The Dr. Chris Griffin Show – Season 1 Episode 5

“Multitasking is a lie” and here’s another one for you, “You can do two things at once but you cannot focus effectively on two things at once.” Now who said that? 

Welcome to the Dr. Chris Griffin Show. Your resource for leveraging systems and technology to easier workload, increase productivity and provide you with the time off you deserve to live the life of your dreams. It’s time to practice productivity in the passionate pursuit of a better life with your host, Dr. Chris Griffin. The doctor is in.

Yes, yes and welcome back everyone. Now that was a little bit of a tricky one, huh? A little bit of a tricky quote there. It could’ve been a few different people. So let me go ahead and just fill you in. That was none other than Texas real estate agent extraordinaire and also New York Times bestseller, Gary Keller. Who wrote an amazing book. I’ve got to say, it’s called The One Thing, the surprisingly simple truth behind the extraordinary results. Okay? It’s an excellent book I’ll recommend that book for you. We’ll try to get a link for you down at the show notes if you want to check it out yourself. It’s one of many books that I have acquired through the years and read through at break neck speed but I’ll tell you that one is the one that I certainly stopped at a few times to smell the roses because it’s a tremendous book and I’ve found after researching him a little bit that before this, he had only published a real estate book and I have absolutely a zero and I mean zero interest in real estate books. But you know what? This one thing book is pretty darn good. So pick one up if you get the chance. Get an app book or a kindle book or however you want to read it.

So today’s episode, the name of today’s episode is Calm Your Stormy Practice with one thing, okay? Sort of play off that book but also you know, it’s Springtime in Mississippi. So it’s not a stormy season. I guess I had that on my mind. And also no matter how good of a manager you are, how good of a doctor, how good of a dentist, how good of a whatever, how good you are of a practice manager, you’re going to have some stormy seasons come through your practice and also your life. And so I thought this was a pretty good episode to dive into some things and really share with you the number 1 thing that we did to calm our stormy way of practicing. And we’ll get to that a little bit later in the show but today, you are going to learn how you can run a very highly productive practice while not violating a law. Now what law might that be? Well if you read this book, if you’ve read this book, if you get a chance to go read this book. There’s a law that’s coming out these days. You know every time you pick up a paper in neuroscience and stuff like that. They’re doing research all over the place that suggests that this American idea of multitasking, which would be, I suppose the idea would be that multitasking is essential if you want to be successful. Well it’s really not only is it not successful, it’s also not possible. Right?

And so there’s a law out there that pretty much says that multitasking is no good because it is not possible. But I’m going to teach you guys today how you can run a very productive practice and a very busy practice. if that’s the way you choose to practice; without breaking that law, without violating those rules. And also how you can harness the amount of amazing power of focused multitasking, okay? So I have named something now. Not only are we not breaking the law of multitasking, we’re out here naming stuff. Boom! That’s just the way we roll right? Focused multitasking, now I hope no one has that trademark, because I haven’t ever heard the term but I just did and just pulled it out of thin air as I was writing up the show notes for this episode. But there is a thing we do called focused multitasking. And we teach it, believe it or not. We’ve been teaching it since 2008. So good grief, it’s been 8 years now. This thing will allow you to unlock your practice goals if you’ve hit a plateau, if you’ve hit a sort of a stumbling block or a block aid. Whatever kind of synonym you can come up with there. If you’ve hit something like that, and you just cannot get passed it. You’re just really, really, really struggling and you just want to hit this goal but you’ve always had it in your mind but you cannot seem to try this. Try this focus multitasking we’ll be talking about here in a bit. It’s really amazing! It’s really good.

Now and I’m telling you, I learned it from a doctor. I learned to kind of, I mean it’s kind of a base knowledge of it. Of course, I expanded on it and I feel like we’ve almost perfected it in my practice and I’ll be sharing that with you today. It’s pretty awesome! And after you learn this, you will be able to solve most of the road blocks that are out there keeping you producing, underproductive, not re-allowing your practice to reach the high level that you would like. Right? So let’s dive right in. Let’s do a little background before I get in all these fancy solutions that we’re talking about. Let’s talk about the multi tasking. Now there’s multi tasking but that’s really a myth. Okay? From what I’ve read, in current referee litterateur, there’s actually no such thing as multi tasking, however, there’s certainly something called switch tasking. And that’s really what you’re doing when you think you’re multi tasking. So I’ve always been the kind of guy that said, I wanted to, you know I thought I was so brilliant that I could actually watch TV and study at the same time for a test, right? It’s really not what I was doing. I was really watching TV a little bit and then I was studying a little bit. And I might have been on it in rapid sequence Back and forth but if I had focused all of my attention on the studying or on the TV watching, whichever was more important at that time, either of those tasks would’ve been done better than what I was doing.

