Link to podcast: 031 Book Review of All it Takes is a Goal
Welcome to DPC Pediatrician. We’re Dr. Phil Boucher and Dr.
Marina Capella,
two DPC pediatricians who are on a mission to share our love of direct primary care with you. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the DPC Pediatrician podcast. Today, we’re talking about books. I’m a big reader, and I believe, Marina, you’re a big reader as well. You at least have a lot of books in the background.
I have a smaller selection of books in the background of my video, but both of us are big readers. And so we thought about doing a book club and then realized that we’re both kind of short slash overextended on just like time to sit and do a monthly reflection with coffee or something like that.
So we thought we would just read a book and then talk about it and then talk about how other direct primary care doctors could incorporate the lessons if they so choose to read the book or if they just want to take our summary or ask questions Chad GBT to apply it to their lives, all are acceptable options.
But we read the book, It Takes a Goal by John Acuff. And I believe, Marina, this was the first time that you’ve read any books by him. Is that correct?
Yeah, this was my first introduction to John. And it was a pleasant one. Before we jump in, I’ll let you kind of introduce the book in general.
Well, he is a writer and I don’t remember his background well enough to speak to it, but essentially he has books kind of aimed at the different places in a project. So there’s a book that I know he has called Start and one that he has called Finish and like how to actually like get important work done.
And in this book, he really talks about pursuing meaningful goals. And for me, the big picture was like, I have… loads of goals. I have way too many goals. And so I find myself, and I think a lot of direct primary care pediatricians that I get to talk with feel similarly is like,
I’ve got so many different things to do that I don’t even know where to start. And I don’t know what to start with and how to prioritize and all those sorts of things. And so the big picture for, for me from this book was like how to pick goals, how to set goals and how to actually
reach goals was the big picture. Maybe you can just share a little bit to start with about what your big picture thoughts of the book were.
I think you’re right on the money there. And I like how he broke it down. He kind of shares part of his story. I believe he went to college at Stanford, but he considers himself a late starter as he refers to it,
that he would sort of almost fail out of a semester and then the next semester just rush and get everything together in order to like perform better and then that cycle would continue and repeat itself and he just didn’t make as much of his opportunities early in life as he could have although
you think well you ended up at stanford so you were probably just fine but this book i think particularly appeals probably to personalities like that where we get this big burst of energy to do something and then we get started and then it kind of fizzles out And I think that that’s a lot of us, right?
That we really want to do something and we get really excited about it in the beginning and we start and then we kind of get stuck. And so he talks about, first of all, one of the things I really liked about it was he talked about how to even understand what goals you should be setting for yourself.
It’s not like we’re born and we magically know what our purpose in life is, right? And he advises people to write what’s called the best moments list, right? And this could be a list of 20 things or 150 things, but you just sit down and you basically think about the best moments in your life.
And it could be anything. It could be something really small, like picking your first tomato off of the first tomato plant that you grew yourself, or it could be something really big, like earning your degree or getting married and things like that, or going to Greece. And I started to do this for myself.
Did you think about that at all, Phil, as you were reading the book, your best moments?
I honestly didn’t. I took the premise and the idea of it, but then I didn’t actually sit and do that. My wife and kids will tell you that they asked me questions about my childhood and things. And I have very little memory. so i’m not good at like pondering back and reminiscing and so i didn’t do that
aspect of it but i could imagine it would be like if somebody did that last night
as i was just writing down some key points i did write some things just to force myself to spend five minutes on it but the point of this is that he says you know in order to really understand what’s important enough for you
in order to set a goal for yourself you have to look back and you have to look back at the things that really really set you on fire the things that really bring you joy the things that you get excited about because in our minds we can often have
things that we think we should be doing where we think we should be aspiring to because of society’s standards or spousal expectations or family expectations and all that stuff but really in order to set great goals for ourself it involves understanding our
past and understanding the things that really bring us joy and light us up and so i realized as i kind of created some of my own list that one of the things that brings me joy is like spending time in nature that’s a common theme across some of my things and then another thing was
teaching and helping others to succeed. And so that brings me joy. I mentor pre-medical students in another part of my life. And all seven of my mentees this year just finished the program and got into medical school.
Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.
Thanks. Congratulations to them because they did all of the heavy lifting. But it was such a joy to like meet with them individually and hear about their success. So that really lights me up. What are some of the things, even if you didn’t write your list, Phil,
like what are some of the things that you realize in your life bring you joy?
I too will share that I really like teaching as well. I’ve been, so I think I got my teaching bug when I was in undergrad and was like doing TA work. I mean, kind of like the typical things that you do for biochemistry and biology and those sorts of things.
And then before medical school, I was a Kaplan MCAT teacher as well. And that kind of really lit me on fire for like teaching and then seeing the fruits of the teaching, because just like you were saying with your mentees that like You get to see what happens to them. I don’t take full credit,
but a lot of my Kaplan MCAT students are like attendings in my community and I know their kids and everything like that too. And I don’t rub it in too often, but I do remind them. my role in them getting to where they are. I like teaching. I like being able to have downtime.
I think that’s a big thing for me is like being able to have leisure time with my family. And so those are like, just in general, those are happy times. um that that are motivational to me or to think about like okay i’m why am i doing
this well it’s to carve out more freedom and autonomy and free time so that i can be with my family and do the things that i want to do them like this weekend we were i was telling you before we started recording we were like setting up all our
garden boxes for spring and summer with all of our plants and everything and As much as I really don’t, like it wouldn’t be my choice of a hobby. I’m roped into it. I do enjoy getting to do that and be outside in nature and those sorts of things and to help and to see the fruits,
like the literal fruits of our work together as a family. So I think those are kind of some of the big things that light me up.
So after John kind of advises us to create our best moments list, then you kind of reflect on it and you use that as the springboard to develop some goals for yourself. And he breaks up goals into three different types. He says there are easy goals, middle goals, and what he calls guaranteed goals.
And the easy goals basically are a very short timeframe, like one to seven days. They have very obvious first steps. They’re low cost. They fit into your current schedule easily, like one or two hours per week. And then he says they feel like they’re not enough.
Like if you were to tell someone your easy goal, they’d be like, not impressed, basically. Yeah, I think you could do more of that. Yeah, it’s hard for us to develop easy goals, I think, especially as physicians, because we are used to being high achievers.
We are used to having the goals of taking the MCAT and getting into residency and passing our boards and all those fantastic, amazing things. But easy goals, he says, are really important because it helps to kind of train our mind and to teach us that we
We can have easy wins, basically, like we can get into the habit of accomplishing our goals. And once we have a lot of those easy wins, it’s easier to gain the momentum and the motivation to then work on middle goals and work on larger goals as well. What are some easy goals? I was going to say,
I think one of the things, I mean, this is like how we teach kids to have confidence, right? Like you set goals that you can meet and then you say, oh, I met that goal. I actually did that. And then it gives you more self-confidence to take it to the next step.
And I am very guilty of if I have a list of things that I need to do and I actually already did something that wasn’t on the list and We’ll write that thing down and then put a check mark by it because like, not only do I want credit, it also feels good.
And it puts a little wind behind the sails of like making more forward progress. So I think that that, that makes sense. If all the goals are like, grow my practice by 500% or something like that. It’s going to be kind of difficult to do that.
Let’s just see if we can make sure that we inventoried all of our vaccines correctly and created a new social media post and things like that as some like easy goals that are very achievable.
Yeah. And those easy goals can be a way of basically breaking up a really big goal into something more achievable. So I have, I filed an extension for my business taxes this year and I have to finish that up. And so like my, my easy goal within that bigger goal is to email my accountant something that I
needed to email them. Right. So that’s my easy goal because it’s very achievable. If I think about taxes, I just, I don’t want to do it. But if I think about sending an email, that’s very easy to do.
