Becoming The Dentist You Were Meant to Be - in 10 Days a Year

Focus on what you are good at. That’s advice you hear a lot, and in fact there is something to be said for the “hedgehog” philosophy of playing to your strengths. But if you are really going to grow and improve and get the most from your life every step of the way, you can’t just be satisfied with focusing on what you are good at now. You also need to have an eye on what you are going to be good at next.

That’s where the frontier is—just beyond the limits of what feels comfortable now. That’s where the path to greater success lies. To get there, you have to overcome some natural inclinations to stay safe. Think about a novice swimmer stepping out into an ocean. He is comfortable and feels safe as long as he is in the shallows and his feet are safely on solid ground. As soon as he ventures into deeper water and he can no longer feel the sand beneath him, panic sets in and he immediately turns back to where he can find solid footing. It’s just a natural human instinct—one that applies to many areas of our lives. As soon as we get out of our depth, we want to turn back. But if that new swimmer knows in advance that he is going to go into deeper waters—if he has a swimming instructor by his side and he expects to venture beyond his existing comfort zone, he is more likely to proceed with confidence, or at least with determination.

In other words, if he approaches it with the right mindset and preparation, he has a good chance of testing and surpassing his previous limits. When you think about it, this is how the process of growth happens in many areas of life: by testing limits. When it comes to physical fitness, for instance, we grow our muscles through resistance training, by consistently pushing ourselves against perceived limits. You don’t get better in the gym by doing only what is comfortable.

The same is true in life. It is true in dentistry. So what will it take to get to this point where you are continually poised to do new, exciting things? The answer is: more than what most dentists do, but less than you would think. Most dentists spend about $900 a year on continuing education and professional development, and they complete their obligations in the most convenient way possible, dropping into state dental meetings and picking up credits here and there.

But if you are really determined to expand your abilities in a systematic way, you can’t expect to accomplish all your goals over the course of one weekend. To go back to our original proposition, what if you spent 95 percent of your time focused on what you are great at? That would still leave you with 5 percent of your time to devote to what you can be great at. That’s about ten days a year, not counting weekends. (Of course many high-level dentists do more than that, and it may well take more of a time commitment at first to get to the point where ten days is enough. But every dentist should target at least ten days a year to focused professional improvement.) These are the days that will get you to the next level. Ten days a year can make you into a whole new dentist.