The power of a weekly planning meeting

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Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills

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to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients.

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When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find

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that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research

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program.

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Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit.

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However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

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For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians

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the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

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Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene.

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Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast.

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I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is an absolute pleasure to be talking with you today.

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Thank you so much for listening.

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So today I'm talking about the power of the weekly planning meeting, and I will share

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a session that I had with some of my coaching clients recently, and we talked about the

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weekly planning meeting, and I am excited to bring you this episode, so enjoy listening.

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So we're talking about the weekly plan and why a weekly plan is so important.

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And now I'm talking about it very specifically as it relates to your academic work, but it

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doesn't have to be academic work.

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This is really just, you're a person who has goals.

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You have things that you really want to accomplish.

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And for the most part, the goals don't really happen or they don't move forward in the way

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you want them to, because there's always a million other things that are vying for your

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attention.

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And so that's why it makes sense to plan, because then you can actually move forward

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the thing you really want to move forward.

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So last week we talked about the strategic plan.

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We talked about it as a long range map, looking at three to four months ahead of what you

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want to accomplish, your three big smart goals, and then a realistic look at the tasks that

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make up this big goal.

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For example, you're writing a grant and you know that the grant is due at the end of three

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months, but you first of all have to write the specific aims page, get feedback, rewrite

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the specific aims page, do the background and significance and the research strategy,

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then go get all the other documents.

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So it gives you an opportunity to say, well, the big goal, the big strategic plan is I'm

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writing this grant, but the individual tasks are specific aims, background and significance,

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research strategy, all the ancillary documents.

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And it gives you a realistic plan for what you're going to need to do over the next few

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months where you're not three days to the deadline and you're like, what, I have 24

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more pages of writing?

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Which maybe has happened to you.

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It certainly has happened to me in the past.

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So it's a long range plan.

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It allows you to break down the tasks using smart goals.

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And that's a realistic look as realistic look as how, as to how these goals actually fit

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in your schedule.

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So it's like, oh, I'm gone for three weeks.

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Clearly I don't have 12 weeks anymore.

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I really have nine.

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So that's what we talked about, the strategic plan.

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Okay.

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So what happens when there's no weekly plan?

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You probably have experienced it firsthand.

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There always seem to be emergencies every day and they're not true emergencies, right?

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Because we're all physicians and we actually know what real emergencies are.

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But you know, there's the email from your mentor saying, have you, have you submitted

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that thing that's due at 5pm today?

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And you're like, oh no, it's due at 5pm.

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You throw out all the other stuff you're doing to do this thing by 5pm.

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Or someone says, oh, that note you're writing, you're going to get dinged if you don't close

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the chart by midnight tonight.

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And then all of a sudden it's like, oh no, I've got to like put aside everything and

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write these notes.

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There's always an emergency, always an emergency.

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And the thing about the emergencies is that they're urgent, even though they're actually

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not important, they're urgent because somebody else is yelling about them.

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It gives you anxiety.

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It makes you afraid, worried about the outcome.

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You're fearful.

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You're ashamed that, you know, it's been three weeks and I still haven't closed this chart.

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And so it's going to drive your activity, even though it's not the most important thing

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you do.

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And so emergencies will always show up even though they're not real emergencies.

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And they happen regularly so that you could literally live a whole week being very productive

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on just emergencies alone.

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And that's the challenge.

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The challenge is that the more emotion that's associated with an activity, the more time

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seems to fly.

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If you're like worried, anxious, afraid, and you're working on something, then all of a

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sudden you're like, I can't believe it's the end of the day.

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And I've just been working on this one thing.

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It also gives you a sense of accomplishment because maybe you're working through your

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email inbox and you have 300 emails and now you're down to zero and you're like, yes,

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you got all those emails responded to.

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That email response, as important as they may be, it's not really in the top three things

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that you're trying to accomplish over the next few months, but you feel accomplished

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closing the box, right?

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That it's not the most important thing.

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So in general, when there's no plan, you tend to get carried away by all the stuff that's

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happening.

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You could feel accomplished, but you're not actually moving forward the thing you want

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to accomplish.