Yeah, I can do that. And then it’s on somebody else’s plate for a little bit. And I’ve put the mental energy in and now I can sit back and do something else that I want to do until it circles back around to me.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So after easy goals come middle goals, and these have a larger, longer timeframe of about 30 to 90 days. They are flexible in their execution. They require slight schedule adjustments. So it’s not like a quick email that you can just fit in wherever you have to look
at your schedule and make time for it to some degree. So it would be about in the range of four hours per week. And then He says that middle goals encourage a patient approach. So they’re not just like, oh, I did it. I checked it off. It’s done.
It’s like, OK, I have to be a little more patient. There’s a little more delayed gratification involved in reaching this goal and a little more persistence and dedication. What’s an example of a middle goal, Phil, that you’ve had lately for yourself?
So one of the things that we’ve been doing in our clinic, which fits this timeline really well is, so we have a lot of patients that we get to take care of that are autistic, and we really like supporting autistic children or families with a child that’s autistic.
And one thing that we’ve been starting to do is we came up with the idea of, well, we should start like an autism support clinic. These are for patients that want kind of like a medical home specifically for autism. Maybe they still see the regular pediatrician,
but they don’t get enough time with them or they feel like the hassle factor is there too much. And so we’re able to work with the child and the family to take care of their specific concerns with autism, whether it’s reaching out to therapists, whether it’s kind of like being the, the the home for their autism.
And then the other thing that we’re doing more of, which we’ve talked about in the Facebook groups is the folinic acid, leucovorin for autism and kind of working through that and getting patients started on that. So building out that offering has been one of the things that’s been on our radar
for the past two to three months where we’ve kind of been hearing from a lot of patients that they’re interested in this, finding a lot of information, reading, reading, reading, setting up the appointment types, setting up all the different like aspects of it, creating the web pages. There’s a lot of different things to actually execute on that,
but it is very manageable over the course of a couple months to set up this new offering and start to get the word out about it and figure out exactly how it all works and shakes out. That’s been one of the big things that we’ve been working on in the past couple months.
Yeah, nice. That sounds like a really cool goal. For me, a middle goal. My team has been planning an open house for the three DPC practices within the building that I bought last year. And so it’s just a lot of coordinating and trying to make sure the invitations get sent out and that we have
the bounce house and the slushy machine, all that stuff, right, for this open house. And the landscaping is also happening at the same time. So just coordinating all those moving pieces and making sure that this event next week is a success, that’s been a bit of a middle goal and has required specifically dedicated time
during our staff meetings to discuss and to took about two months to kind of get there so yeah but it’s looking like i can see
that i can see that like there’s a lot of different pieces they it takes time too like you can’t just sit down and be like guys we’re going to do it all today because there’s vendors you have to contact there’s things that you have to reserve
there’s questions you have to answer there’s things that have to be created and all those sorts of things so it kind of requires ongoing touch like almost like if you were I don’t know, braising a turkey or something like that. Like you have to let it work for a little bit and then circle back on it.
Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So then finally, John talks about guaranteed goals and these have extended timeframes between three months and a year approximately. He emphasizes the fact that they have to be within your control. So he gave the example, for example, of He wanted to like run a few times every week with his friend. And then his friend,
unfortunately, was too busy, started a new job and was too busy to join him most mornings. So he said, well, I didn’t have control over my friend’s schedule. So the goal had to be more specific and personalized to me. Like I will reach out to ask my friend to go running with me three times a week.
And if he says yes, great. If he says no, I’m still going to figure out a way to do it on my own. Right. So it has to be within our control. We can’t be reliant on someone else to achieve the goal for us.
Also, he says it has to be easily measurable and it requires deliberate time management. This is a long-term goal requiring six to eight hours of dedication per week and It also may seem ambitious to others. So it’s one of those more impressive goals that you tell your friend or your colleague, I’m doing this,
I’m training for a marathon. They’re going to say, wow, that’s a lot of work, right?
Yeah, totally.
