How To Find the Sweet Spot of Work & Life Balance as a Dentist
A healthy work-life balance is one of the most sought-after goals of the modern age. About 20 years ago, it was quite easy to set reasonable working hours, take vacation days, and generally have time to spend with family and friends. Nowadays, however, with the speed that comes with the modern age of technology and the constant need to fulfill relentless ambitions, accomplishing a balanced life can be challenging.
A healthy work-life balance is one of the most sought-after goals of the modern age. About 20 years ago, it was quite easy to set reasonable working hours, take vacation days, and generally have time to spend with family and friends. Nowadays, however, with the speed that comes with the modern age of technology and the constant need to fulfill relentless ambitions, accomplishing a balanced life can be challenging.
Why is Work-Life Balance challenging for Dentists?
Achieving a good work-life balance is challenging for all professions, but perhaps the problem is more pronounced for dentists. This is because dentists who own their private practices generally have 2 active jobs: A dental practitioner and a practice manager, and between these, having time for oneself can be incredibly difficult , but very much necessary. Yes, some dentists choose a more corporate style of running their practice(s), acting more as an owner and manager rather than a practitioner which can make it a bit easier to achieve that balance, but for the average family dentist, the problem persists.
It’s not difficult to figure out of if your work-life balance is impaired. Check these:
Your number of working hours: On average, dentists tend to work 4 or 5 days per week, for about 7 hours per day, which sums up to be about 35 working hours per week. This is a good amount of working time that enables you as a dentist to fulfill your ambitions without causing damage to your physical or mental health. Personally, my sweet spot is 3 days per week. My schedule right now is 3 days one week, then 4 days the next averaging 24-32 hours per week. For now, this schedule allows a nice mix of time focused on work and ample time away from it.
Your number of days off per year: There is no specific number to place here, but on average, at least 150 days off per year (including weekends) is the minimum to achieve a good balance. Because I have a 3 day weekend every week and 2 full mandatory weeks off in a year, my minimum days off per year averages around 170, which to me is a reasonable amount of time on and off of work given that there are 365 days in a year.
Your quality of sleep: All work can be stressful, but dentistry is doubly so. Dentists are usually solo practitioners who spend a lot of time practicing alone, taking on the issues of the practice, their staff and patients. It can be isolating and also mentally and physically taxing. More of teen than not they think about the practice and cases at home (at night) which adversely affects their sleep. Poor sleep quality is a great indicator that you’re working too much.
Your overall general health: Stress is the leading cause of many health problems such as hypertension and strokes. When dentists work too much, that generally means they’re more stressed out, which makes them more vulnerable to these dangerous conditions. A few indicators of deteriorating health such as generalized weakness or constant headaches should be red flags that a different approach is needed.
Here are some tips to help you find the sweet spot of work and life balance as a dentist:
Prioritize self-care: As a dentist, you understand the importance of self-care, but it can be easy to neglect your own health and well-being when you're focused on taking care of others. Make sure to prioritize your own self-care by getting enough sleep, eating healthy, and exercising regularly. Set aside time for hobbies and activities that you enjoy and that help you relax.
Define your priorities: Take the time to define your priorities both in your personal and professional life. Determine what's most important to you and how much time and energy you want to allocate to each area. Make a schedule that allows you to accomplish your goals while still leaving time for relaxation and downtime.
Create boundaries: Creating boundaries is essential for achieving work-life balance. Set clear expectations with your staff and patients about your availability and work hours. It's okay to say no to non-emergency calls or appointments outside of your regular hours. Creating boundaries will help you avoid burnout and ensure that you have the energy to enjoy your personal life.
Delegate tasks: As a dentist, you may feel like you need to handle everything yourself, but delegating tasks to your staff can help you free up time and reduce your workload. Consider delegating administrative tasks or hiring additional staff to help with patient care. This will allow you to focus on the most important aspects of your practice and enjoy more personal time.
Use technology to your advantage: Technology can be a powerful tool for managing your practice and reducing your workload. Consider using appointment scheduling software, electronic health records, and communication tools to streamline your practice and improve patient care. This will help you save time and reduce stress, allowing you to enjoy a better work-life balance.
Achieving work-life balance as a dentist requires careful planning, prioritization, and a willingness to delegate tasks and set boundaries. By prioritizing self-care, defining your priorities, creating boundaries, delegating tasks, and using technology to your advantage, you can find the sweet spot of work and life balance that works for you and your practice. I hope this will help you create a life that you love!
