I worked like a beast of burden for many years. 10- hour workdays and straight to school after work for years on end.
As if that was not enough, I never could pay my full attention at school, because there was always unfinished work from the office. So, I would listen to the teachers and engage in the class activities with one side of my brain, while the other side of my brain was attempting to reduce and rein in the endless office work.
For example, we saw an average of 50 patients a day at our medical practice, and it was good practice to submit the rather complicated invoices to insurance payers on a daily basis. This is because if you skipped one day of billing, it meant you would now have 100 claims to prepare the next day. If you skipped two, it meant 150 claims to prepare in a single day.
Failing to be consistent in daily submission was not optional.
Preparing one claim could take something like 10 minutes. So that meant 50 claims was easily 500 minutes. For perspective, that’s a straight 8.3 hours of activity. It would have been nice if the big boss provided me with some human resources to help and if billing was my only responsibility. But not so. I have many others. Before long, it became clear to me that if I really wanted any kind of job satisfaction, I had to figure out a way to get more done with less.
There is never enough time in one day, as everyone knows, but this is my own story. A story that many can relate to. We love our jobs and want to succeed, but we are not always spoon-fed everything we really need to function optimally.
Of course, you can always quit. Or complain until you get what you want. or just do whatever you can daily and go home. But if a two-day slip-up will cost you 16 extra hours of your life, then you have to find a way to deal with it.
