Episode 695: Get Out of Your Head and Start Prioritizing

 So many projects, so little time, right? In this episode, Kiera breaks down how to successfully go about prioritizing the tasks in your life. She walks listeners through …

1. Making a list of tasks

2. Dividing the list into chunks

3. Fine-tuning delegation

4. Establishing deadlines and follow-up loops

Remember: Not everything that needs to be done in your life needs to be done by you.

Episode resources:

Reach out to Kiera: [email protected] 

Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast

Become Dental A-Team Platinum!

Review the podcast

Transcript:

music]

0:00:05.8 Kiera Dent: Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent. And I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective. Because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants, where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental, and I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.

[music]

0:00:50.4 KD: Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And you guys, I hope today is a great day for you. I hope that you are just feeling so blessed and grateful for your life. And if you guys want... Something I just started doing, a friend of mine shared this with me, if you guys want, it was a pretty awesome experience for me, especially on days where I just am either in my rut of just moving along or I'm forgetting to be present in life, or I maybe have forgotten how magical life can be, just take some time. It can be while you're driving. You can even put this podcast on pause while you do it. But just... And it's really uncomfortable. [chuckle] At least it was for me. You can do it with a friend or you can do it solo, but just say out loud seven things that you are truly grateful for right now and have it be a very intentional experience. So it could be... I'll use... You guys all know Spiffy Tiff. [chuckle] She's usually one of my top seven. Or just say out loud... For example, if I was doing this today, I would say, "Today, I'm super thankful for Tiffanie."

0:01:52.5 KD: Tiffanie has been my rock through so many things in this company. And Tiff just reminds me to be super happy in life. She always comes with the fun and the zest and makes me laugh, and we'll add the sprinkles. And I'm just truly thankful for someone personally and professionally who I look up to and admire. And I'm especially grateful today that Tiff has just been there through thick and thin with me through all the changes going on in Dental A Team, especially right now. So that would be one of the things I'm super grateful. The next thing... And this isn't meant to be something fast, it's meant to be something where you are intentional about it. So another thing today I'm grateful for is actually this podcast family and being able to meet so many of you and be able to have so many of you share this podcast with other people to bless their lives. It's pretty magical to think about the ripple effect of this podcast. I think we drop one stone of this podcast and think of the millions of people we are able to bless and serve.

0:02:49.7 KD: Another thing I'm super grateful for today is, honestly, my view. We bought a house. I'm a first-time home buyer, guys, at the riffled age of 36. [chuckle] I feel like I'm a little behind in the game, but I am super grateful. I have the most stunning view. And today, I'm looking out my window as I podcast, and I'm seeing our mountain range. Just one of those magical things to look out and see this awesome view. So whatever it is for you, it can be big, it can be small, but saying it out loud and really feeling that, and you do it as a stack. So say those seven things in sequence, and then just take some deep breaths at the end of it, I think it's actually a really awesome thing and experience. I've been doing it for the last couple of days, and I feel like it just puts my head space in a right space of remembering all the things that really are going so well in our lives, because I believe that momentum is real within our lives. So whether it's a positive momentum or a negative momentum, I believe it's real.

0:03:46.7 KD: And I know you guys, [chuckle] like, I stack sometimes in opposite directions where, "Oh my gosh, this didn't go right," or, "This isn't going right," or I'm obsessive, guys. I am a consultant, and I love to find problems and solve them. So sometimes I look for all the problems in my life instead of realising all the great things in my life. And so maybe on your way to or from work, just doing the seven minutes or seven stacking of gratitude and just see how that starts to shape and form your reality. So, today, I just wanted to share that with you as we kick off today's podcast, really hoping you guys, just remember, it's a beautiful time to be alive. No matter what is happening in your life, it truly is a beautiful time for you to be alive. So I'm hoping that you guys are just grateful for the life you're living. And if you're not happy with the things that you're doing, remember, you are the culprit for change. You alone are the culprit for change. So I just hope that you guys are just able to see that and take that in.

