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Hello, and welcome to another episode of To The Point. I’m Dr. Nell with American Acupuncture Council. Thanks everybody for being here, and let’s go to the slides today. We are going to go over . Three really simple, effective, very quick things that you can be doing to keep your practice on track. Played with the title a little bit of this because I wanted to tell you they can be done in less than five minutes.
So I think we go through a lot of misconceptions when we’re running a business. It’s hard to stay on track with things we think that. We have to analyze everything that we have to, have this whole system in place that’s gonna take us way too long, every day. And so what ends up happening is we end up having reasons that are silly, that we don’t keep our practice on track.
And it doesn’t have to be that complicated. But the reasons we’re not doing this, it really is that paralysis by analysis. We don’t know what we need to look at. We’re looking at too many things, trying to make this way too complicated of a. Or we’re not prioritizing. One of my coaches once told me that if you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any priorities.
So we have a hard time narrowing that down sometimes, and sometimes there’s a very real reality to this of capacity. So we’re focused on our day to day. Sole proprietor, small corporation, trying to make sure that the absolute necessities get done in our business. And so if we’re not focused on some of these just anchor practices that don’t take us very long, but can be really helpful, really effective for staying on track with growth, we don’t get to the point where we can enjoy scaling or enjoy taking some admin off of our plate.
And so today we’re looking at three really simple things that you can do. They take less than five minutes each, so we’re looking at less than 15 minutes a day to make sure that we stay on track with this. So the first one is highs and lows. Sometimes you may have heard this referred to as roses and thorns of your day.
Pros and cons of your day. You can take less than five minutes a day, and sometimes you’re gonna have to search for something because we have a tendency to overgeneralize when it comes to our day or when it comes to themes that we had throughout the day in our practice with patients. So we might say, oh, it was a really challenging day, or, wow, I killed it today.
But to really drill. Scroll down into that in a short period of time and just say what was really one high of the day and one low of the day. And that’s going to allow us to then take data from that and say, all right, if my high from the day was I stayed on track with timing, then we can look at what things did I do differently?
To stay on track with timing that made that really successful, or if the lowest today was like I was always running behind. Are there ways that we could have accountability in that and could tweak that a little bit? So it can be something just as simple as what’s one really positive one area of improvement that we can make, but just a quick check-in with that on your highs and lows every single day that you’re practicing.
And then you can implement this weekly as well, right? You’re gonna create two lists as your second thing so fine. Two can have an A and a B. So maybe this ends up being four things total, but you’re gonna have two lists that are gonna help keep you really on track. And this says, who owes me and who I owe.
This is not favors or anything like that. This is your task list. Things that you said you would get to people. Maybe it’s a list of therapeutic exercises that you were supposed to get to a patient. Maybe it’s that a patient was supposed to send you lab work and they didn’t, so you’re gonna have two running lists at all times.
That’s going to be who owes me something that I need to check in with, and who do I owe something to? And so this keeps you accountable every single day for that quick check-in. And with the who owes me something that could be as simple as shooting something through your patient portal. Oh, I wanted to check in, make sure nothing fell through the cracks on this end, because I’m seeing that your labs didn’t come through.
That quick check-in with a patient does so much. It allows them to know that you’re thinking about them, that they’re still a priority in your mind, even though they’re not in the office at that moment. That can have a huge ripple effect. Just that quick check-in and it helps you keep on track because you were probably needing to do something.
When you get that, who owes me something? The who I owe. Same thing. Go through your list and what can you knock out at end of day or first thing in the morning, however you choose to implement these three things throughout your day, whether it’s at the very beginning or at close of day. I like doing both.
You’ll get to that point taking that five minutes on either side, but this helps you have that running list so you know really what your priorities are for the day. And you can look in order of magnitude, who do I need to reach out to first? Who’s owed a status update from me? Who do I need to send things to?
This really helps you stay on track and allows things to not fall through the cracks. And the last thing is one person to outreach to. And I wanna challenge you to make this a different person from someone who was on those two previous lists. So if it’s someone that you were owing something to, or they were owing something to you, I want you to try to think outside of that.
I want you to try to think about someone who you can add value to, someone who could be a good . person to add to your care plan for a patient, another provider that you wanna keep in better contact with a colleague that you could send a quick article to. So again, thinking about it in these five minute brackets, one person you’re gonna outreach to help in that day.
And that might be by sending them content. It might be just checking in with them and see how they’re doing. . It might be, you can have a running list for this too. One of my leadership instructors calls it a drip list. So people that you wanna continuously keep in contact with and make sure that you stay updated with them.
So really, those are the three things that are going to, in less than 15 minutes a day, allow you to stay on track. It’s nothing complicated whatsoever, and it’s simply. What are my highs and lows for the day? Not thinking in general terms. Get really specific with this, and then you can take action items from that for improvement or things that you wanna keep doing because they’re going really well.
The second thing, being those two lists, who do I need to get things to and who needs to get things to me? And make sure that we’re constantly working those lists every day. So things. Don’t fall through the cracks. And that last thing being who am I adding value to today? Who am I staying in contact with today?
Who am I continuously cultivating a relationship with? And pick that one person to outreach to that is not gonna fall into one of those other lists that you needed to keep track of those three things. Help you stay on track in less than 15 minutes a day If you have further questions. You all know I love efficiency hacks, simple and effective ways to keep practice on track.
I hope this has been enjoyable for you. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions at a c and don’t forget to tune in next week for another episode of To the Point. .