How to Balance Work and Parent Life - Tips from Experienced Moms!
Balancing family and work has become an issue for modern families. It’s overwhelming and stressful, especially when you’re giving more attention to one at the expense of the other. This behavior has led to dysfunctional outcomes like strained family ties, poor physical and mental health, and inefficiency in the workplace. Here are tips from experienced moms to get you started.
This is a guest post by Stephanie Shea
Balancing family and work has become an issue for modern families. It’s overwhelming and stressful, especially when you’re giving more attention to one at the expense of the other. This behavior has led to dysfunctional outcomes like strained family ties, poor physical and mental health, and inefficiency in the workplace.
Balancing these two different aspects of life is therefore essential. The process is daunting but achievable.
Here are tips from experienced moms to get you started.
Prioritize Balance
It’s pretty hard to be everything to everyone. Therefore, making a conscious decision to prioritize work and parent life balance is crucial. Most moms believe you must create opportunities for balance to avoid failing along the way. Making effective decisions about your life will make attaining balance easy, like finding a job that’s not overwhelming or thinking of a family size you can responsibly raise.
Additionally, you can make small changes here and there as your family continues to grow to achieve balance. An excellent example of a small change you can do is requesting flexible hours and reorganizing responsibilities at home.
Talking to your Family
To solve your work versus family conundrum, you’ll need different perspectives. Talking to your family to see how they feel about your work will shed light on their perceptions. They’ll be honest with you and tell you if you’re focusing too much on your work. It will allow you to be aware of areas you need to change. During such moments, try to make them understand your obligations at work.
Having such conversations will make your loved ones feel heard. Plus, they’ll see where you’re coming from as far as your work is concerned. It’s, however, essential to make these conversations constant.
Accept Help
At times, balancing work and parent life becomes difficult. Maybe you’re trying to beat a deadline, which means working till late hours. You’ve already communicated to your family how the situation is at the workplace. It’s now time to bring in help.
Most friends and family are always willing to help. Ensure you seek help from people who can be trusted to do the things you’d normally do. If it's taking your kids to practice or picking them up from school, they should be willing to do them all.
Create Boundaries
It’s essential to establish boundaries between family and work. Boundaries are imaginary lines that protect your work from family distractions while protecting your family from work obligations. It shows what’s acceptable and what isn’t. With clear-cut boundaries, you can easily tell which aspect of your life is not going in favor of your ultimate work-family life balance.
You can make rules like no work-related phone calls at the dinner table or no checking emails on vacations. It’ll make your family feel they are a priority too.
Accepting Work-Family Imbalance Is Inevitable
Are you struggling to balance work and parent life? Don’t beat yourself up; you’ll let your family or work take center stage at times. You can miss a work event when your loved one is sick or miss a couple of dinners to beat a project's deadline.
It’s, however, important not to let this imbalance become the norm. The scale may shift according to the situation at hand. Ensuring the scale moves at the center always should be your top priority any chance you get.
Take Time for Yourself
Taking time off from everything-the work, the family to relax and re-energize. There's no point in pouring from an empty cup. It doesn’t have to be grand; it can be an easy fitness class, following your favorite TV series, or taking a walk to feel the sun over the lunch box.
Going on vacations is also an excellent idea; check out these designer bags for your next vacation here. When you take good care of yourself, you’ll be better positioned to manage your busy work schedule and take care of your family, achieving a balance in the end.
Wrapping Up!
Trying to balance your work and your parenting life is not easy. There’s no right approach to finding this balance. What works for one family may not work for the other. Every family needs to zero down and find solutions specific to their needs and preference.
People who have made strides to balance between work and family life can sufficiently meet both family and work commitments. Working hard to get ahead in life is what everyone desires, but letting it override every other aspect of your life becomes a challenge. There’s nothing that’ll replace all the missed special family moments.
You can never get them back, so be sure to make time for your family even as you're stomping the workplace. Strive to achieve a balance that works best.
About The Author:
Stephanie Shea is a marketing professional who originally hails from Southeast Asia. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends by visiting various natural landscapes and hanging out on beautiful beaches. Besides nature-tripping, she’s also very passionate about writing quality content that helps in building professional relationships with people and sharing informative insights to various audiences interested in different types of topics.
Balancing Productivity and Self Care During Quarantine
It’s easy to separate your work life from your home life. But finding and maintaining a balance between the two can get difficult. While it may seem counterintuitive, taking breaks while working can increase productivity and creativity. It allows your mind to refresh itself after the stress and exhaustion of being “on” for hours.