Now how I got through school and got to this point? I’m not sure because I certainly have never really focused on things the way I probably should have. But recent neuroscience proves that you will almost always, always finish to independently focus tasks quicker, you know if you’re doing like one at a time, that’s all you’re focused on than trying to do both at once. It’s every time guys, it’s every time. So and if the tasks that you’re trying to accomplish are complex, that just makes it that much harder. Okay? It’s just that much worse. So that is, that’s the deal. So if you’re out there thinking, okay Chris, well thanks a whole bunch! So I guess we’re in the wrong profession, right? Because I can’t just sit down in the cubicle and focus on this one project for two hours and get done with it and take it to my boss and say “Didn’t I do a good job? I’m so focused and awesome.”  I’ve got a practice to run. You know I’m trying to see a patient, I’m trying to numb up a patient that’s very difficult to deal with. I Guess someone is not paying their bill in the back. The hygienist is screaming at me, the hygienists are doing their own thing. You know how hygienists do? They just do whatever they want to do all the time and I don’t know what I can do to single focus things in my practice one at a time. That’s just not happening. Or maybe you’re one of these kinds that got a practice like a cosmetic practice and you’re seeing one patient in the morning, one patient in the afternoon. Or like a military doctor who’s a friend of mine who said, they actually had a quota of 2 patients in the morning and 2 patients in the afternoon. And I mean that’s, well you can do it then, you can do that.

Yeah if you’re in a modern practice and you run it at a reasonable rate without a whole bunch of advance services. Then I think you’ve got to take this and you know, say “Wow!” I mean I bet most of the day I’m trying to multitask but it’s just not possible. I mean, when they’re trying to numb somebody and while I’m doing that, I’m thinking about the cram preps there next door that I got to get to. I’m thinking about the lab case that I’ve got to send off for and we take a shade on that. It’s how the porcelain going to match and all this. I’m trying to think to get my lab first and get the whitening cases poured up. I mean I just don’t know. So I’m constantly multitasking all day.

And at the end of the day, we have an okay day, I feel pretty good about myself and I think “Wow, you’re a pretty good multitasker.” But now you’re telling me Chris, that multitasking’s a myth, what I’ve been doing has just been a sham. I’ve been fooling myself and everyone else. And so how am I supposed to run my practice now? I just don’t understand. Well let me introduce to you your salvation. Okay? Because a few years ago, we came upon this truth and I had to… you know I had to take deep look inside and I had to admit to myself. “You know what? You know Hoss, you admit you’re super productive. You’ve been thinking you’re some kind of multitasking freak, super hero freak in nature.” Well you’re really…you’re not. Thank God! And you probably have been hurting your efforts because you’re just trying to multitask all day long. And don’t our patients deserve a 100% of our attention? And I’m actually, that is actually something I’ve taught since 2008 and I’ve always had trouble trying to reconcile a busy practice with the fact that I knew that patients deserve 100% of our attention at all times.

And so, we actually came up not only with the term and a theory, but we actually put it into practice. So I came up with this term called Focused Multitasking. How how’s this, how’ this work? So it’s really not multitasking. So I’m not breaking those laws. I’m not violating the myth of multitasking. I just called it multitasking because it’s the common usage term. That’s what people would call what we do but you as the individual doctor, you have the power to change them. You know, you can change the way that it’s perceived then actually create a situation that’s ideal or very, very much better than historic multitasking; a lot of us do. And a lot of the way that we do that is divide up complex procedures which we have a bunch up, and you do too in your practice every single day. So we divide up these complex procedures into very small independent chunks. And then, we execute chunk after chunk after chunk after chunk. Okay so let me go into little details. So you’ve got a, you’re doing Crown prep, okay? You’re doing a crown prep and in one room, you’re doing an emergency exam in another room, and down the hall, you’re supposed to go check your hygienist out and doing a few exam on that patient, okay? After the hygiene appointment, well you’ve got 3 things going on at once right? This sounds bad. It already sounds like this is multitasking. Well guess what? It becomes focused, what I’m calling, Focused Multitasking. If instead of worrying about those 3 things at one time and thinking about all 3 at one time, you just chunk it out.

So on the crown prep, you walk into the room, you’re going to focus on that patient with 100% of your focus and you are going to give an injection. Okay? You talk to the patient and do a little chit chat, and check through medical history and make sure everything’s on the up and up. And you’re going to give an injection, you’re going to give the best injection you can possibly give. You’re going to give that injection, and give that anesthetic without any regard, whatsoever, for the patient across the hall waiting on your exam that’s in pain or the patient in the hygiene room who’s getting ready down there. And once you’ve given that injection, and you leave the room, you’re no longer going to think about that patient and take them back to him. And you’re going to cross down the hall and you’re going to talk to that emergency exam, you’re going to find out what’s wrong with them. You might order some x-rays and while you’re in there, you’re going to absolutely focus 100% on that patient. And then you’re going to leave the room and you’re going to forget the patient for a few minutes and you’re going to go down the hall, you’re going to check hygiene and you’re going to give them 100% of your focus for that procedure. Okay? And you go throughout the day and you just focus on little chunks at a time.