0:04:46.5 KD: So what I wanted to podcast today is basically how to prioritise. I think oftentimes as business owners and as team members, there are always so many projects to do. And I think that this is, in my opinion, the game of work and society, of how can we prioritise everything that needs to get done. And so that's really where I wanted to take this podcast today, and giving you guys some tactical tips that have helped many offices we've served, that have helped me personally, that have helped other people of, how do you actually prioritise what needs to get done.

0:05:20.6 KD: And I think one of the biggest things is we gotta start, number one, with you and realising that everything you think you need to do doesn't actually mean just you need to do it, it means that we've gotta figure out what is the top priority [chuckle] and then do it. And it's a top priority that only you can do.

0:05:40.7 KD: So I'm gonna walk you guys through a couple of the different things. So number one, I like to actually see what's on my list. And there's a couple of different ways people do it. Some people like to do a brain dump on a Google Drive. Other people like to have sticky notes and you literally put it up on the wall. Other people like to have Whiteboards, where they write all the things that need to get done. But really, we just need to get that out of your head, because when you're in your head, you're dead. It's one of my favourite lines, when you're in your head, you're dead. So we gotta get it out and on to something where we can see it, and then we can figure out what truly needs to happen. So right now today, we can visualise... Let's imagine we've got all these Post-it notes of all the different things we need to get done. And I don't know where this comes from. This is not my idea. I know, and I should be sourcing it. So just know Kiera is sourcing it by not knowing who it is, but this was not my original idea. I just think it's a really good way to visualise it depending upon how you wanna do it. And it's a sticky note method of like, here's all the things that need to get done, and then we have the must get done and then the future.

0:06:38.4 KD: And Brit and I actually did this for Dental A Team in ClickUp. ClickUp is a great tool. Trello is another one similar. So you can have it all there, you can Google Doc it, you can Trello it, you can sticky note it, you can whiteboard it, you can journal it. I don't care how you do it, but just get all those things there. And then we need to really prioritise looking at that list, number one, before we start to prioritise what things are similar tasks. So let's cluster them. There might be... We could put a heading of like, "These are all the things for marketing," "These are all the things for team," "These are all the things for bookkeeping and taxes," "These are all the things for new hiring." Whatever it is, see if you can cluster, because I think sometimes chunking and putting things together, just like when we do with insurance verification, instead of going one by one by one, that actually takes a lot of time.

0:07:22.9 KD: So let's cluster and chunk, just like we cluster and chunk our insurance verification, or you should. If you are a Dental A Team Podcast listener, you definitely cluster your insurance verification. You never, ever, ever go one by one. That's just your little like Dental A Team angel. I hope you liked my voice change, guys. That's what I would imagine I would be if I was a Dental A Team angel. Okay? Hello. Just kidding. [chuckle] It feels weird, but I hope you guys got a good laugh on that one. I did, and I hope you did too.

0:07:51.8 KD: So after we've chunked them together, now it's easier your brain to sort and process. So looking at that list, then we're going to say, "What of these items could we delegate?" Because so often, I realise when I'm trying to prioritise, so many of those tasks, I don't actually need to do. I just have either, one, done it for so long that I think I need to do it. Two, I'm ego-driven, and I think I'm gonna lose my identity if I delegate it, and I really have to have a hard talk with myself and realise that's not the best for the business. And so for me to get out of my own way, I ask, "Who is the best person in the business to do this task?"

0:08:30.2 KD: And also, I will remind you, do not abdicate or delegate your true responsibilities. I just had this epiphany moment this week. There was a task that needed to be done. I tried to delegate it to three different people, and I had to stop myself and say, "Kiera, who is the right person to do this job?" And the answer was me. "I don't wanna do that job." [laughter] I know. It's one that scares me, and I really wanna delegate it. But we have to be careful that we're not abdicating what we really are meant to do.

