The Scope of Practice Podcast
The Scope of Practice Podcast
It's Time to get Unbusy - Garland Vance, D.Min
Episode 98 -When did the phrase, “I’m busy” become a badge of honor? I’ve been wrestling with this lately. When did we get to a point when someone asks “How’s it going?” and we reply “It’s busy” like it’s something we’re proud of? I think part of it comes from the mistaken impression the busy-ness equals accomplishment. It’s all too easy for us to get caught up in the idea that being busy means we’re getting stuff done, or that we’re accomplishing everything we want to do. Sometimes being busy just means running around putting out fires and never getting to the things that actually matter to you. Today’s guest is going to teach us how to get “un-busy” so we can reclaim our time and our sanity and make room for the things that are truly important to us. It's time to get Unbusy.
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It's Time To Get Unbusy
2022, Brent Lacey And The Scope Of Practice Podcast
The Scope of Practice Podcast
Transcript
[0:00] When did the phrase I'm busy become a badge of honor.
[0:04] This is something that I've been wrestling with lately when do we get to a point that when somebody asks us hey how's it going we reply though it's busy like it's something that we're proud of.
[0:15] You know I think for me at least part of it comes from the mistaken impression that busyness equals accomplishment.
[0:21] But we know that's not exactly true it's all too easy for us to get caught up in the idea that being busy means that we're getting stuff done or that we're accomplishing everything we want to do.
[0:32] But sometimes being busy just means running around putting out fires and never getting to the things that actually matter to us.
[0:39] Today's guest is going to teach us how to get unbusy so we can reclaim our time and our sanity and make room for the things that are truly important to us let's kick it.
[0:49] Music.
[0:56] Welcome to the scope of practice podcast where we help busy Healthcare professionals learn to manage their businesses successfully in master their personal finances now here's your host dr. Brent Lacey.
[1:09] Hey y'all thanks so much for joining me for the scope of practice podcast where you can get the knowledge and resources you need to grow your leadership skills your business and your personal finances welcome to episode 98.
[1:20] If you haven't already subscribe to the podcast please be sure to go ahead and hit that subscribe button right now and also hit the button at the top of the podcast player so you can turn on the automatic downloads and get your access to these episodes anytime anywhere even if you're not in a place where you can stream live.
[1:35] Also don't forget the podcast is now eligible for category 1 CME credits and it's free.
Just click the link in the podcast description or go to www.desktoplearn.com / podcast CME to download your CME credits for free.
[1:52] This week's sponsor is Pearson ravitz they were one of our Premier level sponsors at the recent marriage and money MD Summit and you may remember dr. Stephanie Pearson who was our guest on episode 21 of the podcast.
[2:03] Well as a physician herself who was injured on the job and had to stop practicing as a result of that injury she understands All Too Well the importance of disability insurance.
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[2:28] If you don't have disability insurance or if you don't know whether you have the right disability insurance you need to talk to dr. Pearson she is a fantastic resource and I'd swear I learn something new every time I talk with her.
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[2:44] Go to her website at www.payoor.com ravitz.com or click the link in the show notes to get free disability insurance quotes today.
[2:52] This week's guest is dr. Garland Vance Dr Vance is an author speaker coach and consultant who co-founded Advanced leadership to help companies succeed by developing the current and Future Leaders they need to win.
[3:05] After earning his Doctorate and Leadership he authored the book get an unbusy which Forbes named as one of the seven books everyone on your team should read.
[3:12] He is also the co-author of the forthcoming Unleashed your leaders which will help companies develop the quality and quantity of their leadership pipeline.
After spending 15 years in leadership positions at Chick-fil-A he knows what it takes to succeed as a leader and as he'll describe to us it doesn't have anything to do with being busy for the sake of being busy.
[3:31] So here is my conversation with dr. Garland.
[3:34] Music.
[3:41] Hey y'all I am super excited to welcome my guests today to the scope of practice podcast he is the founder of advanced leadership and the author of the book get an unbusy 5 Steps to kill busyness
and live with purpose productivity.