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When you have no plan, what you find out is that you're accomplishing a lot of things

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that other people want you to accomplish, especially those with the loudest voices,

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but not really the thing that you want to accomplish.

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And so what does a plan do for you?

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Well, the first thing a plan does for you is it actually gives you space to reflect

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on what's important to you.

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Because if you're going to come up with a plan, you actually need time to think about

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it.

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Like, okay, well, what do I want to do in the next three months?

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Yes, I have 16 things on my list, but what are the three most important of these 16?

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And it allows you to do it when you're cool, you're calm, unemotional, hopefully not under

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stress, not anxious, or not trying to make anybody happy.

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It's like your most lucid, most thoughtful, real self saying, well, this is really what

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I want to do.

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Right?

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And it could be anything.

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On the one hand, your program director says that if he can get this protocol written by

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the end of the month, that'd be the most important thing you do.

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But then you get to sit down and say, well, is it the most important thing?

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If you don't get this protocol written, is that the end of your career?

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It allows you to really think objectively without hopefully pressure.

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So it's first of all, a chance to really reflect and be clear about what's important to you.

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The second thing it allows you to do is it allows you to make decisions free of pressure.

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So the email you get in the early in the morning where you open your inbox that totally throws

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off your day, all of a sudden you can't see anything but the red that this email has brought

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to your mind.

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And maybe it's full of microaggressions and then you're like so angry, it derails your

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whole day.

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Right?

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That you can't really think well when you're under that kind of emotional stress.

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And so a weekly plan allows you to plan outside of all those things that kind of derail your

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calendar or derail your day so that you are your most thoughtful, lucid self and you can

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make decisions ahead of time.

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So it's like in the middle of the week, you're going to be overrun by an email that's going

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to throw you off.

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But the person, you, same you, at the beginning of the week before all of those pressures

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came in already had the time to make a decision that you know is your true decision because

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it was your rational, unemotional self making that decision.

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The third thing that making a plan does for you is that it gives you a very realistic

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idea of what your week looks like.

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So before I started making a weekly plan, someone would say, oh, Tia, I just need this.

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I just need you to review this manuscript for me.

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It's due on Friday.

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And I would be like, oh yeah, sure.

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Of course I can.

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Because I didn't have a good idea of what was on my schedule.

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And now that I have a weekly planning meeting and I have a really full calendar of all the

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things I want to get done, when someone comes in like that and it's like, oh yeah, it's

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due on Friday.

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I'm like, hmm, I have to throw away one of my preconceived pre-planned plans to take

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over your review that's due on Friday.

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Is it worth it to me to take your plan and displace one of the things I said in advance

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that I was going to do?

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So it gives you a realistic understanding of what you actually have to do.

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So you're not like, oh yeah, I have all this time in the world.

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I can do all of this.

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And for many of us who find ourselves in unstructured spaces where we're no longer on the consult

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service or rounding or doing things that take our time for a significant amount of the day,

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you have all this unstructured free time where it's like, you have all the time in the world?

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Of course you can get your notes done for the next three days.

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And when you make a plan, you realize that you don't actually have as much time as you

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thought you did.

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And it helps you to manage other people's expectations as to what you can do for them.

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Okay.

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So those are the three things that a plan will do for you.

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Okay.

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So how do you actually do this weekly plan?

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How do you operationalize that?

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So people do it in different ways.

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I'm just going to talk through how I think about the weekly plan.

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The first is that you choose a day to do the plan.

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So I think a week is a really good, it's a really good discrete group of days that you

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can use to make a plan.

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I used to make a monthly plan and the reality of a monthly plan is that it's so far away.

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It's really hard to be realistic.

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By the time you get to halfway through the month, the month doesn't look like it did

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at the beginning.

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I think a week is useful because in general, we think in terms of the week.

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Also, the plan can change, but it's not going to change as much as over the course of a

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month.

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So I think a weekly plan is useful.

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So you select a day of the week.

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Maybe it's a Friday planning for the week starting Monday or it could be a Sunday.

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I used to do Sunday mornings.

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Most of the time I try to do on Sundays and then because it helps me look ahead to the

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week, but sometimes I'll do Monday mornings as well.

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Usually the earlier the better, but I like as close to the week as possible.

