Same Highway, New Sign: The Cost of Inaction.

 While clearing out drawers for a renovation, I found an old journal entry from 2021, written back when I was still a clinician describing compassion fatigue and a caseload with no room left for me. I thought the answer was simple. Build my own business, get the flexibility, control my own cash flow. It was not that simple. I built the business and ended up on the exact same highway, just with a new sign on it, still carrying everything in my head. In this episode I walk through what actually changed things. The cognitive lens that has let me build a multi six figure clinic, bill 10 to 15 hours a week, and still clock off for dance parties with my daughter. I am teaching exactly how I did it in my masterclass on the 24th of June at 12:30pm AEST, recorded for replay if you cannot make it live. 

Link to Masterclass: www.imogenot.com.au/masterclass

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Cognitive Capacity Chat. This is the podcast for the therapist ready to think beyond the therapy room. I talk about our cognition as our foundation, not just for our clients, but for ourselves. Because the way we think, organise and live directly shapes our clinical work, our capacity and longevity in this profession. I'm Imogen, an OT, here to bring you practical conversations that fit into real life. This podcast is for the therapist who wants more depth, more clarity, and more life. Welcome. Hello, it's Imogen and I am back with another episode. And this week I wanted to talk about the cost of inaction. I, because we're renovating, we were clearing out our drawers and I found my old journals. Now I don't know about anyone else, but journaling is not a habit that I routinely have. It's something when I I only journal when I really feel like the noise in my head is really, really loud and I need to get pen to paper and get it out of there. So when I was journaling, so when I was looking through my journal, I was diving back into what it was like as a clinician and reading back through old entries, I realized where my head was at when I was a clinician. And I'm going to read you one entry that I think really stuck with me because it was in 2021. So this was five years ago. Um and I only had, if it was five years ago, how many years experience did I have? A handful of years of experience. And I was already saying, I think of late I've got compassion fatigue. I think I feel burnt out from always needing to help, help, help, and not feel a sense of fulfillment from billing hours. I can see that I could have have less fatigue and more life with running my own business. And this is great because I love that I wanted to develop a business, but what little old me didn't know was that the fact of running our own business comes with the need to manage your brain and manage what is in your brain. And that is what that clinician is currently struggling with. That is what I need to work on to stop feeling like so overwhelmed, so busy. There was a handful of journal entries that were like, I rested this weekend, but I felt really guilty that I didn't do any extra work, or I feel really guilty that I didn't for my clients because I don't have enough time. So I thought the answer was simple. I thought if I get out, build something on my own, if I own my own practice, I would have the flexibility to actually have a life and have control over my cash flow instead of someone else's billable targets. And I think in the private practice landscape, that is often a discussion among clinicians and it seems so quote unquote easy. But when I actually was in it, um, I realized that I probably was working in the most rigid job I'd ever had because I didn't actually use the skills that I taught my clients every day to hold more. I was still carrying everything in my head. I was still putting up roadblocks, I was just different. There were still potholes. I had just relocated the highway but had a new sign on it. And so when it actually clicked that I just need systems through a cognitive lens, I need to work out how I can protect my own capacity. And how do I actually think about my thinking? I could do so much more without it costing me everything that I had. And I think this is true for a clinician, a community therapist at any stage in their career is that if they have uh if they have the knowledge of functional cognition, how they can optimize, optimize how they work, how they can regulate better, handle their emotions better, how they can problem solve easier, make decisions quicker, still have that passion for advocation that they did when they came in. You will be able to move that needle and also still have that personal life and balance that you were craving when you went out on your own or that you currently are in your position. I feel that if I could go back to that clinician, I would be telling her to think about how she's operating her work. Because for some reason, we are gifted a caseload and we're gifted a calendar and an email. And our employers don't teach us how to manage the complexities of our work, manage the capacity to communicate what's appropriate caseload size. When am I going to get my case notes done? For some reason, there's an unwritten rule that therapists need to bill. So, therefore, that equals they need to be client-facing or they need to be writing reports. And without the knowledge of what actually enhances your capacity or what things are bringing you down on the daily, like being responsive to emails and checking them consistently and being hooked to your emails is an attention grabber. You are going to have such a hard time diving into the higher level thinking that you need if you are constantly being grabbed at by your emails. But I don't feel like anyone teaches that in that moment that you need to work in a way that honors your brain and your cognitive capacity. But what I want to go back and tell to her, tell her is create action because the cost of inaction, the cost of not actually engaging in learning something new, developing something new, increasing your capacity is you're not learning anything. The idea that I was just I I ended up getting another role after this um position. And it wasn't until I had Evie that I decided to go out on my own and start a business. But I could have been, I'm just doing the calculation, two years ahead in my business. I could have been learning what I am learning now in business. And if you run a business, you know there's lots of learnings. But I could have also engaged in improving my capacity through cognition and felt so much different. Felt like I was present to learn the professional development, felt like I was able to give back to my clients and not just feel overloaded. I just wish that I could go back to her and say to her, make review yourself functionally like you do all of your clients, and what are your barriers? And critically analyze yourself like you do with all of your clients. What can you do that is going to enhance you your own workload? Because that's exactly how I've landed in a space where I can hold so much. I run a busy clinic, I have four occupational therapists, two admin supports, I run multi uh multi-six-figure business, and I clock off with Evie and have dance parties. I feel regulated, I feel present, I feel like I have capacity for complexity. I'm still billing around 10 to 15 hours a week. And I just love educating others on this. I'm constantly thinking about different ways to enhance my team members' capacity, my coaching clients' capacity. I sat with someone for a whole hour fitting out a notion template to enable them to hold more for their personal life. That is what I love, love, love to do. But if you're someone who's listening to my podcast and agrees with what I'm saying, thinks that I am articulating exactly what you're feeling, that noise in your head that you went out on your own as a as a business owner because you felt like you wanted that flexibility and you didn't want that hierarchy of needing to hit KPI and report to exec and go performance reviews. Good on you. But how are you organizing things? How are you making sure you are still holding that clinical integrity? How are you making sure that you are able to go and get NDIS registered if you ever needed to because of the landscape that we work in today? How are you making sure that you can clock off? How are you making sure if you, God forbid that you don't, end up in a hospital bed for six weeks, that your significant other can come in, reply to your emails that are outstanding, note what is needs to be handed over to another clinician and or back to the support coordinator without even needing to ask you a question. They can just open your laptop, work out that there's a task management system, and go from there. So this is exactly what I'm teaching in my masterclass that's coming up next week, 24th of June at 12:30 Australian Easter Standard Time. I uh have decided to record it as well. So even if you can't attend it, it will be live in the recording for 24 hours. And I truly hope if this episode resonates with you, that you are able to attend, because I am teaching you exactly how I did it and the systems that I use and the organization's tools and how I got to where I got to. And I honestly want every community therapist to feel like this because I know that we do such impactful work, such amazing work for our clients. And if I can create more capacity for you, you're going to be able to better service our community with your amazing clinical lens that you have. I just also really want you to have a life as well. And I so I need you in that room. DM me masterclass or follow the link in the show notes to get there. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you in the next episode.