And peace and that sounds like a recipe for Success right there so I'm definitely excited to get started with dr. Garland Vance Garland thank you so much for joining us really appreciate it
my pleasure I'm so excited to be here
yeah this is going to be great I'm always love hearing perspectives from people who are not in the medical industry because I think there's a lot that we can learn from people that
are not perhaps burdened with our particular worldview and so it's a great way for us to get new ideas and different ways of looking at things and you especially have had a really interesting career
Drew you're a director at Chick-fil-A for 15 years you led a church of 9,000 people and then now you founded this leadership organization Advanced leadership
and so you've been a busy guy for a long
long time this I'm fascinated with this new concept of this book getting unbusy and especially as Physicians because I feel like this is something that we as Physicians
we're busy literally all the time and often times I find it we equate busyness with productivity you know like the more than we're doing stuff the busier we are the more productive we are but the subtitle of your book is actually
killing busyness and living with.
[5:08] Purpose productivity and peace you set those up as diametrically opposite so how is it the busyness kills productivity
yeah so first let's define what busyness is and then that will give us great insight into how it's killing our productivity so busyness
isn't over commitment to too many good commitments nobody's busy because they're doing bad things you know unless you're like a dictator or drug lord nobody's nobody's busy doing bad things we're busy doing things that are good work
were you know you're building a practice your
you're helping patients you're spending time with your family you're engaged in your kids lives you know we're all busy doing good things but it's kind of like going to a buffet you can go to a buffet that has tons of good food on it
but if you eat too much of that good food all that good food is going to turn bad in your stomach it's going to start feeling awful.
That's what busyness is to us so the way that busyness hurts our productivity is that busyness mistakes
activity for accomplishments.
[6:13] Busyness thinks of activity as long as I'm moving as long as I'm getting stuff done then we think that's productivity but just because we're getting a lot of stuff done
doesn't mean that we're actually accomplishing the things that are most important in our lives
and so I call those your Big Dreams in your high priorities so we're not necessarily accomplishing Our Big Dreams in our high priorities that's what productivity actually is it's the accomplishment of those things
whereas busyness is just activity for the sake of being a.
[6:46] Yeah I feel like it's like if you were a city manager and your goal is to is to build and plan this amazing.
[6:53] City and all these all this growth and expansion yet this big dream
but you're spending all of your time going around on ride-alongs with the fire department and the police department you know doing arrest and do it help them put out fires and those are all.
Valuable things but you never get around to the big things to the things that really you can do that that need to be done in order to move
towards some big hairy audacious goal or something right yeah yeah I'm going to steal that analogy for my next book that was great
so yeah that's that's free for nothing I wrap that up just for you appreciate it well I really think you're on to something with this I mean
your book one of The what was it the author Elite award I think last year for best business book 2020 so there's clearly something to this so
how did we get to this point.
In America because I feel like this was not something that was prioritized or you know the people would get excited about 50 years ago I mean
you know nowadays you walk down the hall and you know you know it's like Hey Joe how you doing oh man I'm busy hey all right we'll keep it up right right you would never have that conversation in the 1950s and the 1960s how did we get to this point we're being busy as this badge of honor or something that we should
aspire to
yeah I think there's a few different factors that led to it the first is for years the world was was run by by per hour payment right and so the longer you work.
[8:17] The more money you made in the more money you made the more opportunities you had to do more and so for years we glorified the person
who would work
12 or 15 or 18 hours a day that was that was a hard worker I think that's one factor that led to it I think another factor that led to it is for years we saw the
people who you know the Walt Disney's of the world and and the Steve Jobs of the world these these people who had these huge dreams
and they presented themselves
as being constantly busy so busyness was the sign of importance and that led to the third factor that I think has really ingrained itself into our mind
is we can't imagine somebody who's not busy.
Being an a meaningful person an important person and we've kind of come to this place in the world where
we are looking for purpose and meaning in the things that we're doing.
[9:18] And so as we're attempting to fill our lives with purpose and meaning the only way we know how to do that
is to fill our calendars full and so somebody will say how are you doing you'll say I'm really busy but what we're actually saying is
I'm so busy that I'm important my life has meaning it has purpose
and here's the hard part Brent that so many people don't realize is the more we pack our calendars full the less meaning and purpose we can actually
pull out of life because we're so busy doing that we don't have time to actually reflect on what's most important what's meaningful in our lives and build our lives around those things yeah I think it's really true it's very calm for people to come to the end of the week and.
Look at look back on and we can go I feel like I was
doing so much stuff this week what did I even do and I can't name you can't name a single thing that you actually did that doesn't mean you did no work it doesn't mean you were unproductive but you can't
point to something of value or of meaning or purpose that you intentionally engaged in because you were just rushing around putting out fires or rushing around you know just trying to live up to all your commitments and doing as many things as possible and so you never got a chance to really
stop and focus on any one thing.