0:08:56.7 KD: CEOs and owners, you are responsible for doing those hard decisions, those hard things, calling people, having the uncomfortable conversations with team members, office managers. That is your job. That is what you cannot abdicate or delegate. But other things such as picking up the order, ordering on Costco, having someone clean the Statim, reaching out to this marketing company, taking pictures for marketing. A lot of those things, we could delegate. And there's someone may be better than you that could be doing that. So we look at the list. It's chunked. Then we go through and we highlight. For me, I'm very visual, so I highlight or I sticky-note or move, "Who could these go to that's not me?" So, when I'm going through a list, if I just have it listed, I go through and literally take a highlighter, and I highlight everything, my favourite colour is pink, so I think it's easier, what are only Kiera tasks? So I go through and highlight those in pink first, and then everything else, I gotta figure out who can go. So, usually, Brit's purple. Tiff is teal like that, like Tiffanie blue. Her name is Tiffanie. So, Brit's purple, Tiffanie is blue. Shelbi, she likes pink too, but I like pink. So, Shelbi gets yellow by default, right? So then I can just go through all my people and say, "Who could I actually delegate these tasks to?"

0:10:09.0 KD: And then we delegate. [chuckle] So, we're gonna delegate those tasks, get them off the board, and then have the people we delegated to look at their list and they prioritise that list as well. Just because I give Shelbi a reach out to the marketer, I need a deadline of when I want that done. So Shelbi, or whomever I'm delegating this to, can also prioritise their list. So doctors, when you delegate tasks to your office manager, there needs to be a deadline on there of how urgent is this. For me, reaching out to a marketing company, getting our social media, right now is not pressing, so I could give that a two-month timeline so that way, passing it to Allison, or whomever my marketer is, I can say, "Hey, I need this done. Can you please do it? I need it done by this date."

0:10:51.2 KD: Now, I use ClickUp. That's my one of choice. If I could go back in time, I would probably stick with Asana or Monday. I think ClickUp is a bit cumbersome currently. It's okay. I'm trying to become a grown-up business over here. So, I've realised I need to do it. But for ease and simplicity, I surely miss Asana and Monday. Some people really love Trello.

0:11:11.9 KD: So what I would do is I'd pass that to Allison, and we would put it in our project management software or our sticky note or our Google Drive, whatever you're using, with a deadline, and I need to make sure I've got follow-ups on that. So however your process is, that's a system that oftentimes doesn't allow us to truly prioritise, because we're afraid that if we delegate, it's going to get forgotten and it won't get done. And if it doesn't get done, then I'm never gonna delegate, because I'm the only person who can do this. False. You just don't have a system that supports it. So we need to create that system to support it. So what is that system?

0:11:46.9 KD: Again, you put it in ClickUp, you put it in Asana, you put it in Monday, whatever it is, with a deadline. So if today, I realise, I've got marketing, we need to find somebody to update our website, take new pictures, and we gotta figure out our social media posts, perfect. Three different tasks, all with three different deadlines. Reality is, none of those are super pressing. Those need to be done in about two months. I would set the timeline of two months from now, pass them to set marketer or set person that can do this. That person then puts it in whatever software with the deadline. Then every single Friday, I have office manager send me all of these, look at our tasks and check in with all the team members to ensure all tasks are getting done.

0:12:29.3 KD: That's the system, that's the loop, that's the follow-up. So therefore, we can delegate, we can prioritise, because we have a process of when we check it, how we have the deadlines, and who follows up with it, and then reports back to me as the dentist, the owner, and lets me know, "Hey, Kiera, all tasks are on track. All deadlines have been met. Everything is good to go. And here are the updates of the projects that have been completed." Ooh, something to think about and implement, right? That would be so magical. So that's why people often can't prioritise, is because they don't have a system for delegating that has deadlines and has a follow-up loop to ensure none of them get off-track.

