If you don’t block time for yourself first, who will? Here’s three tips to manage your time, talents, and energy.
For solo practitioners or clinic owners
Running a clinic while balancing life as a practitioner is busy! While self-care can help with managing burnout, how can you even get to that super relaxing yoga class if you’re already completely booked?
While there’s no perfect solution, taking a few proactive steps to prioritize your schedule can help you to create more work-life balance, optimize time with your patients, and focus your business efforts more strategically.
And, by being mindful with your time? You might make it to that 6pm vinyasa class you totally had your eye on. 💙
Here are three practical tips for prioritizing your way to more balance from clinic owner, business coach, and mental health professional, Kendall Hagensen.
1. Challenge the myth of “having it all”
Do you identify yourself as an entrepreneur, a practitioner, or both? Doing everything well, all the time, may not always be possible. It’s helpful to be honest with yourself regarding how much time you have in each lane, then pull back where you need to.
“You know, this term, work-life balance, doing it all, right? It’s a myth. What does ‘do it all’ even mean? What ‘all’ are you trying to do?” Kendall comments.
“Know your limits, your capacity, and also your long term vision for the business. There are things that others can do in a business and there are things that only you can do as the person that created it. To hold that vision and that you created this space–it’s hard to find someone to replicate that.”
2. Work within your skill sets: it’s okay to ask for help
When balancing the responsibilities of practitioner, administrator, and business owner, it’s okay to admit what you don’t know and ask for help when you need it.
As a clinic owner, you could focus on training your front desk staff to help with some additional tasks to free up some of your time. Or, as a solo practitioner, you could hire for technically demanding tasks that might be outside of your expertise.
“I think sometimes as business owners we expect that we’re supposed to know how to do all this stuff all of a sudden. No, people go to school and learn how to do social media and how to do marketing. These are really big skill sets,” Kendall says.
“My first recommendation is to know that you don’t have to be an expert in everything and there are people that can help you.”
Need help with building a website? Learn how you can create a quick, beautiful, and fully Jane-integrated website with Clinic Sites.
3. Make time for yourself and your business development first
Lastly, there’s scheduling. Taking control of your time and effectively prioritizing your own needs is a huge step towards finding more balance.
Once you’ve decided where you want to spend your energy, Kendall suggests going through a monthly exercise of evaluating your schedule.
There’s the ideal schedule: the one you’re aiming for, where your hobbies, family and friends, and self-care practices have space to thrive. Then there’s assessing your actual schedule, where you may notice you’ve set aside less time for yourself, or time you could spend on growing your business.
“I have my current schedule, my ideal schedule: if there’s any discrepancies or any gaps in between them, I make a plan and a timeline to change it,” Kendall comments.
While it might feel counterintuitive sometimes as a helper, Kendall suggests blocking time for yourself as the primary focus. It also helps to prioritize time for growing your business, if you find that’s what tends to slip to the wayside.
“I always schedule in my breaks and my resting time and my time with my kids and family first, because when I look at my core values, any decision I’m making in my business, I want to make sure that that is prioritized,” Kendall says.
It might take work and practice, but after a few months of aiming for an ideal schedule, you might find that your actual schedule and ideal start to look more and more alike.
Need help with blocking off your time? Here’s how to schedule breaks and personal time in Jane.
It’s about clarifying your needs and prioritizing them
With all these tips, prioritization is truly the main takeaway. Here’s the recap:
-
Stick to your vision of how you want to spend time in your business: identify your strengths and ensure the business you’re building aligns with how you want to spend most of your time (seeing clients, building a business or both).
-
Hire or train for complex tasks as needed: It’s okay to not be an expert in everything! By strategically allocating some budget for things outside of your expertise, you’re freeing yourself up to do what you’re good at, which helps you bring the most value to your clinic, practice or business.
-
Block time for yourself first, cause no one else will: If you leave having time for yourself up to chance, there’s a huge possibility it just won’t happen. So ensure that when you’re scheduling in patients, you’re also making time for yourself, your methods of self-care, your friends and family, or anything else that helps you recharge.
Learn more from Kendall
| See Kendall’s video, Developing a Collaborative Leadership Team, featured in Jane’s Allied educational series. You can also find her online at vancouverwellnessstudio.com and wellnesscentercreators.com |