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So select a day of the week and look at your strategic plan.

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Remember, so we talked last time about the strategic plan where you've already determined

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these are the top three things I want to accomplish over the next couple of months.

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So from your strategic plan, select three things, three tasks, right?

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For the example of the grant that you're writing, well, you're not going to write the whole

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grant in the next week.

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And I hope you don't try to do that though.

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I certainly know that it happens, but you look at the week, you say, well, I have this

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grant that's due in three months.

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This week I'm just going to focus on writing the specific aims page.

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So that's your one big goal for the week.

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And maybe you have more than that, more than that one goal.

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Maybe there's a manuscript that you're working on because perhaps you'll finish the specific

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aims page on Wednesday and you're like, oh, I'm done, but I still have Thursday and maybe

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Friday.

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And you'll say, well, okay, so then the manuscript, this manuscript that I'm revising and resubmitting

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will be number two.

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And one of the reasons you want to do that, especially when you think about longer range

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things like the grant is that it takes time to write well.

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And the bigger something is, the more time it takes.

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And so you want to, you really address it a little bit each time rather than trying

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to crunch it all at the end.

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And so anyway, so you might do that.

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So you have three goals.

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One is the grant, one is the manuscript.

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And this week for the grant, all you're doing is specific aims.

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And so maybe Monday you're going to outline paragraph one and two on Tuesday, you're going

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to draft paragraph one.

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And then on Tuesday it'll be paragraph two, Wednesday it'll be the actual aims page.

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And by the end of the week, you have a whole specific aims page.

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And you can decide that you're only going to focus on one paragraph, which won't take

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you the whole day of your writing or maybe it will, but at least it allows you to say,

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okay, I finished this first introductory paragraph, I'm done.

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I'm now going to move on to the manuscript and revise the introduction.

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So anyway, so that's an example of how you could take two things from your strategic

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plan and fit them into your week to have no more than one to three major things that you're

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trying to accomplish in the week.

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Okay.

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So that's what you're going to put on your weekly plan, right?

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And those are the first three things you do before you really add anything else.

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Then your priorities are already scheduled.

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You're going to put them on the calendar.

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So Alison and I were talking about this earlier where you're actually going to look at your

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calendar and say, if I'm going to write paragraph one of my specific aims page, that's going

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to take me, I think about 90 minutes.

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So I'm going to do 60 minutes, right?

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When I wake up in the morning and then I'm going to do the remaining 30 minutes at 2

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PM after clinic.

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I don't know.

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I can't do anything after clinic.

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So usually it will have to happen for me before clinic, but you get to look at your calendar

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and actually block out the time.

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And the two, there are many reasons why you block out the time.

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One is to tell yourself it's a real meeting.

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It's not just one of those things where somebody calls you and says, oh my gosh, I need you

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to pick me up right now.

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My car has a flat tire.

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You're like, you know, it's just, and then you look at your calendar, you're like, oh,

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of course I'm free.

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The next meeting is not till three.

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It's helping you recognize that any meeting with yourself to move your work forward is

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a real meeting.

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Like, you know, you're, you're paid actually to be productive academically if you're at

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an academic medical center.

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And so it is a meeting.

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You put it on your calendar and in places where people can schedule meetings onto your

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calendar without your express invitation, you especially want it to be on your calendar.

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So they don't find the space and say, oh, I saw that you were free at 6am.

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So I put the meeting on there.

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And then when you finally get someone who can help you with your scheduling, then they

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also know that, okay, this time is blocked off.

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It's not available for a meeting.

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So you're going to put it on your calendar.

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So you put all your big activities on the calendar.

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Your next step is to say, well, what are all your other activities?

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Right.

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So the things that are on your calendar, you're meeting with your mentor on Thursday morning,

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clinic on Tuesday afternoon, those are already at your calendar.

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That doesn't have to be part of your weekly planning meeting.

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It's just on your calendar.

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And if you're like me, if it's on your calendar, it's probably going to get done.

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Right.

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Because you get those alerts, you know, it's there, all of that.

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It's all the other stuff that you're now going to make an exhausted list of what are all

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the other things I need to do this week.

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You could say, oh, okay, well, my city training is due on Friday.

