You Have Tried Everything…So Why Are You Still Staying Late?

You are working at full speed, rushing to see patient after patient. The last patient has finally left, but your workday is not over. The inbox is overfilled. The incomplete charts you temporarily ignored are staring at you. Fatigue is setting in. You have read all the tips you could get your hands on. You optimized the templates. You even took a charting course. Yet you are there, facing your unfinished work. “I’ve tried everything – and nothing works,” you keep telling yourself. You feel hopeless. You feel betrayed, because you thought that if you worked hard, if you ramped up your speed, for sure you could leave work at a decent hour. What if that thought, “I’ve tried everything and nothing works”, while understandable, is actually keeping you stuck?

“I’ve tried everything” feels almost like a fact. Physicians are trained to solve problems efficiently. Not completing your work in a timely manner feels like failure. The brain tends to generalize things. When something does not work, it is easy to conclude that nothing is working. Then you start to notice and focus on what did not work, while overlooking what is working. That is a heavy toll on your emotional weight. It is exhausting and suffocating. Exhaustion narrows creativity and masks possibility.

Is it true that you have tried “everything”? The answer is almost always a “no”.  This is not an opportunity to criticize yourself for being wrong. It is a chance for you to explore with curiosity. There are countless combinations of workflows, boundaries, mindsets and systems. It is not that nothing works. It is that you have not yet found what works for you.

“Nothing is working” easily falls into the belief of “I am failing”. Instead of thinking that you are failing, or that any of it is failure, you are collecting data. What did not work as expected taught you something. Each attempt refines the next as you gain more experience from experimentation. Embrace lightheartedness. Welcome curiosity over judgment. Choose playfulness over pressure. The lighthearted attitude helps you see even more possibilities.

Allow yourself to think outside the box. Get beyond the usual advice. Sure, faster typing, better templates and working harder may help to a certain extent, and those things are not the full solution. What about even broader possibilities of creating a workflow redesign, setting clear boundaries with the patients and your staff, improving team dynamics and delegation? What about looking into your emotional and cognitive patterns? Are you focusing on getting everything perfectly done? Are you being over-responsible? The solution to leaving work on time may not be where you have been looking all this time.

There are physicians who leave on time consistently with their work done. Yes, even in busy practices. Seek examples instead of reinforcing limitations. For example, as a hematologist and oncologist, on a busy day, I see close to 30 patients. My patient schedule starts at 8 am and I leave work by 5 pm – without bringing extra work home. If it is possible for someone else, it is learnable and it is possible for you too.

You do not have to figure this out alone. There is no award in creating your path of work efficiency alone. When you try to figure it out yourself, it takes a lot of time and energy, not to mention the amount of frustration you experience. Why not let someone who has already done it help you? Coaching is a great way to cut down your own time of experimentation as you do not have a good direction to start. Coaching is guided experimentation. You get to utilize personalized strategies and achieve accelerated results. Learning from someone who has already solved this problem is much faster and easier than figuring it all out on your own.

When you find yourself thinking that you have tried everything and nothing is working, I invite you to think this instead: I haven’t found my solution yet, and I will. Progress is inevitable with persistence and the right support. Thomas Edison had conducted thousands of experiments before he invented the light bulb. Stay curious instead of defeated.

Imagine yourself finishing your last patient and leaving work on time. You are reclaiming your evenings, weekends and your life. Be lighthearted, be open to possibilities, be ready to try another experiment. How about working with me 1:1? This may be the shortcut you have been missing.