How To Avoid Burnout

Hi, this is Dave Kats from Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you. More and more we hear therapists that join our organization get full very fast and they're seeing as many people as they can handle and they're peddling as fast as they can. Then, the next stage beyond that, if you're not careful, is burnout. How are you going to avoid burnout, or if you're in burnout now, how are you going to get past burnout?

The answer is, first of all, you have to adjust your hours. You have to work early or late, but not both. Now, I don't care if you work neither early or late, but some of you have when you're working four nights a week that just does not work. It's going to lead to burnout. Maybe you can work one night a week. I had one therapist couple that said, "We don't really care if you build our practice. We just want you to get us back in control of our life. We work four nights a week until eight o'clock. By the time we get out, the last patient is out at nine o'clock, and we got school-age kids that are at home and we are gone four nights a week." They joined. I said, "The first thing we're going to do is we're going to cut down, and instead of going four nights a week, we're going to go just one night a week late and we're going to quit the rest of the time. We're going to quit at five o'clock and take our last patient so we get out at six o'clock." They said, "Oh, we can't do that. The busiest time that we have is from 8:00 to 9:00." I said, "Yes, that's true, but if you closed at 8:00, it'd be from 7:00 to 8:00. If you closed at 6:00, it'd be from 5:00 to 6:00. It's always going to be those precious times are going to be the ones that people want, but they will mold and work with you."

The first thing you have to do with burnout is work early or late, but not both. You can go in later and work a little later, or you can go in early and get off a little earlier, but don't burn the candle at both ends.

The second thing you have to think about as far as burnout is concerned is you might want to think about hiring help. Now, there's two ways I talk about hiring help. One, you may be hiring an assistant to help you. It may be a virtual assistant. It may be part-time. It may be somebody that's only going to work for a certain period of time like til the end of the year and then leave so you can see how you like it. You should look at some office help if you really are feeling that burnout.

The second thing you should do, and this sounds strange coming in a business technique, but you should think about using help at home. Help with your housekeeping, help with your lawn service, and things like that. I find it interesting that one therapist was mowing his lawn. They were mowing his lawn for him for $33 and he instead mowed his own lawn. I would think that if you could make $200 doing a counseling session, you'd make that $200 instead of thinking that you were saving money by not paying the lawn people $33. Find help at work, find help at home, and utilize them completely. The next thing you have to think about doing if you have burnout is think about exact times when you're going to take off, when you're going to spend some time on vacation, when you're going to get away from everything, and don't have a packed vacation. Have a very simple, laid-back, easy vacation. I think you'll find that if you do these things, it won't necessarily cure all your burnout problems, but it'll go a long way to helping you get where you want to be as far as getting past the burnout problem. This is Dave Kats. Thanks for listening. Know that we are here to help! Visit Therapistconsultants.com to get started today!