[10:32] Yeah yeah it and it happens all the time we move so fast that we actually miss out on life well and Beyond just missing out I mean it can take really a serious toll on us emotionally mentally even
physically and I know that's something that you've talked about in the past that you actually experienced some physical consequences of being
too busy and that I guess is one of the things that prompted you to write the book and we don't really think about that I mean we talked about in The Physician circles we talk about burnout we talk about overworked and things like that and I think that.
[11:02] I think that people have an abstract concept of that but there are some real physical consequences to this Beyond just the not feeling like you're productive so what are some of these negative side effects of being too busy that we need to
be aware of
yeah so you touched on several of them there's the physical right and so so I'm not going to describe a whole bunch of this to your audience because you already know a ton of this but
even from my own personal experience it was as a result of chronic migraine headaches
and extreme fatigue restlessness heart palpitations while I was checking my email I mean I was having all of these strange physical symptoms and I thought I had a brain tumor or you know that my mom was born with a heart condition and so I was like oh my gosh I inherited my mom's heart condition and I was in
I was in great shape at the time and yet I was still having all of these challenges and I go to my doctor and my doctor was like well Garland this is stress.
[11:57] You're stressed out because you're working so many hours and you're working on your doctoral and you're engaged in your kids lives and you're helping your church grow and yada yada all these great things right over commitment to too many good commitments
and so there's the physical you mentioned burnout and burnout so we all know this right 2019 before the pandemic hit World Health Organization said burnout as a chronic condition in America it's doing massive damage will years before that dr. Christina maslach had discovered
that burnout and busyness
were highly connected and originally she thought it was just for those in the helping profession those who are doctors and lawyers and pastors and you know those who are helping people and then she came back about 10 years later and said no it's actually people who are busy
are burning themselves out and then the last one I'll say there's a lot that we could look at but the last one I'll say of the the negative effects of dizziness is there's a relational toll so we make ourselves busy
typically because we care about our patients we
care about our families right we care about the our friends and so we say yes so often to them but what ends up happening is there's a stage and burnout known as depersonalization and that's when we begin to actively resent.
[13:18] The people who we care about the most because when they ask us for help we get frustrated with them right and so when our page when your patients come in and you're like you know you're frustrated with them for even
coming in that day and it's because we're so busy that were beginning to experience depersonalization.
[13:38] Yeah and I think as Physicians we just get numb to it over time I think we just sort of get used to it really starting in medical school maybe it for a lot of people even in college just because
the amount of time that is required to learn this craft at a deep enough level to do a good job.
Is tremendous I mean we really have to spend a lot of time getting good at this I remember when I was in medical school I would have.
College friends call me I'm like Hey we're going to be in San Antonio this weekend you know you want to hang out
I would tell them well let's see I could probably get together for dinner for like an hour and a half on Saturday but I've got a test in three weeks and I really got to be on my game I got to be studying and they're.
What do you mean you got a test in three weeks you can take off a few days like no I can't I mean I'm barely hanging on as it is.
And I think we just kind of get used to it then in residency and fellowship were spending you know 80 hours a week doing
all the things that we're doing we're constantly being pulled in 29 different directions are pages are going off all the time I think we're the only people in the world who still use pagers thinks it's just it we get
we get this pavlovian twitch every time we hear that beep go off every still it's every time I hear that one particular page or sound I still kind of
Flinch a little bit it just still happens so I think this is probably resonating with people and I.
I would imagine that there's a lot of people thinking okay listen garland that all sounds fine but you know.
I don't need another lecture on time management I'm pretty good at time management but that's not really what you're talking about as a matter of fact you've even argued in the past the time management isn't the solution.
[15:06] To being busy so why is that because that's what we're all told us you just got to get better at time management you just gotta get better at time management.
Yeah and that's what I thought for 4 years in fact when my doctor told me Garland you're stressed out I was like well this is a time management issue and the problem for me was
I had read over 300 books on time management and articles on time management I was teaching time management to people that was one of my go to trainings that I was doing on the Chick-fil-A nonprofit side is time management and so here's the best way I know to
to explain it my grandmother used to have this saying she would say Garland you can't fit 15 pounds of potatoes in a 10 pound sack
right you just can't you can't do that I'm sure there's some way that we could do it but you can't fit 15 pounds of potatoes and a 10 pound sack well with potatoes the answer is simple I just got to go get a 15 pound sack when it comes to time
there's a limit to it
not only is there a limit as far as 24 hours a day 168 hours a week but there's a limit as far as how much energy we have that we can put into those
twenty-four hours and so time management isn't the problem because what we're sitting there trying to do is say how do I take more commitments than any human can possibly handle and how do I fit those into 24 hours a day.
