Dental practice management for more time off

I have often said that the ideal life consists of 365 days of equal value every year. In order to achieve that, you have to get out of some of the rigid mindsets people tend to have about time and how we spend it.

One of those mindsets that needs to be broken is thinking that we have to live in a Monday to Friday, eight-hour world. That may hold true during the early stages of a dental career, but most dentists who have reached a point of where they are putting in fewer hours often have much more flexibility than they imagine with regards to how to go about putting in those hours.

Consider the dentist who goes down to working a four-day week. What do they do with that fifth day? In most cases, it just gets absorbed into their weekend. They might do a little accounting or review some cases, but they basically treat it as a weekend day.

When you think about it though, there are 52 of those “fifth days” in a year. That’s the equivalent of over 10 weeks of time in practice. Those days could be redistributed in the year in a way that makes life incredibly energized, rather than just disappearing through the cracks of a weekend.

For instance, what if you did a two-week rotation, working Monday to Thursday one week and Tuesday to Friday the next? Every second weekend would feel like a week off. Or how about doing Monday to Friday for three weeks and then taking the fourth week off? Think of how much easier life could be if you planned those off-weeks strategically to coincide with family events and other “away” time demands. You could even do an eight-week rotation in which you work Monday to Friday for six weeks and then take two weeks off. That basically gives you a vacation every couple of months. 

I realize there are other considerations involved here, such as getting dental patients and team members to adapt to a new system that breaks the mold. But I can tell you from experience those obstacles are usually not insurmountable once you have made up your mind to optimize your calendar.

The point is, a day is a day, and they should each have equal value. If you are lucky enough to be a dentist and practice owner, you have the ability to arrange those days – and live your life – in a way that makes the most sense for you.

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