Digital Decluttering for Healthcare Leaders
Reclaim your focus and presence

Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast — Episode 73: Digital Decluttering for Healthcare Leaders. Dr. Michelle Walter, DO, in conversation with Dr. Lillian Liang Emlet.

Lillian Liang Emlet: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. Welcome to the Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast, and this week we're super excited to announce one of our new coaches at Transforming, which is Dr. Michelle Walter. Dr. Walter is a palliative medicine physician and academic coach, and a professional organizer, and I just want to let Michelle first say hello to everyone before we get started with our episode today.

Michelle Walter: Hi everyone. Thanks for having me, Lilly. I'm so excited to be here.

Lillian Liang Emlet: So this episode is about digital decluttering for busy healthcare leaders. And so when you think about leadership and why we are so distracted, partly it's because we're never off because of this thing. And so who better than a professional organizer and leadership coach, like michelle to help us think through how simplification of even our digital space might be the solution.

And so I guess to start us off, Michelle, can you share your journey with how you became both a professional organizer and a leadership coach?

Michelle Walter: [00:01:00] Yeah, thanks LLilly so my journey started when I experienced burnout, unfortunately, as a physician. And the beautiful thing about that is that it put me on this. What has become an incredible journey of understanding how and why that happened and how I can move forward in a different way. as part of that process, I really became very deeply interested in just how we live and how we work and how we can be more intentional about those things. That's really the core of what I'm doing now as an organizer and a coach. It's helping my clients understand why of whatever it is that they're working on or they're struggling with, and [00:02:00] how they can move in a more intentional way to simplify, as you said, to. Be purposeful with their time, with their things, with their spaces, focusing really on how things are functioning for them, what systems they have in place, and what they can let go of because they don't really need it anymore.

Lillian Liang Emlet: It sounds so serene and amazing because I feel like just, you probably have noticed that so many of us are pulled in so many direct. And not able to understand where the intention even needs to be. And so I'm curious, what are some of the first things you work with whenever you, you know, when someone comes to you, overwhelmed, like just doesn't even, don't even know where to begin.

'cause I think many of our clients that, many of our leaders do have a thousand different things. I mean, even myself personally, I have more than one calendar, more than one way of keeping track of time. And so how does digital decluttering become a part of that very beginning [00:03:00] story?

Michelle Walter: I think it all starts with what the vision is. What is the vision for your space? What is the vision for your work? What is the vision for your leadership? And using that as the touch point for everything else. then the next pieces are not so much about. What, but how so really focusing on taking small steps, tiny pieces of action, to leave you or to get you toward that sort of ultimate vision for how it is that you are living, working, being leading.

Lillian Liang Emlet: That sounds really amazing. I think it's hard though, whenever people think about, well, what is their intention as a leader? And so I guess I'll take myself as an example. Obviously, I wanna be a leader that has great impact to be [00:04:00] able to help all of the people here at transforming Healthcare coaching and to be able to provide different solutions for different individuals in healthcare.

And so if you had to coach me and think through. Well, how do I have the greatest impact when I have so many things going on? What would be your question back to me to help me understand or think through that process to help our audience think through themselves?

Michelle Walter: That's a great question, Ali, and I think it really centers on, as your goal is to be this great leader, digging into what exactly that means to you, then also understanding or working through what is it that is. in the way of that vision. So is it that you don't have time for deep work?

Is it that you are being pulled in too many directions and have too many commitments to be as effective as you want to be as a leader? And then working from there about [00:05:00] how can we. Change things around. How can we let go of things? How can we simplify there's themes here already so that you do have the space and the time in order to do the things that allow you to be the most meaningful leader that you can be.

Lillian Liang Emlet: You sound like my coach in terms of always the first, the why, the intention. And then I really like the curious exploration for how could we see this differently so that if we were looking at our leadership life and the way we're allocating our time as like a beautiful glass sculpture. How can you see it from different angles?

To be able to find the little pockets of how things could be shaped differently and become more simple. And through simplicity is where the magic might lay.

Michelle Walter: Exactly.

Lillian Liang Emlet: You know, so I think a lot of times we think that our digital lives are running us instead of the other way around. You know, for most of our healthcare leaders, they have a lot of administrative meetings. They have projects to run, they have clinical shifts, they have to [00:06:00] do, they even have work products in terms of presentations and curriculums that they have to deliver.

So what are the biggest pain points you often see in this conflict of, like you said, deep work and shallow work? And then project management and people management. What is the biggest pain points you often see for really busy healthcare professionals?

Michelle Walter: Yeah, so I think the biggest one, and this is something I certainly experienced was this expectation that we have to be constantly accessible. That we can't turn our phone off, we can't turn off notifications, we can't be unavailable for any period of time, and that comes at the expense of. Constantly being distracted by calls and pings and notifications and emails and it's very reactive instead of being proactive.