[16:21] And you can't do that so it's not a time management issue I think it's a commitment.
Issue that we have over committed ourselves because again busyness over commitment to too many good commitments
everything we're saying yes to were excited about it's good it's wonderful you know think of all the things that could happen if we do this and yet we're saying yes to so many things
that we end up harming ourselves and experiencing this this burnout this busyness these physical.
Okay you're speaking my language here because this is definitely something we experience in the medical field because our jobs are incredibly demanding in the first place right so we've got we've got patient calls we got calls from other docks we got messages from our team we're constantly being bombarded with little
three minute 5 minute 10 minute decision
things that we have to do but in addition to that then we're expected to take on you know committee assignments at hospitals and you know work with our community and do you know patient education things
and you know if
if you're a private practice owner then there's all the stuff that you do on top of that with regard to managing your business so there's a lot of stuff going on and so I think this is really going to resonate with a lot of people this concept of being.
[17:33] Overcommitted well let's dive into the book a little bit let's kind of talk through this a little bit
so in Chapter 2 you talk about how to recognize when we're getting over committed so what are some signs of that because I think there's a lot of people out there there's someone that's driving to work right now that is going okay
I don't know if I'm over committed I mean I'm busy and I've got a busy job but how do I know if I'm actually overcommitted on my time
yeah yeah so I give 20 signs I'm not going to give all of those right now but let's hit a few of those one is if you feel constantly exhausted if you wake up exhausted and you go to bed exhausted you're probably too busy s sign to look out for
is if you're if you find yourself constantly wondering how am I going to fit it all in
right like how am I going to get all this done third maybe you go to bed at night and you've worked your tail end off
and yet you feel guilt you feel shame you feel like you you haven't
accomplished anything right you can't even you know look at the day and say look at what I've done you kind of just beat yourself up because you accomplished 10 things but you didn't accomplish.
[18:36] 25 other things so that's one I would say you actually mentioned one earlier is I call them if you have if the only friendships you have or what I call one our friendships where you say I can give you an hour
right that's all I've got for you you know and you probably show up late and have to leave early to that but if.
Of all the relationships in your live our one our friendships and here's the final one that I would say and this one's really really practical if you don't take at least one full day per week
off of work and work being whatever you consider work to be right whether that's
emails and patient calls or whatever you can like for me yard work is work but I have a good friend who loves to do work right so if you can't take a full day off of work or you don't give yourself permission to take a full day off of work every week.
[19:28] Then you're probably busy while Okay so
oh my goodness that's that's kind of hitting a little close to home right there because I'm I definitely I definitely know what you're saying with that and now for folks who do more shift work like emergency medicine and critical care folks
anesthesiology Radiology things like that a lot of times they're doing their shift they go home
and then they're not doing stuff and they when they're off they can be off and that's that's true in a lot of cases for folks who are more in say Primary Care Pediatrics OBGYN you know the various medicines subspecialties like GI we get patient calls on the weekends we get calls from other docks on the weekends you know there's just
this is always stuff going on so how do we
protect that time when there's when there's stuff going on like what do we need to put systems in place to do that and we just simply declare hey one day a week it's I'm not going to be available to call the answering service or I'll get to you on Monday or how do we do that.
[20:25] Yeah so I think there's going to have to be a case-by-case basis right if you're in private practice and it's only you and you're the only one you you might not be able to do that as easily I think what happens here is when we build strong boundaries around one day off every week
it is amazing to me how quickly we figure out how to do it so so I would say you actually have to make the commitment
first and then how it's going to happen
typically follows right so it could be you know where you say okay I'm going to take one day off every week and I'm going to Outsource a an agency that will take my calls
and they will let me know if there is an
absolute emergency where I need to work but you know the here's the five or six criteria that have to be met for an absolute emergency so it could be that you you know you hire out a calling agency it could be that you you trade services with somebody else right you get for doctors and and y'all say hey
all of us are going to take one day off every week
and except one of us will be on call for all four of us you know or there are so many ways to make this happen.
