Well I am having an interesting transition from residency to distance learning. While we were in London, they would always talk about transitioning back to home and getting use to having school while also juggling family, your job, and everything else. As I sat there in London, I contemplated this transition and thought "well I was handling everything minus school pretty good before I left and since the workload of school for an entire week will be what we did in one DAY here in London it shouldn't be a big deal."
Although it hasn't been overwhelming, there definitely is an adjustment period associated with getting back to juggling multiple things at once. I think I discovered one of my biggest adjustments is going to be focus. While in London and attending class, there was very little to distract me from the task at hand. Work was put on the shelf, I didn't have my computer or cell phone with me most of the day, and communication with you and anyone else was limited since being in different time zones meant we had smaller overlap of time to communicate.
Now that I am home all of those things are happening simultaneously which for me can tend to be a distraction. For example, if I am sitting here studying at the desk and I get a text message from anybody, I can't NOT look at it. The fact that it is sitting on my phone will eat and me until I actually look at it. Of course the mere fact that I received it is now a distraction of my focus because I am thinking about the text message instead of what I am studying. In the same context, if I do read the text message, 9 times out of 10 my mind will wander to the subject of the text whether it is work related, about the upcoming dixie or BYU football game, or just about what we are going to be doing this evening.
Now I point this out to show that it is no one's fault but my own and focus management as I like to call it, is going to have to be a skill I develop over this time in school. In the same thought another distraction I am dealing with has to do with ideas. While in London I was so isolated, the only thing that would really come to mind is what I was doing in class. But, when I am here ideas are running through my mind as I try to focus on a module of accounting on bonds and leases.
"Our focus today is on leases and off balance sheet obligations..." "hum... I bet I could develop a powerpoint that would standardize as well as increase the efficiency of our most common patient visits like heel pain. If I just used some unique graphics and hyperlinked...."
See my dilemma?
This will all definitely be an adjustment for me (gosh I can only imagine the distraction of trying to study/attend class on Saturday morning when I know there is a college football game waiting for me :).
BUT, with all these distractions I do still have some learning that I have been able to accomplish. In Managerial Effectiveness (ME) we are currently studying incentives and motivations and it has really intrigued me to assess current and past jobs and how incentives are placed. Everything we read summarizes to saw that extrinsic motivations like bonuses, bigger salary, time off, etc do little to achieve the goal it is meant to do. People for the most part must be motivated intrinsically. Also, most extrinsic motivators like that point us to the wrong goal.
For example, in football the goal is for everyone to work together as a team and make the entire team successful toward the goal of winning a championship, BUT players are rewarded on an individual level with salaries and bonuses. So when it comes to winning some players will say "Well I don't care how many times I touch the ball as long as we win" but when it comes down to it they realize that if they don't get a certain amount of catches they won't meet the accelerators in their contracts and they'll miss out on a lot of potential money. This leads them to act in their own interest rather than in the best interest of the team.
The same thing was true of when I worked at Merrill Lynch. I was always frustrated by the fact that although all 9 advisors worked in the same office it was like each one of us was working on an island with no support from each other. As an economist, we are taught all day long how if we combined forces and specialized 2 people each working their speciality will create more output than each person individually trying to do everything solo. I was thought "hey if we could get all nine advisors to work together as an office, we would all end up better off, we would bring in more clients, and the office would produce more revenue. Now Merrill Lynch's goal is to have us produce the maximum amount of revenue, however, they reward us on an individual basis which pushed us to work on these proverbial islands and never capitalize on the synergy of a nine person office working as a cohesive whole.
So my thoughts turn to medical offices. How do you motivate and celebrate employees intrinsically so they are focused on the benefit and goals of the office rather than themselves, realizing that with the success of the office will come the success of everyone individually?
These are questions I am yet to answer.
Managerial Effectiveness is definitely more thought provoking than Financial Accounting. This week's focus in accounting is on bonds and leases (debt instruments). I enjoy finance but when you are trying to learn a subject straight from a textbook and/or a monotone voice on a CD-ROM lecture, it is really tough to grasp the concepts. I am coming along, but it is taking me more time than I would like.
Classes this week were a new experience. Remembering that in London we pretty much spent a half a day in each class, it was quite an adjustment getting use to a class that is only an hour long. I felt like before class had even begun it was over. Usually this would be a good thing, but I feel like my comprehension of the material was less than stellar. Added to that was another distraction--Saturday college football :) Luckily classes are over before the actual games start, but the thought that college gameday is going on the same day as class makes it a little more difficult to focus. :)
Well now that classes are over I guess we are officially launched into week 2. This week my plan is to jump on top of the material right away so that by mid-week I am close to being done with all that is assigned. Hopefully this will give me some time to review past material and feel "caught up" before some of our team projects start in week 3. We'll see how it goes.
Love ya,
Brock
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