How to Optimize Your Time with Creating Your Not to Do List

Hey there, and welcome back. I'm Dr. Vince Leone, executive producer and co-host of the Practice Builders Podcast. With my partner in crime, Dr. Kyle Pankinen, we deliver proven strategies to help you grow fast, specialize with confidence, and build profitable staff-run practices. Let's go ahead and dive into today's episode now. Hello and welcome to the Practice Builders Podcast. My name is Dr. Vince Leone.

Hey, and I'm Dr. Kyle Panknin, and we're excited for this episode. You're excited, we're excited you're with us and listening to this. This podcast is growing, and Dr. Leone is going to introduce our topic of the day.

It really is growing. And, um, before we get into the topic, highly recommend if you could and you're a listener, go give us a 5-star review, share it with a friend, um, and, uh, you can find us Um, on YouTube at Specialized Practice, on Facebook and Instagram at Dr. Vince Leone. Dr. Pankin, do you do any social media? Do—

am I on social media? Just, just, just Facebook. And I have my own podcast too besides this one.

Yes, you do. Treat the Cause, baby.

Treat the Cause with Dr. Kyle Pankin. You can find that on Spotify. We have literally— oh boy, I bet I have over 100 episodes now.

So are you serious?

Oh yeah, yeah, I have a whole bunch of them. I do it every week, and all the way from just about every chronic pain condition that you can think of to a whole plethora of functional medicine topics are on there too.

So amazing, I love it. Um, doctors could probably get a lot of value out of that as well, I bet.

Doctors could get value out of that because if they're looking for protocols or insight on how to handle some of the more challenging conditions that come in their office. They're going to learn quite a bit from that. And also, if nothing else, just directing their patients to that for maybe conditions they don't want them to— the doctor maybe doesn't want to treat, but they want to guide their patient in the right direction on a certain condition.

Yeah, 100%. So, that's Treat the Cause. Let's dive into today's podcast. We're going to call— we're calling this How to Optimize Your Time Creating your not-to-do list. It is your not-to-do list. And Dr. Pankinen, this is something that, uh, you know, I was taught early on by a mentor of mine. It's, it's served me really well. I know we've gone through this with you and several other clients. Why would a doctor who's trying to grow his practice, right? This is not someone on, on, uh, you know, um, speed or cruise control. This is a doctor that is actively trying to grow their practice. Why would they want to create this not-to-do list?

Well, first, it seems counterintuitive because we all every day have our to-do list, and I have one, and we always, you know, we think it's pretty neat when we feel good about ourselves when we, ah, got that one done, we can check it off, and it's kind of empowering. But what's even more empowering, I have learned over the last few years, is creating a not-to-do list. What is this? And why? It is creating a list of things that, yes, you as you are a smart doctor, you are a capable person, you have many skills. These are tasks that you are capable of doing, but they are not the best use of your time or your skills or your mind that you can, in essence, you can pay or delegate someone else to do. That's going to free up your time. And this can be very liberating.

Mm-hmm.

I remember when this concept was given to me a few years ago by you, I was like, wow, I never even thought of such a thing before. And it was, it was something that stirred in my mind where like, yeah, there's several things in my life that I'm doing that You know what? I don't really, really, really need to be doing this. And I am already busting my butt, working hard. Are there some areas in my life where I could create some leverage and free up some time and some freedom to work on what I truly am passionate about and good at? So, that is kind of the why or the big picture overview of that. Any other thoughts on that, Dr. Vince?

No, I think that is great. To me, the big why is really to give yourself the leverage to grow. If you think about like a CEO of even a medium-sized business, like, you know, they have limited time and they have limited tasks, right? And it's usually managing team, but, you know, they're not, you know, on the phone doing sales, they're not running marketing, they're not, you know, picking up the kids, or maybe they're picking up the kids, but you know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

They're not doing all the, the things that's driving the business. They're optimizing their time. And so what we want to do is model what is working, already working for, you know, the high-level achievers. Now, we understand that you don't have a massive staff, but you would be shocked of how much more time and energy that you can generate, which then you can allow to translate to, you know, strategically growing your practice. So I think that's the why. The benefits are Exactly that, right? You will have more time, you'll have more energy, and you'll probably have more creativity to think in a bigger fashion, think more intuitively, more creatively to solve some of these problems that may be holding you back from growth. And so, now that may be diving into some training program, that may be, you know, investing in more team members, but the benefits are huge when you implement this. So let's kind of dive into some tactical kind of methods of, of how to just get this process started. Dr. Kyle, what, what worked best for you?