What’s an example from your life of one of these bigger goals?
oof that’s a good one that’s one actually that i’ve been working on lately is actually in the same realm of running i used to do before the pandemic i used to do like two half marathons per year and i haven’t done any since since covid started
and just like starting my practice and all those sorts of things um and so that’s one that i’ve been wanting to get back into so last week i went like they just had a half marathon and so i went and got new running shoes and so now like the next steps are unfurling from there of
getting out in the morning and running and like i’ve done that a couple times and it’s been really defeating because i used to be able to run a half marathon and now
yeah but that’s running running is one of those in my experience running is one of those frustrating activities where you can get really good at it and then you take a few weeks off and then you you’re kind of back at like square one i know it
totally feels like square one
For me, I mean, this doesn’t really meet the time requirement he’s talking about, but the length of time it does meet and some of the other things. I decided to start taking singing lessons from my brother, who’s a professional singer, a few months ago. And this was really stepping out of my comfort zone because first of all,
my brother’s an amazing singer. And so me in comparison to him, like very much a beginner, a novice. And so it’s just it’s embarrassing to like be sitting in front of Zoom. He’s in California. I’m in Utah. And I’m practicing something and my voice is breaking and my armpits are sweaty
because I’m being observed and I’m being critiqued and all of that stuff. But but it’s also really fun. It’s fun to just explore a completely different thing, a completely different hobby. But it does take. dedication instead of listening to audio books sometimes or just being in silence on my way to work and back from work.
I am playing music and I’m practicing singing on my way to and from work. And also sometimes I have to make space as well for the lessons and at home practicing. So it’s not something that something terrible is going to happen if I don’t do it,
but it’s a goal that I’ve set for myself to at least practice. And I know that Just like what I tell my patients, the more you practice, the better you get. I’m trying to apply that to myself in this new realm.
Well, that’s something too that like you can… If you don’t do it, nothing bad is going to happen, but there’s a lot of potential upside for getting good at it, whether it’s running a race or growing your practice, or those sorts of things that you can choose to not do it. You could listen to audio books.
You could just binge whatever Netflix show or something like that, but you’re doing something that is a bit of a stretch that you don’t necessarily have to do, but a good will come from it no matter what.
Yeah, definitely. Any other favorite highlights from this book, Phil?
I think the goal killer part where talking about perfectionism, which for me, as Marina knows, well, I don’t struggle with perfectionism. Yeah. because I am very happy with B plus work and output, but I know that’s a huge issue for a lot of physicians is perfectionism.
And I used to be more of that way and I’ve just gotten more comfortable with it. I’ve almost put it like as a badge. One of my previous colleagues that I worked with was really, offended that I would suggest that B plus work was okay for like notes, like you’re, you’re doing it.
No one is ever going to read. And so it’s going to go in the chart and maybe one person in an entire history of the world will ever read it again. And that’d be okay for that. And I think that that was a really eyeopening to me of like, wow,
perfectionism is a big issue holding physicians back from doing amazing things because it has to be perfect. There can be no mistakes because that’s what we were trained to. It’s not our fault that we become perfectionists. It’s the systems that we were trained in and educated under and
born and bred into that this is what you have to do and it has to be perfect and you have to work harder and you have to push the patient down to radiology yourself if you want them to get the x-ray all the different things that just turn you into
the perfectionist because you can’t trust other people is is how we’re we’re raised in the the medical system and so i think perfectionism really slows physicians down because they feel like they have to get it right. They have to know every single step. It has to be executed perfectly or we just quit.
And I think that’s one of the big things that really stands in the way of somebody opening their practice or trying something new or being willing to get out there is like, what if I fail or what if it doesn’t work out the way that I hope it did?
And I wish that everyone has their CV that has all their accomplishments. I wish over the past decade that I had had a failures CV because it would be four times as long as the CV that I would be an employer or something like that of all
the things that I tried that didn’t work out the way that I was hoping or didn’t happen, but that I learned from, that I grew from, that I’m still standing here today from. I think that that would be really motivational for people to see is like,
If you only are going to do set goals that you can be successful at, you’re never going to get as far as you could and do the amazing things that are really going to be transformational for you and for others. If you’re only willing to do things where you’re going to be successful.