0:13:10.2 KD: This is how we delegate. This is how we are able to prioritise. So like I said, number one, make the whole list. Number two, chunk it all into sections. Number three, we look to see what are your true tasks versus what could be delegated. Then we go into delegation with deadlines and a follow-up loop to ensure it gets followed up on. Now, you actually can look at what's truly your priority. So then, you have a couple of options here of how it works best for you.

0:13:38.1 KD: And I'll just share a couple of different things. When we look at that priority, I don't just... A lot of people like to just check the list, but I like to do it a different way. What's the number one task, if completed, would move us forward the most? Ooh, is that really gross one that you've been putting off for the last like five months 'cause you don't wanna do it, 'cause it feels hard? That's, to me, where we prioritise our time. And we've also gotta have time to do it. So oftentimes, what I see is people are like, "Oh, I'm gonna get all this stuff done because we think we can multi-task, so we feel very busy, aka, trying to be productive, but we're not actually getting anything truly done of substance. So instead, we're not actually moving the needle forward. We're just busying around, but never actually moving it forward.

0:14:21.3 KD: I think about it, like you're spinning your wheels, you feel like you're making progress, 'cause you hear the vu-uh, but you're not actually moving. It's an illusion of moving. Whereas if you take that top task and get it done or at least start making progress on it, things will happen. And that's where you guys can build in a power hour every single week to work on these priorities.

0:14:42.8 KD: So I like to... When I'm looking at my list of true Kiera projects, I like to see, "Okay, how much time are all these gonna take?" And I put it in order of, "Which one's gonna be the most moving me forward to the least?" And then I allot times for how much they're going to take. So for example, the number one thing you might need to do right now that you know if you got this done, it would move forward is reviewing all of your treatment plans in case acceptance 'cause your production is low. That's the number one project that only you can do, 'cause you need to look for the patterns. You can definitely do it with your treatment coordinator and your doctors, but that's the project that really means to get done. After that, you need to write a protocol for how we do our new patient exam, and then we also need to bring on... We need to hire a dental assistant. But that dental assistant, we know they're going on maternity leave in about six months, so not as pressing for me to do, but things that realistically I need to get done. Also word to the wise, you do not, as a doctor, need to be hiring a dental assistant if you have an office manager. Just putting that plug there. If you don't have an office manager, yes, you need to do it.

0:15:46.0 KD: So we've got... The number one thing is reviewing case acceptance. Number two is going to be putting the ads out, probably, 'cause we know we've got six months to go. And then we also know that we need to write that protocol. So now, I'm gonna assign times. How long is it actually gonna take me to review, I've got them an order, number one is case acceptance, number two is writing that protocol, number three is hiring. Those are my true items that are gonna move the business forward and the things only I can do. So then I say, "Alright, reviewing case acceptance realistically is gonna take me... Honestly, going through all of it, looking through it, two hours is probably how long that's gonna take me." Writing that protocol, probably about an hour. And then placing the ads, realistically, about 30 minutes to place the ad. But then I know it's gonna be... I set it in motion and then I need to review ads. So, that's honestly, gonna take me probably about three hours per week to do.

0:16:40.7 KD: Well, now I just took that daunting, terrifying task of case acceptance that felt so big into a two-hour chunk that I could then block into my schedule. So I always... For Kiera Dent, this is my model. I always schedule the big things first. Those things have to get done in my schedule, and I have to find time to do them. Otherwise, it's never gonna move forward.

0:17:02.1 KD: Writing that protocol, super easy. I could do that in between patients. No problem. Like, drrrrrr, easy. I don't necessarily need to have it in there, but I do need to have a deadline of when I need to get that done. So we then go schedule them into our schedule. For me, I like to have deep work or business admin time where I will put these projects in there as a must that I have to get it done. For me, my standard is once it's in my schedule, I don't move it. I do have a big golf right there. [chuckle] That's gonna make you really think about where you're going to put it. But the bottom line is, having that consistency is how you can prioritise.