Well, most chiropractors in their offices are what I call a jack of all trades. They're, you know, there's some of them are scheduling people, they're answering all the subjective updates, all the documentation on people, they're Taking the x-rays of people, they are checking people out, they're, they're doing some cleaning, they're doing some marketing, they're going over finances with people, they're doing some of the therapies. Well, if you're doing all of that, how many patients can you really treat in a day if you're doing all that? I know some doctors that are just, it's just them in the office. And now, Granted, your overhead is low. I understand that. But could you pay somebody $15 or $20 an hour to take on some of those responsibilities that's gonna free up enough of your time that you can see more patients and generate way more revenue above and beyond the expense of what you're paying that person. So, for instance, most chiropractors, I think, are bogged down with their documentation.

Hmm.

Well, what would be— why not hire a scribe or a CA? That's their job, in essence, is to help you with documentation where they, they take the patient into the room. That CA updates the patient. I'll get all their subjective history and complaints. Then you go into the room, you do your exam and your palpation findings and stuff, and you're just dictating that to them, and they're entering it in as you go live on the fly. You, you're telling them their diagnosis, they're putting that in. You're telling them what you're doing for treatment in the plan part, they're putting all that in. You walk out the door with the patient, Telling them when their next appointment is, and all that's done. All the documentation is done. You may be over your noon hour, recheck the note, sign off on it.

Mm-hmm.

That's an example where you have doctors that are literally doing entire SOAP notes, all the documentation themselves, or they're going home for 1 or 2 hours every night and working on their documentation. That's just an example. Great. It's a powerful one.

It's a great example. I, you know, was talking to a client recently and, you know, it takes them 45 minutes to process a new patient. And I said, wow, uh, how much time are you spending on the history? And they're like, about 20 minutes. Uh, that can be, you know, obviously it bogs down the whole thing. Uh, and what you— what Dr. Kyle had mentioned with the Scribe, it's like, holy smokes, you, you get All that stuff, all the paperwork's filled out, the whole health history is filled out. All you're coming in, it should be 5 minutes. You're verifying this, this, this, and this. And then the last thing is finding the trigger. Hey, what is this taking away from your life? Like, what can you not do because of this condition, right? That's what you want to figure out in the history. Now, obviously you need to know the cause and the severity and all that type of stuff, but again, that should already be available for you. And that trigger— we're going off topic here, but that trigger is what's going— that's what you're trying to give back to them Uh, through the treatment, right? They want to get out of pain, but what they really want to do is get back to doing something, right? Um, but the— I digress. Um, that would be a fantastic way to save time. Now, tactically, how do you start to identify these tactics, uh, these tasks that are not worth your time? First of all, I would consider, just as a benchmark— now, you, these doctors listening, they may have an hourly wage, quote unquote wage, higher than this number. Or it could be a little lower, it doesn't matter. Just use this in your head. If I'm worth, quote unquote worth, about $100 an hour, I want you to use that as your benchmark. Then I want you to start making a list and do a time audit of your day, right? Monday through Friday. And just, you know, every day, every 30 minutes, 20 minutes, write down what did I do that day? And then I want you to take those tasks. So you have, okay, I, you know, answered the phone, I, you know, did SOAP notes for, you know, whatever, an hour. treated patients for a couple hours, um, you know, worked with a staff member. Just list everything that you did that day in the office. We can talk about this at home too, but in the office, make— do a time audit of what you did and how much time that took. And then next to each one of those, I want you to write a happy face or an unhappy face. And what that means is that, that task, right, it either gave you energy Or it drained your energy. Very, very simple. And then I want you to do one more thing. I want you to put $1 sign or $3 signs. In other words, did this grow the practice or did it not grow the practice, right? So, and a good example of that would be, you know, like SOAP notes. Well, obviously that's probably gonna be draining, so you get an unhappy face next to that one.

No doubt.

No doubt. And then, and then that'd be a $1 sign. In other words, you're not signing up a patient, right?

Right.

