For most of my life, I was inept at managing my time. I was late with everything from the least mundane to the most important. Sometimes I had valid reasons but mostly my reasons were the product of events that dominoed because I couldn’t get a handle on managing my time. Timeliness was a life skill I simply did not possess. To improve my situation, I pored over self-help books and “productivity” systems from Dayrunner to Stephen Covey’s four quadrant system (which I still adore). None helped. I understood in theory but I could not put into practice what I learned. I simply lacked a basic awareness of the passage of time and I could track time only with great effort.
Eventually, I reached the point where I pissed off enough people that I cared about that I had to make a change. I’m not sure what happened that actually enabled me to change my default setting and put into practice what I understood through my searching. If I could figure that out, I could probably package it and start a new career as a lifestyle coach.. (Actually, I think what happened is that I married a walking, talking Dayrunner and somehow managed to internalize some of his perspective. I guess I could start my career as a life coach by pimping him out…) Re-orienting my life took immense effort on my part.
So, imagine my sheer frustration at spending three hours waiting for a doctor who was behind on seeing patients. Not once, but several times. This actually happened to me a short time after I made my paradigm shift and the unexpected waiting made me feel out of control. After I worked so hard to master time, I felt victimized by someone else’s poor time management. So rather than wallow in my victimhood (which I admittedly did for several months), I quickly learned the art of managing appointments. I now follow these practices whenever any type of appointment is required.
1. Schedule for the first appointment of the day. Typically doctors, health care providers, hair stylists, and the like suffer from a cascade effect where “running behind” accumulates with each new client or patient. Every appointment adds an extra ten or fifteen minutes to the “behindness” so that your wait time increases exponentially the later your appointment is. The first appointment of the day avoids that accumulation. In fact, you are in the enviable position of starting the cascade effect for others.
2. Always get an appointment card. Always. I learned this trick because one of my provider’s receptionists was bad about accidentally double booking (not “tight scheduling” but actually double booking). The doctor, who was close to retirement, felt that a computerized appointment system wasn’t worth the hassle. As long as I had the appointment card in my hand, I could prove that I owned a particular time slot. My card trumped the poor soul who showed up for the proper time but had nothing to prove it. Seeing this in action, I put it into practice for all my appointments. Now, when I find myself in scheduling mishaps, I just whip out the card and I am promptly accommodated.
3. Don’t come early even if they tell you to. Note: This only applies to doctor’s appointments. Health care providers want you to come in ten minutes early to fill out their excessive paperwork. In my experience, when I’ve rushed to an office early to fill out paperwork, I end up sitting around either way. Now I just show up at my appointed time. I don’t even get dirty looks from the receptionist for it.
4. Call ahead. Not all providers call to remind you of your appointment. If they don’t offer that courtesy, then you should call to confirm. If you have a provider who is notoriously late, call the receptionist before you leave and find out how far behind the appointments are running. That way you can reduce your wait time by showing up later than scheduled.
5. Don’t miss an appointment. Missing appointments puts you at the mercy of the scheduler and limits your control of the timing because you have to be “squeezed in” or put on a wait list or you are locked out of choice time slots. For some visits, like the gynecologist’s office, you have to schedule several months in advance and it’s easy to lose track of your date. Even though you might get a courtesy call, the time before your next appointment is long enough that you can forget and make other plans. Use a free reminder service on the net (monkeyon.com) to send yourself emails or messages telling you when your appointment is getting close.
6. Bring something to do. In the era of mobile computing, there’s really no reason to be twiddling your thumbs in the waiting room. For those holdouts, however, remember that the well-thumbed magazine left on the end table is probably missing the last page of the article you’re interested in reading. Tip: Once I tried an audiobook in the waiting room, smugly enjoying myself, and I missed the nurse’s assistant calling me back to the doctor’s office. Skip anything with earphones.
