Over the years, I have helped therapists free up so much time and energy to focus on creating a vibrant practice that fits with their desired lifestyle outside of the therapy office. Honestly, some of the strategies I teach take awhile. These are “long game” strategies because they are tied to major shifts in how therapists approach their work. Little by little, changes are implemented that have a huge impact.
However, if you are a therapist who is feeling really depleted the longer game strategies might not be the right fit and could contribute to more overwhelm. This week’s post is for you!
- Take 5 minutes to plan your administrative time.
- Clean off your work space.
- Encourage clients to start using your client portal regularly.
- Unsubscribe from email lists that no longer offer you value.
Here’s a list of four 5-minute tasks therapists can implement to free up time immediately:
Take 5 minutes to plan how you’ll spend your administrative time this week.
When therapists start the week off by planning how they’ll spend non-client work time, they save themselves the time and energy of thinking about what to do multiple times throughout the week. We are trying to avoid decision fatigue and just get stuff done!
I suggest prioritizing the tasks on your to do list and blocking off time on your calendar for this week’s top priorities. You can still be flexible and move those time blocks around, if needed, but you will be more efficient in getting things done as you won’t be deciding what to do next over and over again.
Examples of tasks that got space on my calendar when I did this type of planning today: writing projects, working on recredentialing with an insurance company and closing old files. This is all above and beyond the normal time I have blocked off each week for documentation or responding to emails/voicemails.
It may take you a little longer when you first start planning your week in this way, but as you start to establish new routines this will definitely become a 5-minute task for most therapists.
Clean off your work space.
If you have a cluttered work space, you are likely wasting time looking for things or inadvertently neglecting items that need your attention. Spending 5 minutes decluttering and putting things back where they belong can have a huge impact on therapist overwhelm.
Tip: If your desk is pretty clean, take a look at other areas in your physical space.
For example, the bag I use to carry non-clinical items between my home and office can accumulate lots of miscellaneous items if I don’t clean it out regularly. Also, I often slide paperwork that requires later follow up into my planner, but can find my planner getting pretty thick from time to time.
Encourage clients to start using your client portal regularly.
If clients are using the client portal to reschedule or make payments, you’ll save so much time by cutting down on the back and forth of playing email and phone tag. I try to take care of as many scheduling and payment issues as I can during session, but for those that need to be addressed outside of session, it is more convenient and efficient for clients and therapists if clients are using the client portal as much as they can.
Tip: You can create a script to use in reminding clients to use the client portal.
Unsubscribe from email lists that no longer offer you value.
Email inboxes can be a huge time suck for therapists because we may find ourselves distracted by emails that are not relevant to our priorities. This week, as you work through your email inbox, I encourage you to ask yourself if the email lists you are on are adding value to your current work or not. Unsubscribe from those that have not been adding value for a while. Less email coming into your inbox means less to manage.
In an upcoming post I will share more tips for creating a solid system to manage your email inbox, but for now start here. If you unsubscribe from two email lists for five working days and each of those email lists were sending you one email per week you’ve just cut down on 10 emails that won’t be in your inbox next week.
Which 5 minute task will you choose to begin with to free up more time?
5 minutes at a time therapists can free up more time!
It’s well worth spending twenty minutes this week working on these four 5-minute tasks.
The amount of time that you reclaim will exceed the twenty minutes you’ll invest.
You will build momentum for some bigger shifts which will allow the vibrant therapist you are to shine even more fully.
I’d love to connect with you to brainstorm some additional strategies that will allow you to find more ease in your practice. Claim a complimentary 20-minute Vibrant Therapist Clarity Call here.
Take Care,
Sarah