Now, adjustments would go into the money, the $3 signs. And if you enjoy adjusting, then it would go into the happy face. If enrolling patients into care, if you just sign someone up for a $5,000 decompression plan, let's go. That's a happy face, right? Because that's fun to do. And then $3 signs, because that's moving the needle in the practice. And so what we want to do is take that list. You have your time audit and you have all those little happy and sad faces next to them and all the dollar signs. And you want to circle all the ones that are with the sad face and the no dollar signs and immediately figure out who can I delegate this to, not how I can do this. Who can I delegate this to to get this off my plate?

The big thing there, and absolutely those happy faces, that's the ones you want to then focus on. And how can you get your life To where you're basically focusing on, especially in the office for docs, those maybe 3, maybe 4 or 5 happy faces. And that is the majority of your day that you spend either adjusting, examining, enrolling patients, doing consults, maybe work on some marketing, those types of things. But almost Almost every other thing around the office can be delegated and you can pay somebody to do that. And by you doing those other things yourself, you're probably losing money on that.

I was just going to say the same darn thing. Yeah, you're probably losing money because you're not living up to that $100 an hour level. And in the process, it's also very frustrating for you, which is draining your energy. So what we're trying to do is optimize time and energy. And when you're doing those low-level tasks, whether you think about it or not, 100% subconsciously, you know, I, I don't like doing this. I shouldn't be doing this. It's dragging me down. And so here's the thing is, once you start to offload these tasks, um, man, it's a very liberating type of feeling.

It's very liberating. And it also, it's just going to, it's gonna increase if you wanna go for more volume in patients, it's gonna free you up to do that. If you want to really get good at the niches that we teach, it's gonna free you up to really focus on those and those high-value patients that we all want and desire. It's gonna give you time to become the expert at something that you maybe always wanted to be. Whether it's a spinal decompression expert or a neuropathy or a knee pain doc, it's going to allow you to focus on what you're truly good at and what you're truly meant to do, I think. Some of these tasks that these doctors are doing, it's like I know some doctors that still stand there and do handheld ultrasound on patients.

Come on.

You're kidding.

Is ultrasound still around?

It is still around. And I know some doctors that literally stand there and do it on patients. And it's just, this is a really liberating topic. And this is a topic you need to really think seriously about and do those, write these things down like Dr. Vince was talking about. And you're gonna find that, whoa, There are so many things that I could delegate and free up time for myself. And this is going to make a huge difference in your life, not only in the office, but what about the next area, which is, I think, home, right?

Yes. But before we get there, and we will get there very quickly, is for those doctors that are doing decompression, laser, shockwave, like neuropathy and knee pain treatment, if you're still doing— You're still putting patients on the table or off the table. Like, I talk to these doctors, you know, they're thinking about joining specialized practice and they don't have a tech, right? And they're putting patients on the table and they're taking them off and they're doing shockwave and all this type of stuff. And I'm just like in my head going, my brain's exploding. I'm like, good Lord, you invested all this money into this equipment and you're not investing in yourself to become a true expert and you're not investing in a team. No wonder you're stagnant. No wonder you're stuck. No wonder you're frustrated. No wonder you say decompression doesn't work, or why is this guy making so much money? Well, it's because you're not doing it right. You are not doing the— you're not playing the game right. Okay, I'm sorry, I hate to break it to you, but you are not playing the game right. The way it works properly is you have staff, systems, and technology to drive patient care and to handle patient care. Your highest value activities in these niches Are driving new patients into the office, evaluating new patients like an expert, and enrolling them into care. That's it. And then your staff should be putting them on the table, taking them off the table, right? Putting them on shockwave, taking them off shockwave. It's going to be a huge time crunch and frustrating if you are doing the shockwave or doing the laser or putting patients on and off the table. You're just not going to grow. I mean, I'm just telling you, you're not going to grow. You have to take the leap of faith That you can get more people in and you can hire someone, train them up, and even if it's part-time to start, right? I mean, what is that, $20 an hour part-time? I mean, it's, it's not a lot of money. Train them up and then they can move to full-time, like when you're good and ready. But start at least part-time. Get someone in, uh, and delegate those activities because that's— that, that is your bottleneck. In other words, You are the bottleneck in that situation. And this, this, uh, this kind of tactic here, this strategy of doing this time audit, will start to show you, hey, this is where I'm getting bogged down. But just for those doctors in these niches, if you feel stuck and you're still doing everything, that's why. Hey there, it's Dr. Vince, and if you're getting value from this episode, please make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if If you know another doc who's ready to grow their practice, share this with them. It might be exactly what they need right now. Thank you in advance. And now back to the show.