So to the outside world and everyone else that looks like you’re multitasking, but as we all now know, you’re not multitasking because it’s really impossible. I guess it’s much closer to switch tasking, but the way we’re describing it we’re focusing as we do it. Okay so in that way, we also don’t violate our own personal code of providing each patient 100% of our focus while we’re with that patient, it’s not that I feel like it’s absolutely essential. I will not take shortcuts on that, that is 100% the way it’s got to be. Okay? Alright, so that’s how it operates and practice that can be productive and yet focused. Now how exactly did we harness this in our practice and that’s what we’re going to talk about now. In our practice, well let me take you guys back a few years. So this is a little bit of a funny story, I would assume that my friend does not mind me telling the story on the radio. So back in 2005, it was an interesting year. We were trying, I’d actually come to the conclusion that in all cosmetic practice, it was not going to work in Ripley, Mississippi. Now some of you out there who are a lot brighter bulbs than I am, would probably come to that conclusion a lot sooner but I’m stubborn and bull headed as they say around here. And I wanted to make it happen. I wanted to be known as this great cosmetic dentist through Ripley, Mississippi and just show everyone it could be done if someone went to work and study hard enough.

Well somewhere between the year 2000 and 2005, you know it became obvious to me that was not going to happen. And so, you know, I said “Okay, what do we need to do? Because I do not want to live a life where I’m not productive and successful you know I have goals and I would like to meet financial goals, personal goals, achievement goals, and so I decided that I just wanted to be very, very good general practice. And you know, not be this amazing, famous, cosmetic guy but however, be a very well educated general dentist who could do a you know, good percentage of almost every procedure while we’re referring to highest end stuff. And so I embarked on a journey all over the country to find doctors who represented different aspects I wanted to learn. Well this so happened that my good friends, Dr. Steve Deloach, Dr. Pat Clark and myself, we were riding to Atlanta Georgia taking on a course on ortho and one of it, I think it’s me. It’s always me. Right? I’m the guy that studies CE, I was just that guy. So I always came on trips with these stacks of CD’s and nobody would want to listen to them but I kind of forced just to listen to one or two on a road trip right? So I pulled out this CD, and one of them was a Dr. Vince Monticciolo and he was in New Port Richey Florida. You know, and so we go t the course, we listened to the CD on the way down there. It was awesome! I mean we were so, all three of us were like “Wow!” This guy knows his stuff. He sounds super awesome, we want to go learn from him.  And so I called him up and I scheduled for not only us three, but I think 5 more that are good friends who graduated from Tennessee together, to go. Now we did. Some of us flew, some of us drove. We played golf, we stayed in this amazing Country Club down there and played golf and went to his office for a full day. Really, Vince was such an awesome guy, such a nice guy, such a smart guy. It just blew you away how intelligent and what a great dentist he was. So while we’re down there, you know, we made friends with him and it was a great day. And we all took away tons of just valuable information.

And now Vince, he was into things at that time we we’re not ready to get into but some of us got into it later but like obvious sedation and you know, crazy really complicated implants, stuff like that; stuff that’s taken me 10 years to really get into. But one thing I knew I could do and I could take away, was he had lot of operatories but things weren’t running really smooth, I mean it’s really amazing how smooth of an operator this guy was and so one of the keys I thought he had was just a little bitty like a white board. Not even a whiteboard, it was just like a piece of white laminated wood or something on the wall that had a glossy surface and they were using dry erase markers on it and some of the assistants were just writing down what was going on, where they need to go, what patient was wearing blah blah blah! And it was a little bit chaotic but boy they were using that thing and they were hopping. And there was a scene I said, “Boy this was brilliant! I’ve never seen anything like this.” And so you know, I took that concept and I brought it home. We started working with it and you know first thing I did is put a big old white board into the hall of our practice and we used it to start writing on it.

And as time passed, it became more and more obvious the things we should write on it and the things we shouldn’t write on it. And over the course of a couple of years, we modified and modified until we think we came up with a pretty darn efficient way of doing it. I actually even came out I think in maybe 2010 with a product that I sold dentist when I go speak at lectures and I would sometimes offer this manual in these DVDs of called “The Route Board”, that’s what we called it because it routed me from place to place throughout the office. This thing, I mean I’m telling you, it is a lifesaver. So I took Vince’s initial concept and I sort of blended it with the surgery boards I’ve seen in hospitals and so what you have is you have this board. That’s a route board for lack of a better term and we actually have 3 columns on it. One column’s priority, one column says procedure and one column says place. And so you know in our office, we’d number the operatories right? And so I guess I have 9 ops. That’s not to say that I suggest to have 9 ops, just for the sake of argument, we do have 9 ops. And let’s say that I’m in a room doing something and I come out in the hallway and I find a board and I look at the board and it says, priority number 1 is for me to go...