Rana Al-Falaki explores how toxic productivity keeps dental teams busy without making progress, and shares practical ways to reclaim time, reduce stress and improve practice performance.
There’s a belief that runs quietly through most workplaces, dental practices included: if you’re busy, you must be doing well. Diaries are full, everyone’s moving, the phones don’t stop and somewhere in that blur of activity, we’ve come to treat busyness as proof of success.
It isn’t. In fact, it might be costing you more than you realise.
A recent global survey found that 83% of employees admitted to at least one ‘performative work’ habit in the past year – reacting to emails at speed to look responsive, scheduling messages to appear online early, sitting in meetings that add nothing – behaviours that exist purely to be seen as busy. Collectively, that adds up to the equivalent of 1.25 days a week spent on activity that shows up, rather than work that counts.
Separate research shows that 41% of the average workday is spent on tasks that employees themselves admit don’t meaningfully contribute to the organisation, and UK businesses are estimated to lose around £13 billion a year to wasted management time alone.
It’s no different behind the front desk. Everyone in the practice is moving – patients seen back-to-back, calls answered, notes written, boxes ticked – yet at the end of the month, the diary’s still leaking, the treatment plans aren’t converting, and nothing seems to actually move forward.
This is the myth we need to attack: that busyness and productivity are the same thing.
The myth: ‘we just need more hands’
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