[21:34] Really has to start though with this decision of I'm going to take a day off and here's what I found Brent is most people will say how I can barely get everything done now how in the world am I going to.
Take a full day off and get it all done and that's the beauty there's this thing called Parkinson's law
which says work expands to fill the time allotted and so if you give yourself 168 hours of work per week guess what your work is going to expand to that size but if you say I'm going to work six days a week
I'm going to figure out how to take a seventh day off then work will shrink.
[22:10] To fill the time that you've given to it so interesting you know it's funny this this idea of just committing and just deciding that this is going to be something we're going to do this
is something I used to tell people when I used to coach I still do Financial coaching but when I used to teach Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University in my church you know we would work with a lot of people that were really struggling with debt
in a big way and I don't mean like student loans but I'm talking like you know credit cards car payments payday loans and people are just mired in a hopeless cycle of debt and one of the first things we would tell them is look you've got to decide
that you're just not going to use debt as an instrument of wealth-building anymore because it isn't working
for you and so you know one of the first sessions we would do we would get have people get out their credit cards and cut them up and you know it was like Anna
declaring an official moment where we're just going to say stop you really have to make that.
Declaration I think a lot of times we just get in our heads and think oh I can't do it I mean if I don't do it who's going to or
you know if you know it's got to be done we have this we have this burden with guilt we had the shame and you talked about that in the book.
In chapter 4 you talk about some inhibiting beliefs that prevent us from getting unbusy so what are some of those inhibiting beliefs that that are stand in our way.
[23:24] Yeah so as I was researching this and and what shocked me is I thought busyness was a calendar issue right and we just have too many problems
and at the heart of it though it's really this this mental in this emotional.
[23:37] Issue where we have three beliefs that we have three I call them inhibiting beliefs they might be true but they're probably holding you back inhibiting belief number one is I need to be more.
Right there it's this identity
issue of I need to be a better doctor I need to be a better spouse I need to be a better fill in the blank right so I need to be more the second is
I need to do more now that one normally follows the first one right so I need to be more so what's my solution to that I'm going to do something about it so the first
is about identity the second is about.
Activity and then the third is about getting stuff it's called I call I need to get more and this one really has kind of two different Expressions sometimes it's this
economic expression I need to get more stuff right I need a bigger house I need the white picket fence I need a nicer car and need a boat right all those things so we think in terms of I need to get stuff
but there's also an experiential element to this of I need to get more out of life
and so we plan more we you know we get our kids involved in every activity they can do their in soccer and basketball and in horseback riding and in karate and in violin lessons right and we're doing all of those things work.
[24:58] Acting them to get more
out of life but these three inhibiting beliefs I need to do I need to be more I need to do more and I need to get more are really the things I found keep us trapped
in busyness and when we begin to replace those inhibiting beliefs
with empowering truths then it begins to break away so for example if if I'm thinking about you know gosh I want my kids to be involved in you know fill in the blank with all these things that I want them involved in there's this inhibiting belief of I need to get more experiences for them which makes me a taxi driver
but if it's if I replace that with my kids will live a much more
full life if they have a depth of relationship and more time at home okay that's an empowering Truth where then I can say oh that changes the way that I allow my family to get involved in activities
it's really interesting and as you're describing these three inhibiting beliefs as I'm thinking about them
you I think we very often will tend to think of these as accelerating beliefs.
[26:00] Writing I want to be more well that's a not necessarily A Bad Thing it may even be a good thing you know you're you want to live up to more of your potential you want to be
more productive and more valuable and provide more meanings to other people and then you want to do more right so you want to accomplish more things and then you want to
figure out how to how to accomplish those things so you have to get more stuff in order to do that so I think a lot of us probably hold onto those beliefs as these are actually
positive things to be promoted as and like you said I think it's interesting to think of it from the opposite polarity that it
doesn't actually accelerate us it actually Keeps Us trapped and on this cycle of busyness without actually generating the kind of productivity that we're looking for.
Yeah yeah and I think a key question to ask in there would be does this belief stem from Hope.
[26:49] Or does this belief stem from shame so hope is going to say you know when you wanted to be a doctor it was
probably because you there was a sense of hope I want to help people I want to do good for people right and so there's this sense of
hope that you have that's driving you to be more what happens with busyness is those beliefs are driven by shame it's not I need to be more because I have more potential or anything like that it's what's wrong with me
that I'm not living up to my potential what's wrong that I haven't gotten this stuff
yet and so it's really shame that's driving us to become busier rather than the sense of hope which says you know I like to say when it comes to hope I can do anything I want you can do anything you want you just can't do everything at once.
