Manage your time like a CEO: How to prioritize your work day

Dentistry’s a hard job. Dentists have to wear many, many hats. As a dentist, we’re producing chair-side, but at the same time, many of us are expected to be our own CEOs. So one tip that works well for me is to start thinking like a CEO and what CEOs are really good at is prioritizing their time.

Prioritize your time

So what our group has come up with is what we call an urgent/important list. So we have these four different categories, urgent/important, urgent/not important, not urgent/important, and not urgent/not important. It’s a to-do list but it’s a prioritized to-do list. For example, urgent/important, maybe I have treatment planned for Mrs. Jones under that one. Or not urgent/important, read Pete Dawson’s textbook, meaning I don’t need to get that done today but I definitely need to get that done at some point.

Evaluate your progress at the end of the day

A key here is to take your list at the end of the day, cross off the things you have checked off. The things that are remaining, re-prioritize the next morning when you fill out your next sheet. In other words, something that may be not urgent but important can become urgent and important after a couple of days. Or something that might be urgent/not important might be just something you cross off and understand, hey, my life, my business, my world is going to go on even if that doesn’t happen.