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That's the deadline.

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Okay.

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Well, you put that on there.

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It's not the most important thing.

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It's not on your top list of things that you're trying to accomplish in your strategic plan.

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But it's kind of important because, you know, you want to be able to continue to work here,

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but it's not so important that it should take up all your time.

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And so there you go.

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You write that on the list and then maybe your mentor said the abstract that's due three

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weeks from now, you need to have a draft outline.

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You put that on the list as well.

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Now it's not your primary priority, even though it's your mentor's priority.

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So it doesn't supersede the work you've already pre-established that you're going to do, but

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you would add it to the list.

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And so by the end, you have an exhaustive list of all the things that you need to do.

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So now you take this list and you look at your calendar and you say, well, you know,

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you already have meetings that are blocked out.

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You already have the time in which you're going to accomplish your important thing.

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And now you got to find space for all of this stuff.

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And there's always going to be more things on that list and there is space on your calendar.

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But what you want to do is you want to honor the calendar and put them on the calendar.

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So realistically, okay, maybe the city training is number three.

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Where are you going to put it on your calendar?

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Okay.

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It's going to take you probably there, maybe 15 modules.

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You're going to speed through everything.

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So you're like, okay, I need three hours for the city trading modules.

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You sit down and you find the three hours on your calendar.

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You're like, I can do this after clinic.

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I don't even have to be paying attention.

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You put it on your calendar, right?

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And then, you know, clinic notes are part of that list.

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And then you're going to say, oh, I'm going to be too tired after clinic on Thursday.

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I'm going to put my clinic notes on Friday after my Friday morning writing.

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And you put them on your calendar and you try, you give yourself a realistic estimate

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of how long it will take you.

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You know, the realistic estimate is in quotes, because to be honest, the more time you assign

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to something, the more time it takes.

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And when you just say, hey, the deadline is at 5pm.

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I'm going to start at two.

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Guess what?

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You are going to be done by five because you didn't meet the deadline.

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And it's not even that important anyway.

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So that's one of the ways that I use my calendar as a forcing function to help me do things

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that other people want me to do, I don't think is as valuable to supersede my work.

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And so I kind of leave it to the last minute so that the deadline helps me move it forward.

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But anyway, those are the things you put on your calendar.

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And what you're going to notice is that at the end of putting things on your calendar,

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there's stuff that just is still there.

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It doesn't have space on the calendar, unless you're going to lie to yourself and pretend

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that the city training is only going to take you 10 minutes, which of course it's not going

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to.

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But if you're going to be honest, you're going to see that they're going to be things on

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the list that are not yet on the calendar.

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And those are the things you're just going to put in the question mark box.

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It's like if it gets done, life is good.

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And if it doesn't get done, it'll be okay.

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Right?

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There will never be enough time to do all the things you don't want to do.

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Never.

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You never have time in life to finish all the things you hate.

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And they're always going to be on your list.

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The first thing is, can you delegate those activities?

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When you find someone else who would love to do them for you, maybe there's a med student

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who really wants to write that abstract because they want to be first author and you're like,

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I couldn't care less about being first author.

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Here you go.

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Like who could you delegate tasks to?

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And I will say that there is always someone you can delegate a task to.

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You may be feeling like I'm just a fellow.

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No one will do this thing for me.

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Think again, who can do it for you?

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Who actually will do it where they will actually find it really valuable to do where you might

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not find it as valuable.

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For example, people have probably told you never to write another book chapter.

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The reality is that book chapters have a role in helping people learn.

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And maybe it's not as important for you anymore now that you've moved on to the big and bad

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manuscripts that you're writing as first author, but somebody else wants their name on something

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and they will gladly take the book chapter and write it with you.

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Right?

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And so think about who you can delegate things to that don't fit in your top priority.

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There will always be someone you can delegate to.

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Okay.

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So now you are left with a calendar that by the end of your weekly plan is full.

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By the end of your weekly plan, you have a full calendar.

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So when somebody shows up and says, Hey, there's this great opportunity.

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There's this two page grant.

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00:18:26,160 --> 00:18:29,480
It will only be two pages and it's due on Friday at midnight.