And so it's hope is all about saying.
[27:43] I can do anything I want what's the one or two things that I'm choosing to give my time energy attention to right now so that.
I can become those things so that I can do those things hope and shame have two very different effects on us
okay so well let's take that and get practical on it for a second so let's start to apply some of these Concepts now.
In later in the book I think it's in chapter 6 you start talking about deconstructing unwanted commitments and so let's let's look at this as a practical actions exercise so you get there's people listening to go in okay.
Garland I'm with you I'm too busy I'm spinning a wheel I'm like a hamster just running around in my cage so
how do I get unbusy so what are some of those actions that we can actually take to free up time during our week yeah so deconstructing your unwanted commitments with the promise I make is if you go through this exercise it'll take you probably about an hour to do which is which let's be honest that's a lot of time but
if you do this exercise and you give your attention to it it will free up 5 to 10 hours per week.
[28:45] For the next year okay so one hour to get 250 hours back that's a good return on your investment of time here so so what does deconstructor unwanted commitments look like there's a few steps to it the first thing that you do
as you go through and you list all of the commitments that you have in your life and I really encourage people to get nitty-gritty
in this right work is not a commitment like you want to think about all of the various aspects of work that you have to to do whether it's the meetings you have to attend the conference has you have to go to the patients per day how many patients you're trying to see
all of that so step one just list out all of the actions and the commitments that you've made step number two is you beside that you list out how many
hours you typically spend on that right you can do it per week per month however you want to do it but what you're doing there is you're looking at how much time you're actually spending on something
third step is you're going to put one of three phases beside each of those commitments you're going to put a happy face
and the happy face means I love this this commitment ads.
[29:56] Energy to my life it makes me happier and more energetic when I do this right so there is a happy face there's a sad face and a sad face means this commitment sucks the life out of me I hate doing it
I cannot bear it my life would be so much better if I got rid of it
and then the third face is just a myth face it's kind of a straight lined smile kind of look and all that means is I don't get energized and I don't get depleted I do it and I go on with my day.
[30:26] Here we found is the more that you can get rid of the sad-faced activities
and the meth faced activities then the more energy you're going to have the more time you're going to have and those and then you're spending more time doing energizing thanks so how do you begin to do that
go through all of your sad face and meh faces and you're going to make one of four decisions about what you're going to do
with that okay decision number one is you delete it
Hugo I don't need to be a part of this anymore maybe you're a part of a medical you know Association that has a yearly meeting and there's no consequences for not showing up right and so you go I don't need to do that conference anymore or you know I'm part of a book club and I don't need to go to that
anymore okay so you delete it from your your life the second option is you delegate
it to somebody or right so that could mean that you're giving that to an assistant you're Outsourcing that we like we talked about a little bit before but you're saying this sucks the ever living life out of me and if I give this to somebody else or pay somebody else to do this it'll make my life.
[31:31] The third is you negotiate so negotiate means you find something that you love to do.
And you find something that somebody else loves to do and y'all trade like hey
here's something I hate but you love to do it and here's something that I hate but you love to do it let's switch you know kind of negotiate a way around this so that we can both begin doing more things that we love to do
those are your three best options right delete it delegate it or negotiate it your fourth option is to look at it and go okay.
Right now I just have to keep it right I just have to keep this for now but if you can minimize those
then you're you know you're going to get rid of so much.
[32:15] So many of your commitments the final thing that you do if you figured out you go back through the negotiate the delegate and the delete things
and you determine what's my next action to do that okay so again if it's a book club just making this up hypothetically you're part of a book club it sucks the life out of you but you feel like you should go because your best friend is leading it you're going to eliminate that from your life what's your action
you're going to call up your best friend and be like hey man I'm trying to
get some things out of my my life that are over committing right now and I'm just not going to be a part of this book club anymore okay simple phone call boom.
You've eliminated that from your life those are the steps to deconstruct some unwanted commitments okay so that's really practical and
I like that you included the acceptance thing at the end because there's going to be some things that don't Jazz it's up or genuinely or really frustrating but.
They're important or necessary for a season for career growth or for.
Just managing a business running the day-to-day or whatever but hopefully we can start moving towards some of the negotiating and delegating you know down the line.