Yeah, definitely. There’s actually a quote that I had written down along those lines of what you just said. He talks about how fear and stress and worry can get in our way when it comes to accomplishing goals. And this is the quote that I wrote down that I liked. He said,
when you’re in the pursuit of your potential, stress won’t seem like the kind of action that’s worthy of your time. You don’t stop worrying. You just start working on your goal and one day realize that you have less time for things like stress, Fear and doubt.
You care too much about your limited resource of time to give it away casually to something that’s not serving. And I love that because it’s true. Just get started and just get busy doing the thing that you want to do. And you won’t have as much time to worry and stress over it.
and that’s what i try and do like when i’m feeling stressed and overwhelmed is like just and i’m not perfect at this sometimes i just kind of like wallow in the stress of having too many options and things to do like can i just do something and can i
set a like a reasonable time limit or impose a deadline like i knew that we were going to meet today. And so I was like, okay, I have 30 minutes. I need to get this uploaded and this email out, or I’m not going to do it for probably another week.
And I was able to do it because there was a timeline because of the small goal that I was able to accomplish. I want to, I know that we’re going to wrap up here about this book, but one of the things that, that my team and I read earlier this year,
along the lines of books is a book called The Six Types of Working Genius. And it’s by Patrick Layanzioni. And it talks, it’s kind of interesting. It’s a fable, which I don’t love that kind of genre in general. I kept waiting for like the information and then 60% of the way through, I was like, oh,
this is a fable. The whole book is a story. But it talks about that there’s like six different types of areas where people are the genius, whether it’s at the beginning of the project, like making like coming up with the idea for the project or the goal,
whether it’s in the middle of like helping the people along the way or rallying people around or in the like finishing off the task and being able to check the job and make sure that we finished it and that people gravitate towards a different area of the project.
And I, like there’s a quiz and all the different things that books often have. We just had GPT make us a quiz so that we didn’t have to buy his quiz. And it was spot on too, because like I am definitely on the coming up with the ideas, the wonder and invention.
Wonder people like to ponder possibilities and then come up with creative solutions. But as Marina will tell you, I’m not very good at task completion per se. And so… This book for me really helped me to realize where my time is best served and how
to surround myself with people that I can delegate to that are really good at the other aspects of that. So not to try and overtake this book club discussion of John Acuff’s book, but it married really well together with… here’s where I’m best. And here’s where I’m not as best when it comes to goals and projects.
I guess if you, I know you haven’t read the book, where would you find yourself? Like, are you the come up with the big ideas, the let’s get everyone on board and like get it going or the let’s finish the task and here’s what we need to do.
And here’s what it looks like when the task is done. Which one do you feel like you gravitate towards?
Um, I’m definitely really good at the details and lean more towards the perfectionist end of things. But I also feel like I escaped into the world of DPC for a reason because I also have these dreams and ideas of like, this could be better.
Oh my God, like this just bugs me because it could be this and it could be that. And why aren’t other people doing it? And so I have to kind of take the reins if I want really the life that I want or envision.
And then I’m really good at kind of honing in on the details and making sure. But I’ve kind of had to, in the past few years, get better at delegating. And that’s something that I’ve been working intentionally on because when you are a perfectionist or a recovering perfectionist, however you want to think about it,
it’s really hard to relinquish control to someone else because you end up thinking, well, I could have done it better. And that might be true.
It won’t take that long. I’ll just do it myself.
Yeah, exactly. You’re not giving other people opportunities to improve their skills. And then you’re making your life miserable by obsessing over the details about every single part when really like you can do your part really well and then trust other people to do their part. Then you can look it over and fix things afterwards. I’ve learned.
to do that so and i actually did read the book that you recommended the types of working people so yeah i i don’t know that i completely resonated with one type but i could see definitely me more in the details and then some of that component of
the bigger goals and visionary yeah that’s what i would have guessed for you and i think like me compared to my team my team are very good at like the rallying behind and the finishing the tasks yeah and questioning like, is this a good idea?