That's absolutely. I think probably the biggest pain point that comes up. But also volume. We are constantly bombarded [00:07:00] by, emails, by the notifications, by apps, by files. Like our brains are processing all of that information all the time. Even if we don't recognize what it is that our brain is doing, it's still doing it and it's exhausting.

It creates decision fatigue. We lose our focus because our brain is, constantly ping around to all the stimuli that we're getting.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yes. I love how you said that, right? You hit the nail to like the most laserlike focus on, the thing I also agree with is just everyone really feels really reactive and that you have to answer immediately at all hours of the day. And I think the weird thing is that where do we make up in our head that there was an expectation that someone else would respond at 9:00 PM No one really has an expectation.

And I think the strange thing is that. Culture breeds culture, right? In [00:08:00] terms of people's expectations is sort of this unsaid thing. And so if someone has to interrupt a cycle to say, we'll get to it when we get to it, I mean, I have no expectation when I send emails. It may take a couple days and I really don't.

If I really need to get the project done, or I need a follow back, I would've said so in my email. Right. So I think par of is also better people management, better project management that could you get back to me in 48 hours, which is, you know, Thursday, September, you know, second or something like that.

As compared to when you send something out just for, for information you'll get to when you get to it. And, and I'm curious, when you work with your clients, how do they release that? Yeah.

Michelle Walter: I mean there's so many things you've said that I think are. One is that there's this false construct about when we have to be available or how we have to respond to things. And I think being proactive about even just setting that expectation. Emails, when you talk to someone on the phone, you can get a sense of [00:09:00] how urgent something is, but when it's an email, it all feels the same.

They all feel equally urgent. So even just taking a step of putting in there, can you please respond by X State or, even saying this isn't urgent. It's okay to get back to me when you have time. Can release others from some of that expectation. But then also you're now setting a culture of I will let people know when something is due. One of my favorite things I saw, it was a colleague locally here and his email signature. exactly that. Acknowledging my work hours may not be your work hours, so don't feel obligated to respond. And I thought that was just such a beautiful thing to set the expectation to start change the culture that I'm not expecting immediate response.

And it's okay if I'm sending this email at nine o'clock, but you don't need to worry about, responding to it in that same time.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I have to admit I I'm a night shift worker, so I do often send emails at midnight because that's when I'm actually doing my emails. A colleague [00:10:00] taught me to just, delay send during working business hours. But then I also then began to think, my God, the pressure of then having all these emails arrive between eight and 10:00 AM because the volume of these auto sent messages is also far from ideal.

Michelle Walter: Yeah.

Lillian Liang Emlet: So I do love that signature solution to be like, Hey, I'm, oh. We're good. The whole point of email. It's a slower type of conversation. If we're an emergency, we should be texting and doing a telephone call.

Michelle Walter: Exactly. And I think, thinking about that idea of being proactive instead of reactive, there's also this beautiful opportunity. To decide when you are going to read your email and that it's not going to be, oh, I have five seconds. Let me open my phone and check my email again, as many of us do I've been guilty of that for sure. But setting aside time in your day to say, okay, between this time and this time, I'm gonna check my email. And I think. That there's so many potential benefits of that. One, as an individual, you're [00:11:00] setting these boundaries and you're giving yourself space to one, just focus on email and two, when you're not to focus on everything else. But it also then sets again this culture piece that I'm not going to respond at all hours and. You can expect an email from me around these times because this is when I've designated. So again, I think just giving yourself and others permission to set those boundaries and to follow that is huge.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, you just, you know, you're saying that just reminded me that I probably should switch my auto programming to like 1130 or noon, simply because I think best practices are just to. Do the real work, the deep work in the morning when you're freshest and like clear things out, get the good stuff done.

And then when you're mindless over lunch, if you're waiting in the hallway for, you know, like the lunch line to kinda get through or to pay for something, you can scroll through and like sort of see new tasks that have to happen and to be able to shift [00:12:00] email to very specific time blocked boundary location in your life.

Michelle Walter: Yeah.

Lillian Liang Emlet: So I guess I'm wondering if someone feels completely overwhelmed right now. They're like, okay, that's great that they one thing, but I still have all these projects and files and people are texting me and then I'm getting direct messages on like teams, like the chat, chat bot, everything. If someone feels really overwhelmed by their digital.

Stuff that they have to do per day for a per 'cause. A lot of it's personal, right? With your family and communicating coordinating stuff for your home life plus work simultaneously. What's the best way to start? Yeah.