A couple of, a little bit of a comical thing. Some doctors ask me about, you know, hooking patients up on the decompression table and exactly how you do that. Or are they—

I know exactly what you're gonna say, by the way.

And what lasers, you know, how do you set up a laser on this particular knee and this angle? And truth be told, I barely even know how to turn the laser on. And, and the shockwave machine, I don't— I've never even touched the machine myself. And the decompression, I think other than the initial training I had on it, I don't think I've ever set up in 10+ years we've been doing decompression, I've ever set up more than one patient on decompression.

Yeah.

I have staff that are beautifully and wonderfully trained And they just do it. And you know what? They look at it as more than just a, oh, I just work. It is a career for them. They take joy in it because they are helping so many people. And I remind them often that the work they do in our back office with our therapy areas, how they are changing people's lives. And they just swell up with pride and joy in that because they are. They are really changing people's lives for the good. And I've had one gal that she's been with me for, I don't know, 10, 15 years now. And that's what she does all day long is this. And she makes, I mean, just from a financial point of view, goodness sakes, she makes me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for what?

Don't let her listen to the podcast.

$25 an hour I pay her. It's nothing.

Do not let her listen to this podcast. No, you're 100% right. I'm always shocked when doctors are like, oh my God, it's $20 an hour, $25 an hour. It's like, you need to, you need to think a little bit bigger. You need to think of like, how do I leverage this and make and get a 10x return on that investment? In other words, if they're— if you're going to pay a staff member $2,000 a month, $3,000 a month, $4,000 a month, just be thinking in your head, hey, how do I optimize this position so it 10x's? That when you think about it like that, it's an investment. It's not a cost, but it takes a different mindset. So, let's— I think we were good on that front. I just wanted to— I wanted to bring that up because I literally, you know, talked to a doctor just last week, same old, same old. And, you know, was just kind of one, one doc wonder, wondering why he couldn't grow. Well, that's why. All right. Now let's look at the home life. Who likes to mow their lawn? Now, some people love mowing their lawn. They get— it's like their Zen state. You know, they're going to shine up the mower and clean it up and go out and mow the lawn. Great. If you love mowing your lawn, 100%. If you don't, because I didn't about 5 years ago, I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm done. I'm going to sell the mower. And I haven't mowed the lawn since.

Hired Reynaldo.

And he comes twice a month and it's just done. And oh, by the way, does a way better job than I ever did. That saved me 2 hours per mow, right? So, every 2 weeks, that saved me 4 hours a month. Well, that's time that I can be with the kids or I can go play golf or I can do nothing, right? It's just not be mowing the lawn. So, I would take the same type of approach to the home. around the home. So, examples: laundry, cleaning, lawn care, pool care. I mean, I don't know what else, Doc. I mean—

In Minnesota, snow removal.

Snow removal.

In the wintertime. So, that was the 2 big things I've done over the last few years is I used to do all my lawn care and Help some around the house with cleaning and do snow removal. And now we have somebody does our lawn, we have somebody does our snow, and we have somebody that cleans our home. And just for the stress relief of not having to worry about, you know, treat patients all day, busy in the office.

Yeah.

And now I gotta go home, it's like, oh, gotta clean out the driveway, it's full of snow, or I gotta mow the lawn. The lawn, mildly relaxing, but at the same time, the peace that I have gotten from not having to even worry about it is way, way better trade-off. And you know what? We actually figured it out one year. The amount that we would spend on every year, take the mower into the shop, get it tuned up, get it ready for the season, drop several hundred dollars doing that. Then the time I spend mowing, and then you inevitably have belts that break and Things that go wrong with it, the amount of repairs and maintenance on the lawnmower every year and the time, just paying somebody to do it, we're way ahead financially on that. So, that's a no-brainer.

