DentaltownUK Winter 2017 - 61

work life balance

Set It and Forget It!
The final article on a series about work/life balance

by Niall Campbell
Dr Niall Campbell, BDS MFDS Dip.
Clin Hyp PG Dip Psych, qualified
from Queens University dental
school in Belfast. After working in
private dental practice in Scotland, he moved to Perth,
Western Australia, where he developed his interest in the
treatment of anxious dental patients and hypnosis.
Campbell also worked in a private psychotherapy and
clinical hypnotherapy consulting firm, offering consulting
services to businesses and individuals. He was also the
host of the MENtality podcast, which interviewed thought
leaders, entrepreneurs and mental health professionals to
help destigmatise men's mental health issues. Campbell
holds a postgraduate degree in psychology from Monash
University, and in recent years has worked as head of
communications at private drug rehabilitation resort in
Asia. He currently works in a clinical and consumer
engagement role at Headspace in Australia.

Our first article focused on "work"- how
you can cut away the fat and make work
meaningful; the second focused on "life"
and helped you orient yourself to the things
you'd want to do if you stopped giving two
hoots about what other people thought. Only
once you have your head around these two
considerations can you start to think about
balancing them. In other words, don't worry
about the fulcrum until you know the weights
that are going on either side of the seesaw.
On some level, writing about this topic
feels like writing about unicorns or the Loch
Ness monster-a fun jaunt into the discussion
of something as fictional as it is elusive.
There are plenty of people who will give
explicit instructions on how to calibrate
your work and life to achieve their promise
of nirvana. They're giving you excellent
directions to a mirage.
Work/life balance is impossible. I don't
mean that to be pessimistic-actually, I
think of it as quite a freeing statement; it
gives you permission to stop pointlessly
striving for what ultimately is an infinite
regress. You'll never get around to doing
all the things you want to do in both your
professional and personal lives; the best you
can hope to do is prioritise the things that
are important to you and your family and
keep moving toward those. That's a life well
lived, in my opinion.
How do you keep moving forward? How
do you balance all the things you have to
do, to create the space to do the things you
want to do?

Automate the humdrum
An inordinate number of tasks you do
every day are repetitive and brainless, but
we still do them. They sap our energy and
prevent us from really engaging in the things
that give our lives meaning.
My good friend who runs a successful
small business works an average of less than
three hours a day.
One of his central philosophies is this,
"If you're going to do it more than once,
automate it." His religious observance of this
doctrine is, in his opinion, what frees up his
time and allows him to live a life of leisure
while still making a nice profit.
If you take one thing away from this
article, it should be that we're surrounded
by software programs, machines and computational devices that leave us in the dust
in terms of competence in many areas.
There are lots of "digital slaves," so make
hay while the sun shines and put them to task!
Listed below are a few easy wins, which
will allow you to dip your toes in the water
of automating the humdrum.

Sleep
We prattle on about sleep hygiene to
our patients, but often we don't take our
own advice. One of the low-hanging fruits
is ridding your evenings of the type of blue
light that's is pumped out from the screens
of your devices into the wee hours. The free
app F.lux gradually removes the blue light
from your screens, meaning that your brain
shuts down more naturally at night.

dentaltownuk.com \\ WINTER 2017

61
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of DentaltownUK Winter 2017