Michelle Walter: that's a great question. And I think it's really also setting expectations around that. Meaning that you're not gonna fix it and have a perfectly working system in a day. And especially if you're in a situation where you've got, the thousands and thousands of unread emails in your box or your stack of [00:13:00] files on your screen, like you can't even see your screen because it's all just files.

That's not gonna change overnight. So I think the key is to start taking action and taking small steps. Because once you've done something towards your goal of being, more streamlined or simplified, it builds momentum. And it also takes some of that pressure off of oh, I have to have this all figured out like tomorrow. So what I would say is you. Taking action. Proactive action. So let's say you want to unsubscribe to a newsletter, or you wanna delete a chunk of emails that are no longer relevant, or you wanna archive one folder that you don't need anymore. Whatever it is, just one step and then take it step at a time. Again, proactive. So I'm gonna call it proactive simplification, right? Getting rid of things you don't need, deleting, unsubscribing, that kind of thing. But then there's [00:14:00] also maintenance. So also thinking about. How can I one, build a system that's functional for me, and then what steps do I need to take to maintain it? And keeping that simple like elaborate systems of if I do this, once a week and I spend three hours and I have to go through all of these things, like that's not sustainable. Really being thoughtful about, how can I make this work? How can I go through my files?

When can I set those boundaries around what I'm doing? Whatever the case may be. But it's just, again, on those little steps and continuing to take action.

Lillian Liang Emlet: I love that sometimes it just feels good to do a lot of cleaning.

Other times it's really good to do the big picture organization. I remember when I used to do this with my projects, I used to have, colored manila folders, like little Rolodex with all the different colors different projects I was working on, or even on your desktop, making specific, colored folders for different major buckets.

Even on my own current digital organizer inside Motion, there's folders of general [00:15:00] projects, right? So big things that sort of need to get completed to be able to do the big picture, zoom out, and if it doesn't fit into there, then it may not need to be anywhere potentially, is what you're suggesting.

Simplifying.

Michelle Walter: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. If something doesn't fit in. And that's again, backtrack and say we're getting back to what is that bigger vision for whatever it is that you're doing. And if it's as a leader I wanna have time for deep work, or I want to be able to fit in the strategy meetings that I haven't had a chance to fit in, whatever the case may be, how can you allow more space for that thing.

Lillian Liang Emlet: And so decluttering our digital space translates into better leadership presence decision making and energy.

. So what parallels do you see between people who love to organize their space and declutter their house? With organizing our digital lives, in our computers, our laptops, our emails, our folders how do you see the correlation between the physical [00:16:00] space and the digital space?

Michelle Walter: Yeah, there's a lot of connection there, right? Like clutter, whether it is digital or physical is noise, and it has similar or the same impacts on our wellbeing and our function. Again, regardless if it's physical clutter or digital clutter, very much intertwines and overlap.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, and I can imagine for leaders, it's really even more important than usual because. Who's gonna follow a disorganized leader with 80,000 things going on simultaneously and not actually able to be present with you to really hear deeply what's of concern to you. If you're always distracted and wondering about the next tab or folder or project, is hard to think that you'd be able to be present for what's necessary right here in the moment with the people you're working with.

Michelle Walter: Yeah, and just thinking about, you are a team member and your leader doesn't recognize, you [00:17:00] know what you're working on. If you come to them with something and they forget about it or they're really focused on something else and they're just not being. Present with you as a team member?

Like how does that feel? It feels awful, right? If you as a leader. And I can imagine, being a strong leader, a good leader an effective leader, you want to be present with your team. You wanna be present for what the goals and the vision of the team are. And if you are scattered in your thoughts, in your process, then. Those goals and vision are not gonna be carried out in the same way or anywhere near as effectively than if you're focused. If you're able to be present with your team and acknowledge what they're thinking about or worrying about or dealing with, and then being able to effectively move projects forward, that's all gonna be [00:18:00] much better, easier, more straightforward.

If you're organized, then if not.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yes. I totally agree. You probably experienced this too, while on service, when you have a team I really find it challenging whenever people would try to be talking about decisions we need to make for certain clinical decisions, and they're on their phone messaging or scrolling on Instagram or messaging a consultant all simultaneously while talking about things and people wonder why no one's noticed whether there's any teaching or feedback that occurs in the clinical space, but half of us are really not present.

Even as we're working together as a team to provide care mindful practice, even on daily rounds and at least on the inpatient side, is very distractible because of the degree of messaging people will get on their phones or the paging going off, or the phone going off, all of these things.

Do you have any strategies for how to stay mindful in that kind of environment?