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Then you get to really understand that your calendar is full and now you have to take

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something off to be able to put this wonderful new opportunity on.

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And so it's an opportunity for you to ask yourself, well, is it a real opportunity or

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is it a fake opportunity masquerading as a real opportunity?

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But you get to decide, right?

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Because when you will come and Lucid, you decided what was most important to you.

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00:18:51,800 --> 00:18:55,040
And then someone has come and they've brought something that they think is more important

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00:18:55,040 --> 00:18:57,880
than what's on your list, but they don't know what's on your list.

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They have no idea what you've put on your list.

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And so that's why you really are taking ownership of your time saying, Hey, I realize that this

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00:19:05,160 --> 00:19:10,200
is a great opportunity and I have other priorities on my calendar already.

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When is the next deadline for this grant?

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Because grants will always come back.

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They always come back.

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00:19:15,200 --> 00:19:17,980
No matter what happens, the grants will always come back.

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00:19:17,980 --> 00:19:20,800
They come back every quarter or they come back once a year.

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They will always come back.

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Anyway, so there are things like that, that honestly it's like, if you miss the city trading

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00:19:26,160 --> 00:19:31,640
deadline, you probably have another day or two over the weekend to get it done.

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00:19:31,640 --> 00:19:35,600
There's always room to move things that are not as important to you.

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Now is there room to move your stuff out of the way?

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00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:39,680
Absolutely.

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But the goal is to move your work forward because that's a thing with your name on it.

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That's a thing that matters to you.

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It's a thing that you really want to move forward.

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And so the tendency in life is to push all your stuff aside to accommodate other people.

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If you're a good doctor and you've had good training, that's what you learn to do.

382
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You learn to just put all your needs aside and meet other people's needs.

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So one of the reasons we do a weekly plan is to help us be very clear that we don't

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want to do that unless there's a good reason for why somebody else's recommendation should

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supersede the work that we're doing.

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All right.

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So number three, step three is just execute on the plan.

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You have a plan and the benefit of a plan is when you actually work the plan.

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So every day start with a look at your plan.

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00:20:26,640 --> 00:20:30,040
So you made the plan last week or Friday, or maybe you made it at the beginning of the

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00:20:30,040 --> 00:20:34,360
week, Sunday, Monday comes and you look at your planning, you're like, okay, well, today

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the most important thing I'm doing is writing the first paragraph of my specific games page.

393
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You know what's number one.

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You might have a number two and number three, maybe number three is getting to the gym or

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maybe it's number one.

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And the specific games page is like number three, whatever.

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Just you know the priority you've assigned to it before you look at it and then you start

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working with the highest priority thing first.

399
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It's like, you know, the book, eat that frog.

400
00:20:57,480 --> 00:21:00,920
It's like, you know, the thing that you said is important is going to be the hard thing

401
00:21:00,920 --> 00:21:01,920
to do.

402
00:21:01,920 --> 00:21:05,200
It's going to be hard staring at the blank page, trying to come up with that one paragraph,

403
00:21:05,200 --> 00:21:06,660
but it's the thing you said was important.

404
00:21:06,660 --> 00:21:11,000
And so it's the thing you should do before you get onto the thing you love about, you

405
00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:14,400
know, meeting up with your friend at the gym, which even though the gym is important, it's

406
00:21:14,400 --> 00:21:16,080
the thing you actually are enjoying.

407
00:21:16,080 --> 00:21:17,520
You would enjoy doing.

408
00:21:17,520 --> 00:21:21,440
So sometimes it's like the reward and you keep the thing that you really are looking

409
00:21:21,440 --> 00:21:25,040
forward to doing or the thing that's most exciting to you.

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00:21:25,040 --> 00:21:28,480
So you can get the thing that's actually a little bit harder to do first, but you want

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00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:30,080
to do the most important thing first.

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00:21:30,080 --> 00:21:34,520
One of the benefits of doing that is that no matter what happens with the rest of the

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00:21:34,520 --> 00:21:38,720
day, you know, a flying saucer falls out of the sky.

414
00:21:38,720 --> 00:21:40,640
Your mentor has a conniption fit.

415
00:21:40,640 --> 00:21:43,280
No matter what happens, you've already won.