Is this a big picture that we want to move towards and those sorts of things. So I think that like finding those people that are really good at filling out the whole kind of docket of different geniuses really helps especially when it comes to delegating which is really hard
for physicians to do in general because we’re perfectionists and we might as well just push them down the hall to radiology ourself because if we delegate that to the nurse then they might not get them there right and might not get them there in time like we’re we’re trained to be perfectionists and to rely on ourselves it’s
hard to get to the point of trusting others and giving them tasks and giving them criticism and feedback, positive and negative when they do those sorts of things.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I wanted to share one more quote that I like. John Acuff also talks a lot about just time. All of us feel like we’re already overextended with everything that we have to do. When we think of goals and setting new goals for ourselves, major mental objection can come up that like,
where am I going to fit it in? Fine. If it’s an easy goal, maybe I can fit that in. But where the heck am I going to find time to fit in learning about DPC or learning how to hire employees and putting together an employee handbook or… All of that stuff. Right. And so that can be daunting.
And so first of all, he talks about like finding the 15 minutes that we don’t realize are there. So he gives the example of how long does it take to board a plane? Right. And he’s realized that it takes on average, he’s sitting there for 30 minutes.
And so he has reclaimed those 30 minutes by reading a book while he waits for the plane to take off. And he gave the example of a mom who ended up completing a degree through an online program in the
30 minutes a day that she was waiting to pick her kid up in the line of cars at school. And all those 30 minute increments, they really added up to help her accomplish a goal. So if we really look at how we’re spending our time from day to day,
we can usually find those little spots of time that are being wasted. I know I waste too much time scrolling through reels after work because I just want something mindless and I just want to take a breather.
Yeah.
And so I could probably be doing something else, even if it’s just half of that time. But related to that, there’s a quote that I really like from the book that I’ll read as we finish up. He says, there’s not a solution to your time crunch, but there’s something even better.
There’s a truth that will set you free. Here it is. The reason you’re busy is because your imagination is bigger than your calendar. Your to-do list will always be bigger than the amount of time you have to accomplish it because your imagination is bigger than your calendar.
And then when you take your imagination and combine it with the imaginations of other people in your life, your spouse, your kids, your coworkers, your boss, everyone you interact with brings their own messy, wonderful imagination into your life. with expectations and tasks of their own. This calendar doesn’t stand a chance against that.
And so I kind of like how he says, it’s a good problem to have. It’s because we are so creative and we have so many ideas for things that we want to do. But nevertheless, if we truly look at our calendar and the priorities in our life,
We usually can find time and we can also be realistic with ourselves. If you are a parent who has three kids at home, including a newborn, then it’s probably not the right time to run a marathon. And that’s OK. Just acknowledge that for yourself. Right. Versus someone who has older kids and more freedom and things like that.
Totally. Yep. I think that’s, I think it’s a very much a both and like, it can be great to get all these things done and we can still say, this is all that we can do right now. And this is enough.
And then when we have those moments, we can say, well, how well am I using my time? Like, is there a way that I could prioritize better or delegate better or remove things that aren’t really serving me so that I can focus on those big goals that I have? Like, it doesn’t have to be all or none.
which I think is often lost in our hyper-competitive, perfectionistic approach to all things in life that unfortunately a lot of us have had told to us so many times that everyone is out to get you and you have to do it all yourself and those sorts of things that really don’t serve us.
And so this book for me was just a good reminder that like, it’s a good problem to have a book full of different ideas. And also you can make the time for what matters.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, and he, he does it in a very approachable, very fun way filled with stories and real life examples. So yeah, we both of us enjoyed the book. We recommend it. If you, if it’s something that you’re interested and you really want to understand how to set better goals for yourself,
we highly recommend this book. All it takes is gold by John Acuff. Thanks everyone for listening until next time.
Take care.