As we continue to quarantine/practice social distancing and adjust to the new normal of being at home I aim to be as productive as possible. With all this newfound “free time” and not being able to work as an Orthodontist, it seemed like an appropriate time to occupy my days with things that under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have time for. Most of my time has been spent blogging, working on things behind the scenes of this platform, and taking courses on Coursera and Skillshare on a variety of topics ranging from epidemiology, entrepreneurship, and digital marketing/branding. I have also been catching up on continuing education classes, joining zoom conference meetings, working tirelessly in the candle shop (which surprisingly has gotten a lot busier since the shut down), updating (and engaging) on my social media platforms and helping to home school my niece. It has all been tiring and I found myself drained this week.
I shared this on my Candle Company’s Instagram yesterday because this is how I felt. I needed to check in with myself.
It’s easy to separate your work life from your home life. But finding and maintaining a balance between the two can get difficult. With the COVID-19 outbreak, a lot of us are working from home - which means the line between work and home has been blurred. A healthy work-life balance is important to address any stress or anxiety you may have.
I am not a parent but with the experience I have with home schooling my niece, I feel for the parents who have to balance working from home and educating their kid(s). Shortly after making my niece breakfast and getting her settled in to start her school work, my first zoom meeting began but she still required quite a bit of help. I found myself multitasking - helping her with school while trying to pay attention in my meeting. During this time her teacher called (as she does everyday) to recap the morning lesson for the day. The first zoom meeting ended and another one started just as we were scheduled to begin her science session. After my meetings, I fulfilled about a dozen orders from my candle company, ran the packages to the post office, returned home and made lunch(whew!). I was so exhausted afterwards that I ended up taking a 2 hour nap.
While it may seem counterintuitive, taking breaks while working can increase productivity and creativity. It allows your mind to refresh itself after the stress and exhaustion of being “on” for hours. Similarly, taking time away from your desk can shape you into a more well-rounded professional.
With everything going on because of the coronavirus crisis – working from home, finding new routines, and a staying up to date with all that is happening – it’s difficult not to feel overwhelmed. But that doesn’t mean we can’t handle it. Think of this as an opportunity to take control of your stress. While it may impact us all differently, it is important to manage and reduce stress to live a happier and healthier life. Stress is not limited to work, school or family. It is all-encompassing and can be both positive and negative. The best thing to do is to identify the stressors in your life and address them.
I shared this on my Instagram yesterday. At the end of the day, I was happy to have completed my tasks ,even if they weren’t done to perfection.
While accuracy and precision are crucial, perfection cannot be an expectation. Mistakes can happen and should not be something you dwell on. Instead, you should take those situations and turn them into lessons.
Today I am finding balance. I am still being productive but also keeping stress at a minimum.
These are the ways I am balancing Productivity + Self-Care:
I am taking classes on Skillshare - This is an online community of educational tools to spark creativity. Learn new skills like photography, digital marketing, calligraphy, etc. You will get your first 2 months free by using this link. Use your computer or download the app to your phone.
I am taking courses on Coursera - This is an online learning platform where you can build skills by learning from Top Universities including Yale, Harvard, Michigan, UPenn, etc. Sign up using this link. Access courses using your computer or download the app.
I like to cuddle up and relax with a great book. I am currently reading two books, The Upside of Being Down, which seems to be quite fitting for the current atmosphere, and Jessica Simpson’s Open Book which is surprisingly very good!
Taking naps - I am listening to my body and shutting it down when I feel it’s time to take a break. Besides, taking naps increases energy, helps you to be more productive and can fuel creativity.
I don’t always make it outside for a run but I try to stay active with the FitOn app. Some days I do hard core cardio and HITT and other days I take it easy and only manage to do a yoga session.
Affirmations and quotes get me through tough times. I am a big fan of Lalah Delia and currently reading her book and using affirmation cards from Starlight + Love.
Warm bubble baths and candles - At least once or twice per week, I draw a warm bath, light a candle and relax. Candle light elicits calm is soothing and has the ability to help in reducing stress (depending on the fragrance). The warm bath helps muscles to relax and stimulates blood flow.
While it may seem that there is no point in planning, I know there is a light at the end of this tunnel and so I continue to plan. I also keep myself organized by planning my daily activities: blogging, scheduling posts, meeting and conference calls.
In the spirit of transparency: This post may contain affiliate links.
