How to save time – (The easiest way) By saying no

 Knowing how to save time is like the holy grail of life

Time is the one commodity we all treasure and it’s the one commodity that is ticking down for us all. So knowing how to save time is a wonderful thing to be able to do.

How to save time – why it’s important

“I don’t have enough time” must be one of the most common phrases we both use and hear. We hear it from our own lips, colleagues, family, friends, and often patients when we ask them to do something to help with their own treatment plan! In short believing we "don't have time" is a very common problem.

Time is a precious commodity, it’s finite, so learning how to save time is a great skill to have.

 

We All Have Masses of Time
(if we choose to think we do)

 

I know you probably don’t think you do, but you do!

A fact no one can argue with is that there are 168 hours in a week, every week. We are all gifted the same 168 hours each week. It’s what we choose to do with those hours (because most of us have a choice in the matter) that dictates the life we live.

What we achieve every day and in life is down to the choices we each make about what we do with all those 168 hours.

 If we sleep 8 hours a night (I wish) that’s 56 hours a week, leaving us 112 hours a week.

112 hours is still a lot of time. That’s 6,720 minutes a week that you get to choose how you spend.

It’s the equivalent of :

• Watching Top Gun Maverick 51 times (tempting!)
• Reading 1,599,360 words that’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 6 times
• Flying from London to Perth in Western Australia and back 3 times
• Walking nonstop from Edinburgh to Cambridge

 

The important point here though is really believing that you get to choose

 

 

“But Jill I’ve got children, I’ve got a horse, I’ve got aging parents to care for” etc.

 

I understand that. We’ve all got those things in our lives that consume our time, and feel out of our control, but until you understand and believe that it’s your choice to spend time with your children, mucking out and grooming your horse, or spending precious time with your aging parents, you won’t be in control.

You could send your children outside to play, ask them to do their homework alone or send them to Guides or football to occupy them at evenings and weekends. But you choose to be a part of their lives and spend time every day with them.

You don’t have to own a horse. But you love horses and can’t imagine your life without them so you choose to be a horse owner and accept all that goes with that.

You could pay service providers to care for older parents some, or all the time. But you choose to spend some precious time with them every week or every day and treasure that time.

 

 “But Jill even if we wanted to, we don’t have the money to do that!”

This might be a bit controversial, but I believe that is a choice too. Finding more money, or not, is a choice. You could get a second job, get good at commodity investing, rent out a room to a lodger, and learn how to sell digital products on Amazon to generate more money. You might not want to do this but that is your choice.

Almost everything we do with our time is a choice. Things that might be totally out of our control like legal requirements, health related issues, or enforced captivity are the only things that really stop us from having choices. When these things don’t apply, the rest of our time is ours to choose what to do with.

 

Save time by being intentional

Our 112 hours get divided up every week somehow whether we like it or not. So why not get more intentional about where that time goes?

Our weekly, daily, or hourly time needs to be divided between all of the things we choose to do to create the life we want to live.

Each week how much time do you spend:

• Working in your practice?
• Working on your practice?
• Shopping for food and cooking?
• Supporting your children, family, or friends?
• Looking after your own health and fitness?
• Pursuing hobbies?
• Seeking fun and pleasures (including a dopamine fix from the Internet)?
• Maintaining your property?
• Keeping on top of your personal and household administration?

 

I’m sure most people have no idea what any of those numbers look like week to week, but the really exciting thing about this whole concept is that as soon as you accept it’s your choice where those 112 hours go, you are in control, and you can change your choices and change your life.

 

Saving time – your working hours

For most of us, time needs to be allocated every week to working so that we can earn money to pay our way in the world, we can chase our dreams and career aspirations.

So, on top of our 56 hours a week of sleep, next, we should consider the time we choose to dedicate to our patients (working in the business) and the time we choose to dedicate to supporting our team and business (working on the business).

How many hours a week do you currently dedicate to your private practice? 30, 40, or maybe 50?
How is that split down between working in and working on the business?

My next question is then, how are you using that time?

Are you a good custodian of that work time?

Or are you wasting some of it being less or non-productive?

In other words, are you busy being busy with things that don’t move you forward?

If that is you it is nothing to be embarrassed about. It's a very common situation and you are most definitely not alone.

 

Creating more time

There are 3 ways you can create more time to do other things.

1. Get honest with yourself. If you’ve got 40 hours a week you are dedicating to your business for example, and you feel only 30 or 35 of those hours are productive.
2. Dedicate some of your remaining 72 hours a week to working on the thing you want to work on.
3. To remove some of your existing workload or tasks etc by saying no to things you don’t want to do, aren’t good at, or don’t enjoy doing.

I’m a big believer in the phrase

 

Success leaves clues

 

So the next question is - What are successful people doing?

The most successful people in your industry have the same 112 hours a week as the least successful people. Success in part comes down to knowing what to do but beyond that, it’s what you do with that knowledge that leads to success or not.

So what has made those people in your industry who are flying high more successful?
Well, as well as being good clinicians, and knowing what to do, the rest boils down to being good custodians of those 112 hours.

These successful people have often learned great time maximisation skills :

• Delegation
• Prioritisation
• Automation
• Simplification
• Batching
• Using dead time

 

This helps them get through their enormous to-do list more efficiently, but what they are also often good at, is limiting what gets on to their to-do list in the first place by SAYING NO. Saying no to things that do not move them toward the goals they are aiming to achieve.

 

Just say NO
(remember that from Grange Hill!)

 

As people who have chosen to train to be healthcare professionals, we are often naturally caring and hard-wired to be people pleasers. A lovely characteristic to help you become a genuinely caring practitioner, but not always super helpful when it comes to developing an efficient, happy, and thriving healthcare practice.

We must be stronger – we have to take ownership of our time and we have to start being better custodians of our time by being more assertive with what we want and what we don’t want to be doing with our time.

 

 

The guilt of saying no

“Live your life for you not for anyone else. Don’t let the fear of being judged, rejected, or disliked stop you from being yourself.”
Sonya Parker

Saying no is a choice we all have, but for many of us, it feels like a hard choice because of the emotions attached to the action of saying no.

• We feel bad
• We feel guilty
• We feel selfish
• We feel rude
• We feel obliged

All incredibly powerful emotions, but we still need to understand that even though it makes us feel negative in some way, it is still our choice to say no (in a majority of life situations).

In this video, I am going to take you through my top 7 ‘oh so important’ reasons why you need to start learning to say no. Then I’m going to teach you 6 simple tactics for softening the blow and easing your guilt of saying no.

So grab a pen and a drink, press play, and let’s get working on building your saying no muscles and let's start saving you some precious time.

 

 How to Save Time - By Saying No

 

 

OK, how are you feeling now?

I hope you’re feeling slightly more empowered in the saying no department.

Making the best use of the time we all have, comes down to the choices we make about what we agree to fit into our day. We need to get smart about keeping that list as short but as impactful as possible and learning to say no is one of the best ways to do that.

 

Thank you soooo much for taking the time to stop by our Practice Momentum blog today.
I really hope you found value in spending some time here today.

 

I’d be so grateful if you could spare me just another few minutes (please say yes) to share your thoughts and anything that struck a chord with you from this blog. Just type straight in the box at the end of this page. I’d love to hear from you.

Oh and please use the social share buttons if you think other people you know might benefit from seeing this.

Until next time.