[33:23] Yeah okay so now let's flip the tables a little bit so we're talking about this as as individuals so
what do we do to get unbusy now let's think in the context of
of our teams so for folks that are leaders or who were running a business we've got dozens to maybe hundreds of team members to be thinking about here and so if this is good for us then we've got I've got to believe there's going to be good for our team but I can see a very tricky balance you have to strike here because you need your team
to be working hard and being productive and you know a lot of times those are going to be.
High stakes high stress jobs especially in the medical field so how do we encourage our teams to be productive.
Without becoming overcommitted and burning them out how do we do that
yeah so I would give to suggestions to this and again you're going to have to customize some of these to your practice and the way that you do things but the first is
getting crystal clear on the highest priorities.
Of every person's role and responsibilities right so even sitting down and saying these are the five most important things that you.
[34:34] So my assistant and I meet on a weekly basis we talk a lot more frequently but we meet on a weekly basis and that's one of the things that we'll do every week is say okay there's the possibility of having way more to do than the hours that you have in the week.
So these are the three most important things that I need you to do or these are the what we have
about every year we go through and we'll say these are the five things that absolutely must be done on a weekly basis right so getting crystal clear with your team what are the highest priorities for each role and responsibilities
that takes some time to do but it creates so much Clarity and freeze up so much time because people can begin knowing you know this is what I need to do and this is what can get pushed off until later the second thing that I would encourage
is learning to build really strong boundaries and boundaries are going to look different for people but I encourage three types of boundaries okay and again you're going to have to adjust these a little bit but the first is what I call an end of work boundary.
[35:35] This is when you say to your team members this is when your job ends
right or maybe they determine it for themselves but this is when your job ins on a daily basis so at 5:30 p.m. no matter what
your day is done okay so an end of job or an end of work Foundry s is helping them think through an end-of-day boundary so an end-of-day boundary is when they get home and they say at this point in the day this is when
productivity around the house has to stop like so for my family it's 9 p.m. if the kitchens not clean and the dishwashers not unloaded at 9 p.m. oh well we're going to get it done tomorrow right it's just a way of building a mental
barrier and saying this is when when we're finished and the final boundary to help people.
[36:22] Develop or what I call task boundaries and a task boundary are those things that you
I absolutely hate to do and they usually because you hate doing them they usually take a lot longer to do and so for a task boundary you actually want to shrink the amount of time that somebody has to do it
you know if somebody has paperwork that they're having to file through insurance agencies and they hate doing it then say okay you've got to get this done in 45 minutes or less
and then again work expands to fill the time allotted so the things we hate tend to take a whole lot longer man this is
super practical this is really great stuff well I wish I had you know another three hours to discuss this but then we would have no reason for people to buy your book and I want people to go get your book because it is.
[37:07] A super super useful tool for folks so if people want to learn more from you want to get connected to Advanced leadership get the book how can people connect to you
getting unbusy is available at Amazon Barnes & Noble all those places if you'd like to get an assigned addition of it if you go to kill busy.com.
Kill busy.com I will send you the book for free
if you'll pay for the shipping and handling and I'll autograph it and all that stuff if that's if that's important to you and so I'd love for people to just just go there and grab a copy of the book and hopefully change their lives to be much more purposeful
productive and peaceful not as awesome you can't
say no to that so soon as you're done listening to this episode you need to go and pick up a copy of the book go check out his website he's got some awesome content there the book is getting unbusy 5 Steps to kill busyness and live with purpose productivity and peace and this is dr. Garland Vance Garland this has been absolutely fantastic conversation I think
that we as Physicians desperately need
to heed this information this is stuff that we are all terrible at and we just need to get better and I think that will go a long way to helping the the epidemic of physician burnout so thank you so much for coming on and
and coaching us and teaching us today I really appreciate you joining us my pleasure Brent thank you for.
[38:26] Music.
[38:32] I love dr. Vance's advice this is an episode that I know I certainly needed to hear this is probably one that I need to listen to about every six months just to remind myself how important it is to stop getting busy.
And instead like he says get unbusy this is a constant struggle for me I'm forever fighting to avoid saying yes to too many good things.
[38:54] You know I find that it's very easy for me to say yes out of obligation or Duty and then I find that I just can't spend time on things that really matter to me.
So that's going to be one of my big goals this year getting unbusy.
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[41:30] Music.