The “4-Hour Work Week for Physicians – how about 40-hour work week?
Category: Physicians in Business
Here is my Assistant, Kelly Johnson, who not only handles a huge number of administrative tasks for me, but is also an important “voice” of my company and brand. She is my right hand partner, even though I’m on the West Coast and Kelly is the Rocky Mountain area.
There is a book that is all the rage called “The 4-Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferris. The premise of the book is that you can outsource or delegate much of your work and focus only on the essentials, thus reducing your actual working hours to the bare minimum.
If your product, like Ferris’s, is nutritional products that you sell online, a 4-hour work week might be feasible. For a busy physician, getting to a 40-hour work week would probably be a triumph.
The book does have some great ideas, though, for physicians who have launched professional services businesses, such as healthcare consulting, coaching, advising or speaking. One of his ideas I implemented myself several years ago, and is one I routinely recommend to my clients and participants in the Physician Coaching Institute: Hire a Great “Virtual Assistant”!
I’m getting better at “outsourcing” to Kelly, and while I don’t anticipate having a 4-hour work week any time soon, I do plan on spending more time on my strengths: coaching, writing and creating.
-Thanks Kelly! You’re a gem!