Busy Dentists: Here’s a New ‘Bucket Challenge’ for You

A lot of busy people I know have a bucket list. Except it is not the typical kind where you catalog the wonderful and inspiring things that you hope to do in this lifetime.

The kind of bucket I am talking about is the one where you put all the things you don't get to during the course of a day so that you can deal with it later. Things like bills to pay, emails to reply to, journal articles to read, charts to review, patient follow-ups to do—things that busy dentists deal with on a day-to-day basis. No time right now; put it in the bucket.

It's easy to see how this happens—as our lives get busy, it often seems like it's always a matter of just trying to survive the day, so it gets tempting to push things aside in our quest to reach the end of the day.

It's a curious attempt at time travel—trying to use time that you think you will have tomorrow to revisit things that you didn't do in the past. It is an approach that is impossible to sustain, however – especially for busy dentists. Like all time travel attempts, it remains science fiction. What's most likely to happen is that the contents of the bucket will continue to grow, and inevitably, important things will get buried or lost in there.

A New Kind of Bucket Challenge for Busy Dentists

The only way out of this is to clear out that bucket once and for all and make a pledge to yourself to empty it regularly. That means that every time you have the impulse to drop something in the bucket you stop and give it one of three designations: do it, appoint it, or get rid of it.

• If it's something that will take just a few moments, do it. Why let something take up residence in your life if you can mark it with done right on the spot?


• If it's something you truly don't have time for now, appoint it. Don't let yourself be satisfied with a vague promise to do it later. Decide when it will be done and hold yourself accountable. If it is important enough to be deserving of your attention, it should be important enough to schedule.


• If it isn't important enough to be deserving of your attention, get rid of it. Purge or delegate.

To all the busy dentists reading this article, consider this a new bucket challenge. Dump out that bucket. Stop the cycle of borrowing from tomorrow to do yesterday's business and live life in a forward trajectory with clarity and purpose.


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