No-brainer. So, you can take the same approach. It's not really a money thing. In other words, do the happy smiley face, do your time audit at home, do the happy smiley face test. You don't really need to do the money test because you're not making money necessarily. You know, mowing the lawn or, you know, doing the dishes or whatever that may be. But do the happy smiley face and figure out, hey, what am I doing, you know, on the weekends and in the evenings? What do I not like about those? Which of those tasks do I not like? And then start to think, hey, who can I hire to do this? There's tons of people that— whether obviously lawn care, that's so easy to find if that's of interest. But You know, you could find people to do meal prep. You could do obviously find people to clean your house. You know, if if you and your spouse don't want to do laundry, you could certainly find a personal assistant. I have a home assistant. She meal preps. She does laundry. She makes lunches. So you know, there there is someone out there, and I look at this as not so like guys. If you if you want to do this, you should never be thinking like. Am I lazy for trying to hire someone? No, actually, in reality, what you're doing is boosting the economy and you're helping someone else with their life and income by helping. Because here's the thing, for every activity that you don't like, there's usually someone that does enjoy doing that, right? Or they're good at it and efficient at it. And so that's the trade-off. You are helping someone else, you're paying someone else, taking back your time. And again, you can use that either productively to make more money Or you can use it just to enjoy your life more, spend more time with your family or your hobbies or whatever is important to you.

Yeah. I always say there's dignity in all work.

Yeah.

But you as a doc, you need to decide what's the best work that's going to be the best value of your time that you want to invest the most in. And so, there's nothing wrong with doing your lawn or moving snow or cleaning your house or any of that stuff. It's good, honest work. But in order to see the benefits of freeing up time and all these things we've talked about in your life, you need to think hard about giving up some of those things. And you're just going to find that it's going to liberate you in many ways and free up time, free up creativity. And pour back into your life. And that little bit you're going to invest in those areas money-wise, you won't even think about it.

Won't miss it. Won't even worry about it. You'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner. That's what you'll be thinking. Why did I not do this sooner? I wish Dr. Vince and Dr. Kyle had this podcast 3 years ago. Okay. So, here's some action items for you. I would start with work, right? That's going to move the needle the most. And just do your— create your not-to-do list and just, you know, get a little journal and, you know, maybe at lunch say, okay, what did I do this morning? And then at the end of the day, what did I do this afternoon? Do that the whole week. If you feel like it's becoming repetitive, then just do it over 2 or 3 days. This is not rocket science, nor is it an exact science. We're just trying to get you to think about your schedule and figure out what you should and should not be doing, what's going to move the needle, what's not, what's going to give you energy, what is not going to give you energy. Actually drain it from you, um, so that you can make good tactical decisions. So put your happy faces on there, put your dollar signs, and then start to think— circle those ones, you know, with $1 sign and that unhappy face— and then start to think, who can I delegate this to? There's so many opportunities, you know, again, with whether it's a VA, part-time work, or your existing staff where you can find, you know, Good help that is, you know, more than happy to take those things off your plate. So, I think those are the action items. Any closing thoughts, Dr. Kyle?

You know, docs, you've worked hard. You've gone through tons of education. You're continuing to learn. You're becoming experts. You deserve some of this stuff. You deserve to have more time to focus on what you're truly gifted at and called for. And I love what Vince said, Dr. Vince said about paying other people, that stimulates the economy, that creates jobs for people. And so, that's a win-win. And so, I encourage you to take this task seriously and write some of these things out and make some resolutions that you're going to make some changes in those areas, and you'll be happy you did.

I love it. I love it. That's going to wrap it up for this episode, How to Optimize Your Time with the Not-To-Do List. So, hopefully, this delivered some value for you. If it did, please share it with a colleague, someone that you know that would feel like you could— that they would also get value out of the podcast. Again, if you would be so kind, leave us a 5-star review. If for some reason you don't want to leave us one, Hey, send us a message. Why? Because we would love feedback. You can send that to support@drvinceleone.com. So for Dr. Kyle, I'm Dr. Vince. This is the Practice Builders Podcast. We'll see you on the next episode. Hey, it's Dr. Vince again, and hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you're ready to grow your practice fast with high-value decompression patients, then the Decompression Accelerator could be a phenomenal option for you. For you. This is our 90-day sprint to help you scale with proven systems, staff-driven protocols, and full marketing support, and it's all guaranteed. Spots are limited. Head to www.decompressionaccelerator.com to learn more.