Michelle Walter: So I think [00:19:00] that, as a palliative physician, being present with our patients. Was of the utmost importance. So I think there's a couple things here. One as a physician leader, modeling the behavior that you're expecting from your team is huge. So if you are the one that's on your phone and answering pages and checking things, then you are setting the expectation for your team that's okay. So I think as a leader you have to model what you want to have happen and what you think is best practice. Even as we were talking about earlier, just verbally setting an expectation for your team. If we're on rounds, then I expect everyone to be present. I expect that, if it's a not urgent call you wait or excuse yourself and go answer it and not just do it in the mix with the team.

There's so many things, but I think it's, again, just it's okay to set expectations about. What it is that you want to have your team be doing at any [00:20:00] given time?

Lillian Liang Emlet: I love those pearls as I think, you know, oftentimes in other specialties, we don't realize every moment is critical and end of life care is in. And making that a beautiful experience for the family and the patient is so vitally important. So I think everyone can take a lesson from what you just shared in terms of having the intention to craft and pre-plan and preset up who can cover the phone and the pager, and to be able to come into space with great clarity.

Is really important and that you as a team leader, people are watching you, like everyone is like your child. They are actually going to mimic you, and then you set the tone If you want to be a distracted person, well, you've chosen that type to be your leadership signature potentially compared to someone who's a thoughtful human, who prepares the team and goes with intention and comes back out and debriefs and picks back up where the digital space needs to come back into your life again.

So that things are not overwhelmed and [00:21:00] multitasked and come to with poor decision making capacity, right? We all know that our brains can't fire two or three things at the same time. We actually do know that things are supposed to be done with concentration and focus, and ironically, you get things done faster in, in that aspect.

So thanks for that amazing tip.

And so as we come to a close for this episode, I'm curious, 'cause I know people are, wondering if they've listened this far? It's like, well, do you have any digital hacks to help with my digital overwhelm? And so I do have one or two that I do use. And so I guess I'm curious from your perspective, Michelle whether or not you have any, whether ways to help control either the email or their folders or some other way to control the digital overwhelm.

Michelle Walter: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think my personal philosophy is definitely all about simplicity. So I am aggressive with my digital decluttering, if you will, and thinking about, what do I not need? How could I get rid of messages or [00:22:00] subscriptions, newsletters, et cetera. One thing I find to be helpful is like bulk deleting. Searching in your email for a particular person. If you're doing a personal email, maybe it's a. Store that you don't shop at anymore or that just is excessive newsletter titles, whatever the case may be. But search for that.

Highlight all of them. It'll, search back pretty far and just delete them. And that can be very effective. And I don't know, it also feels good just. Seem all go poof and go by. I think the other biggest thing is maybe not so much a hack, but just again, focusing on being proactive.

Not waiting until things are overwhelming because it's just that much harder to deal with. So just taking those little steps whatever the case may be. If it's, your files, if it's the emails, whatever it is, but just taking care of them and not waiting for later is just a deferred decision.

It feels okay in the moment, but you're really hurting your future self. Who's gonna have to deal with it?

Lillian Liang Emlet: I love that. [00:23:00] So what I'm hearing is that using some kind of way to clean out on a regular basis for things you're not using. And then also simultaneously, if you set yourself up for success there is also potential that way too. For me, I use something called Quora. It's a software that overlays into your email.

That won't really let you see your emails except two times a day. So once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I love newsletters 'cause I love to learn and I can't stop it. So it's just, I love to learn all kinds of things. I do love newsletters, obviously we have a newsletter, so I like them.

But what it does is it summarizes all of 'em together into like, like miniature, like couple lines. And if it looks good enough, I'll go in and pursue it. Actually read it. But it gets me enough where like I learned one or two pearls within the auto AI summarizes a newsletter for you.

The only danger I think for me is I feel like more nervous in this process of having Cora on my email because I worry that I, I have missed important things and maybe I didn't get back to somebody, [00:24:00] but it also forces you to be slower in your response time and to just. You know we'll get there when we get there, rather than that constant pinging.

So I have become more productive because I now only can check my email two times a day and you really can't see things unless you really dig into folders to be able to find a particular event.

Michelle Walter: It sounds like that's helping you just set the boundaries for yourself.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Yes. And I know for some other people too, what they'll set a timer. They'll set a timer for how long I can do email. So if you race yourself against the clock, I only have 30 minutes, and that's all there really is. So,

Michelle Walter: Yeah, I love that too.

Lillian Liang Emlet: so thank you Michelle, so much for coming and chatting about digital decluttering and sort of figuring out how to live in this techno world that we live in.

And simplify. Simplify to amplify and to be able to have intention with everything that we do. And it starts with that.

Michelle Walter: Yeah. I'm so thrilled to be here and thanks so much for having me, Lilly.

Lillian Liang Emlet: Awesome. So everyone will leave information in the [00:25:00] show notes below for the things that we've mentioned in the show. But otherwise, thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode. Bye everyone.

Michelle Walter: Bye!