416
00:21:43,280 --> 00:21:44,720
You've already won.

417
00:21:44,720 --> 00:21:49,000
And that's why it's important to be very clear and start the day with it.

418
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:53,800
And some people would recommend don't check email because email, I am easily distracted.

419
00:21:53,800 --> 00:21:57,240
So I can't start the day with email because then the whole day goes down the drain.

420
00:21:57,240 --> 00:21:59,960
And I'm like, wait, I feel so productive, but what did I do?

421
00:21:59,960 --> 00:22:02,960
Oh yeah, I responded to that email that took me three hours to write.

422
00:22:02,960 --> 00:22:07,560
So you want to start the day with the thing that's most important to you.

423
00:22:07,560 --> 00:22:10,960
And then when you end the day, you look back.

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00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:16,600
So you've got to reflect and the reflection is important because, you know, if you don't

425
00:22:16,600 --> 00:22:21,600
stop and reflect, then you don't really have a chance to evaluate what worked, what didn't

426
00:22:21,600 --> 00:22:22,600
work.

427
00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:26,520
So when you're reflecting, you're saying, well, I set out to do this one paragraph of

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00:22:26,520 --> 00:22:31,640
a specific aims page and I ended up taking like the whole day and I only wrote three

429
00:22:31,640 --> 00:22:35,400
sentences and it helps you think about, well, what happened, what went wrong, what could

430
00:22:35,400 --> 00:22:37,080
be different next time.

431
00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:42,240
But reflection is important and gratitude to say, okay, well, job well done.

432
00:22:42,240 --> 00:22:46,200
And even if you didn't accomplish everything you said you wanted to, it helps you reset

433
00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:52,320
and say, well, maybe it takes more than three hours to write this first hardest paragraph

434
00:22:52,320 --> 00:22:54,360
next time I'll split it over two days.

435
00:22:54,360 --> 00:22:59,080
I'll just start with the outline today and I'll do the actual full draft, ugly draft

436
00:22:59,080 --> 00:23:00,080
tomorrow.

437
00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:01,880
And so it just helps you over time.

438
00:23:01,880 --> 00:23:05,880
You start to learn what's realistic, what can be done in 30 minutes, what can be done

439
00:23:05,880 --> 00:23:10,920
in two hours worth of writing, like how much can you get done even though clinic starts

440
00:23:10,920 --> 00:23:11,920
at 9 a.m.

441
00:23:11,920 --> 00:23:17,960
It just helps you become more aware, more self-aware so that you can be more productive

442
00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:21,560
with your day in a day that's meaningful to you.

443
00:23:21,560 --> 00:23:26,120
So that is a summary of the weekly planning meeting and it's not too late.

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00:23:26,120 --> 00:23:27,740
Today is Monday, end of the day.

445
00:23:27,740 --> 00:23:29,440
It's not too late to plan the rest of the week.

446
00:23:29,440 --> 00:23:32,120
Like if you miss Sunday or you miss Monday, it doesn't mean you're done.

447
00:23:32,120 --> 00:23:36,860
But it just allows you to pause and just say, okay, well, let's look at the calendar.

448
00:23:36,860 --> 00:23:40,200
Let's make sure that everything is on there that needs to be on there.

449
00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:43,120
You want to always leave white space in your calendar for yourself.

450
00:23:43,120 --> 00:23:46,880
Like don't be like me stacking meetings back to back to back.

451
00:23:46,880 --> 00:23:49,240
Give yourself time as well so that you have white space.

452
00:23:49,240 --> 00:23:54,360
Yeah, I think that's all I want to say about the weekly planning meeting.

453
00:23:54,360 --> 00:23:55,360
Thank you for listening.

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00:23:55,360 --> 00:24:05,640
I look forward to talking with you again next time.

455
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:11,000
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic

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00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:16,200
clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they

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00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:17,760
have a mentor.

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00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:23,720
If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself.

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00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:25,640
Someone else needs to hear it.

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00:24:25,640 --> 00:24:29,680
So take a minute right now and share it.

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As you share this episode, you become part of our mission to help launch a new generation

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of clinician researchers who make transformative discoveries that change the way we do healthcare.