CDS Member News and Articles

Professional News Articles : FRONT DESK by Mary M. Byers, CAE : Conquering gnats

Conquering gnats

December 01, 2006

What's a gnat in your work day? A gnat is a “little something” that keeps hanging over your head and keeps you from being as productive as possible in your work. It may be a pile of papers that needs to be filed. It may be collection of calls that need to be made. It may be getting the next round of patient invoices printed and mailed. In short, a gnat is whatever it is that you know you should be doing, but just can't seem to get to. The more gnats you have in your work life, the less efficient you'll be.

Follow this advice and you'll quickly rid yourself of gnats:

Make a list. What are the things that you've been putting off or that seem unimportant, yet keep resurfacing on your “To Do” list? Get out a piece of paper and list as many as you can think of.

Review the list. Are there any items you can cross of your list and choose not to do? Are there others that you can delegate to someone else? Do both so that there are as few “gnats” on your list as possible.

Prioritize. There are two ways to do this. You can either rank items in order of importance or you can list them from the easiest to accomplish to the most difficult.

Choose one activity to begin with. Select one item from your list (preferably the first one) and identify the steps necessary to complete the project. Sometimes this process is enough to move you fully into working on the project. When it's not, move to the next step.

Set a timer. Identify one item on your list to begin working on. Set a timer for 10 minutes and begin the project. When the timer goes off, you may well be on a roll and choose to continue your work. Or, you can let yourself off the hook and move onto something else. Continue this pattern each day until you slay your first gnat by working ten minutes at a time.

Move on to the next item on your list. Once you've completed one item, select another to begin tackling in 10-minute increments.

I recently used this method to attack a pile of filing that had grown over the course of many months. The size of the pile seemed overwhelming, which is why I never tackled it to begin with. Breaking the project into 10-minute increments made it seem less overwhelming and I was able to eradicate the pile in less than two weeks. Buoyed by this small success, I now spend the last 10 minutes of each work day filing so that my pile won't get out of hand again. Though it's taking effort on my part to stick to this new habit, the reward of living pile-free is making it worth it.

This six-step process will make it possible for you, too, to rid yourself of gnats, both in your personal and your professional life.

CDS presents Front Desk, a column addressing problems dentists and staff members experience in the office. Front Desk is prepared by Mary M. Byers, CAE, a professional speaker and freelance writer. Ms. Byers may be reached at mbyers@marybyers.com or www.marybyers.com. Send suggestions for topics to be covered to review@cds.org.

Copyright 2006, Chicago Dental Society