You’re an RMO. You’re a registrar. Or a consultant. You come to work each day, to a job you enjoy. It has its ups and downs like all jobs - you’re resilient, you get the work done. Go home, relax, eat, sleep, repeat.
But there are two types of work that we all do: proactive work and reactive work - you might think of proactive work as your work. As you become more senior, the more you recognise the importance of your work in reaching your own goals - and the goals of your organisation. Where you are going and what you are building for those around you, medicine as a whole and the world. Longer term, bigger picture stuff.
Let’s face it, our jobs are busy and we’re never short of things to do. It doesn’t only expand to fill the time, it expands way beyond the time we have. And this is why you have to:
- Spend time clarifying in your own mind what you need to be proactively working on
- Carve out some time each day or week to prioritise your work
- Learn techniques to be immensely productive
As a junior doctor, your work includes everything you’re doing to build a career, improve the care your teams deliver and to move you closer to your personal goals. Your work is proactive, not reactive and includes:
- The projects you are passionate about, the one you will present for peer review, the ones that are aligned with your WHY
- The projects you’re working on that make a difference to lots of patients who use your service
- The projects that will build your CV, increase your visibility to your boss or advance your career
- Personal development - clinical and other essential skills you’ve identified for growth and success, e.g. ALS pre-reading, learning to use SPSS, implementing a GTD strategy
For all of us, this includes taking time out for just thinking, for reflecting on things, bringing all your experiences together and working out how to move forward in the areas that are challenging you.
Even if we define our priorities for our day, often other people’s ‘urgent’ needs come along and derail our plans. Unless you intentionally block off time in your day or your week for longer-term, meaningful work, it will always get crowded out by the small stuff.
Of course for us, the small stuff isn’t usually small, and all the other things we do are absolutely important too. We can, however, be intentional in how we plan each day. So that when the end of the month comes around, we’ve all edged that bit closer to our important goals.
“You are the steward of your own potential. The resources within you—and around you—are only tapped when you recognise their value and develop ways to use them... The greatest leaders will be those most capable of tuning into themselves and harnessing the full power of their own minds.”
It’s very easy to be constantly sucked into a day and a week of busyness, bouncing from one urgent thing to the next. The best creative minds agree that giving ourselves time to think and focus on our own priorities - as well as the needs of others - is the key to long term productivity and success.
As Henry David Thoreau said, “It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”