Wes Read, a CPA and financial planner, argues that dentists should focus their limited time on what they can actually control and what materially matters: spending, saving, investing, and practice leadership. He breaks activities into three categories and recommends building routines around the few things that move the needle on financial independence.
Carrying on the subject of financial independence, I want to discuss a really important subject that I've thought a lot about in my own career and in my own life. Your most valuable resource is your time. You can't achieve financial independence without it. And focusing your time on what you can control and what matters is what produces meaningful life outcomes. Most rewarding experiences aren't just a package deal with life. They are the result of really good decisions, strong habits, goal setting, and most importantly, I can't emphasize this enough, the execution those goals. So let's dig into time a little bit more. You can spend your time in one of three areas, or I'll say that all of your activities and everything you do is sort of spent in one of these three areas. The first is in an area where the activities are controllable, where you control them, but they don't really matter to life in a meaningful way. For example, what you watch on TV is something that you control, but it just doesn't matter what shirt you wear today versus the other shirts in your closet, it just doesn't matter. Whether you choose chocolate or vanilla just doesn't matter. There's an innumerable number of activities that you could spend your time focusing on that just don't matter. The second area is on activities that you.
That matter, as opposed to what we just named off activities that really matter in life, but that you don't control. You may want to control them and perhaps you develop such a successful life that you become in a position of significant influence later on, like a Bill Gates to influence some of these things. But I'm talking to you about the here and now. Examples are world peace, poverty levels, how much your friends earn. That matters perhaps not to you as much, but it matters to them, but that's out of your control. And your parents health, that clearly matters. But by and large that too is out of your control. So we want to focus on the intersection. We want to focus on those activities, those habits, those experiences every day that you do control and that do matter. Some examples are how much you spend. Yep, you can control that. How much you save. Another area that's important, it matters and that you can control. The financial values that you define for your life matter significantly. And you control that. How precise you are, how deliberate you are in defining what your value system is, how you lead your practice, that matters and it matters a lot. And you can control that. How prudently you invest your money, how you take care of your own health, all areas that matter. And there's a Lot of these and it's important that you define them for yourself. And that's where you focus on. As we work with clients, we're trying to get them to move the needle and specifically to move the needle in areas that really have a meaningful impact in their life. And sometimes the needle may just move a little bit, but if it's moving and it's continually moving, then it's amazing what the outcome can be. Now we've noticed those dentists that achieve the greatest success in their practice, then convert that success into personal financial security. They have a very specific way of doing things. They have sort of mechanisms in place to focus their energy on what they can control.
And that wouldn't matter. They schedule their activities, their routines, until they become almost chain reactions in their lives. They build patterns in their practice and in their just their overall life in such a way that those around them are pulled into those patterns. And that's really how vision led practices are built. It's by the doctor. The doctor drives the attitude, the doctor drives the motivation in the practice, the doctor drives the culture. He or she enters the office each day or with incredible energy and optimism and then the patients feel it and the staff feel it and it becomes self feeding almost a cycle and it becomes a remarkably rewarding experience for that doctor. And we see this as we work with our clients, those who have figured out how to channel their energies into the areas that matter and that they control and to see how that converts into daily routines and habits and then the success that comes out of that. It's just a phenomenal experience to witness and to be a part of. As we help a lot of our doctors and as they do so, as we focus our time and energy on what you control and you matter, what's going to happen is that you're going to insulate yourself from the uncontrollable noise and distractions that exist. And there's a lot of that that's vying for your time and your attention. And this is going to reduce your stress and help you prioritize really what matters most. So make a plan for yourself. Now we've attempted to help you by providing in our resource section on the Associates on Fire website, a business plan for both associates and for new practice owners or owners that are about to step into ownership. And each one has a template set of questions that are intended to guide you on those important decision making processes and that will help you focus on what you can actually control. I think they're going to be very helpful for you A couple of my favorite books, too, on this subject are Ray Dalio's book entitled Principles, and another one is Clayton Christensen's book entitled How Will youl Measure your Life? Both great books that have made me think really hard on this subject and how I can apply and my daily activities, my efforts in a way that's going to make my life, my family's life, my life at work, a more satisfying experience. In our next module, we're going to discuss how developing a financial system plays into the concept of financial independence.
