that they happen as long as it's not too overly complicated. And I will actually type and read back the impression and plan to them as I do it so that they, one, understand it. And honestly, if I do it, I read it back as slowly as I'm typing it and thinking it out, it's actually easier for them to understand the summary or correct me if I do something wrong.
And then I'll even say, who's your physician? I make sure it's sent to the right person. So if there's problems there in the communication section, I'm picking those up in real time with the patient in attendance. And it really cuts down on me having to search for things later.
Now, the other thing is to set some real boundaries to protect your academic time because the easiest thing to go is to add a clinic patient on or add a procedure time on or take a meeting for something that's not critical to your academic life during your academic time. Most of us don't have a ton of that. You really want to protect it.
And so if you're not protecting it for the things that are important, whether that's writing a lecture or writing a paper or submitting your grant, then those things tend not to happen. So you have to make room for them on purpose. And what they found is faculty protect more than four hours a week of time for research or writing are much more likely to get grants and be promoted.
And that if you do time fragmentation or context switching, if you go from this to this to this, instead of blocking things together, you are 40% less productive. There's also data that says if you get interrupted in the middle of something, it can take over 20 minutes to really get back in the flow that you were in before as you were working on something seamlessly. And so as you think about where your boundaries are, block your academic time before your week starts or maybe for the month.
Say that that time is already committed without apologizing. If somebody asks to set up a meeting or asks you to add a procedure, the answer is no. And a no is an okay answer because your academic endeavors are just as important to your career and hopefully to your excitement for your career.
And then ask people to help you. Ask for accountability partners. And these may be your scheduler or your administrative assistant or the clinic front desk staff.
And then share your ideal week with people and see if you can get some accountability in that way too, whether it's a peer colleague or a mentor. And so I use many of these techniques to keep myself on time, to get home without a lot of the mental clutter that happens from knowing you have notes left to finish or trying to remember that big thing that needs to be done. So unless it's a complicated patient, it really does hold over to me to the next day.
And then also it allows me to find time to write and to put grants together and to have that thinking and planning in the time that can be so critical for you to move your career forward. So my take-home points really are to schedule the work that gets you promoted, finish your notes during the day, the same day if at all possible, and set boundaries early so that people understand not to take away the time that should be used for academics and get accountability partners so that the scheduler is not asking you to take that time. And in fact, if you ask them, hey, can we use that academic time? They remind you, hey, you told me if you asked to do it on Thursday mornings, we're not supposed to use that time for this point.
And so you have the ability, not only to make sure that you're doing the right thing, but in times of guilt or weakness or tiredness, you have somebody else who's helping look out for your schedule too. So thank you so much for being with me today so that we can talk about how to really protect your time. I look forward to talking to you again next week.
And in the meantime, I really would appreciate if you would rate, review, and follow the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast or subscribe if you're on YouTube. I know I'm on Apple and Spotify if you're looking for me on an app. And if you wanna get in touch with me to send feedback or questions, or you're interested in a free checklist on how to optimize your time or build your national reputation, please DM me on Instagram or message me on LinkedIn or email me at [email protected] or contact me on the website at medicalmentorcoaching.com. I look forward to talking to you next week.