0:17:37.5 KD: So I hope I walked you guys through how to get it out of your head, how to delegate it to other people, how to have a follow-up loop on there, how to chunk tasks so you can really see them, and then to put them in order of what's really going to move the business forward the most. And I think that question is better than "What do I need to do?" Because "What do I need to do?" often helps us not see what's truly a priority. What's going to move the business forward the most helps us prioritise it in the most productive way. You can take that one step further of, "What's gonna move the business forward the most? And then what's my time-to-benefit ratio?" Maybe building out an associate packet onboarding, that's gonna take me like, realistically, 15 hours. So, what's my ROI on that? Do I need to block those 15 hours? And they're broken into chunks, obviously. No one should be working on something for 15 hours straight. You'll never get it done. Or do we need to just move that forward in a different way and break it into smaller pieces? Big daunting tasks might need to have sub-categories on them. So if that associate onboarding was 15 hours, let's definitely break this subcategories, 'cause that's much easier for your mind to do.

0:18:44.1 KD: Then we schedule it. And then for me, I go back to my list. So I'm only focusing on one or two projects on that day, instead of a huge list. I know where that list is in case I finish my project sooner, but I know where it is, and I have... For me, I review it every Sunday and check to see what's going to move my company forward the most that needs to get done, and I schedule that every single week into my schedule.

0:19:09.4 KD: So, hopefully, that helps you guys on how do I prioritise? What things do I do with the system for you to follow and a loop for you to close it? This takes discipline, you guys. This is something that does not come easy. This is something that is constantly refined and improved. And it's not something where you'll be like, "Yep, I've got it. I'm amazing at it." Because you're also a human, and humans don't like to do things sometimes, and humans say, "Oh, my gosh, I know I need to do it." I think really training yourself that, 3-2-1 go, I go when I say I'm going to do this. I don't allow myself to have excuses, I don't hit the snooze button, I don't push it off and think about it. I get it done. I'm disciplined. And so I know when I say, "Kiera, let's go," Kiera, doesn't hesitate. I go, I execute and I move forward, even if I don't wanna do it. But that's training constantly. That's reminding myself that this is who I am and is becoming a characteristic trait of me, not just a hope and a wish.

0:20:04.0 KD: But I do think you need accountability on it, you do need someone to help you with it, and then you just need to own it on yourself to say, "I'm going to be this kind of a person, and I'm going to do it." I really do believe that if we act in this regard, you will get more done, be less stressed and be able to really make traction and progress and know that you're actually gonna get things done without being stressed out. Not taking it home, not doing it when the kids are asleep, you've got a set system in your day where you can get these projects done. If that sounds good to you, then I think the opportunity here is to actually execute on it.

0:20:41.8 KD: So, I'm going to encourage you to put this into play, whatever works for you. And if you need somebody to help hold you accountable, or you need someone to help you structure it, 'cause oftentimes, I hear things on podcasts and I'm like, "That's such a great idea, and I'm going to do it in, never." So if you're that person, reach out. Let's not wait. Let's get this done so that way, you can truly prioritise, delegate, execute and get things moving in your practice and in your life.

0:21:06.3 KD: Reach out [email protected] or go to our website, click Book a Call. I would love to help you. I think you can do this on your own. But if you know you're the person who can't do it and you want other side of success, reach out. Reach out. But make sure you do something today. You're here. I guarantee, this is gonna be one of the most-listened-to podcast of how to prioritise, because all of us are looking for it. All of us hear it. The real question is, are you actually going to do it? Because doing it and executing on it is what separates the successful from the failures.

0:21:42.6 KD: That is the key. We all have the same information. It's just a matter of what we do with that information that counts. So I'm gonna encourage you, do something today and make it count. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

[music]

0:21:56.8 KD: And that wraps it up for another episode of The Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And we'll talk to you next time.

[music]