Did you ever have somebody tell you about something they are doing in practice and you realized that you once did the same thing in your practice…but now you don’t? And it wasn’t because it wasn’t helpful or profitable to your practice. It’s because you, well, you just got out of the habit. Perhaps you once did weekly lay lecture/health care talk and you didn’t stop them for any particular reason but you just don’t do them anymore. Maybe you went on vacation and never started them back up when you returned. Maybe you just got out of the habit. Maybe it was sending out monthly newsletters or advertising in a local publication. Perhaps it was having a topic of the week to talk to practice members about or giving out certain literature on the first 10 visits. It’s really easy to get out of good habits. On the other hand, it’s hard to break bad habits, like reading the newspaper between people in the morning when you could and should be doing something to promote your practice. I hate to think how much good, productive chiropractic work I fail to do in the office because I get on the internet just to quickly check my e-mail or visit a message board and then get caught up in them or some national or international news story that pops up on the screen. While the computer can be a great time-saving device, I often wonder whether it steals more time than it saves. The computer should be freeing us up to do more, not robbing us of the time to do what we used to do. I suppose we should be thankful we don’t ordinarily have televisions in the office too!
So what is it in your office that you once did to build your practice that you don’t do any more because you got a little lazy, don’t have the time or just plain got out of the habit? If it’s laziness, well, get yourself motivated bubba! If you don’t have the time delegate some activities to free your time a cut out some of the non-productive time (like the computer) in your office. If you’ve gotten out of the habit, well get back in. It may be something you have forgotten you even did. Go back and look at your practice, analyzing the things you were doing, the things that helped build your practice and get back into the habit of doing them.