The Campbell Academy Blog | Colin Campbell (72)

Easy fixes

Last week, we had a fantastic course meal after the first night of our Sinus Grafting Course.

This is a course that's run now for eight years, and so we're pretty used to providing it and quite good at delivering it, and it's churning out people every single time who are much better at implant dentistry and implant surgery and on a path to doing bigger and better things.

It's a joy.

One of the great parts of it, as with all the courses, is the course meals and the opportunity to meet people you've not met before and get a different perspective.

I was sat at one end of the table with some of our new delegates (five) that have not been on our course before.

We know from everything that we do that at least three or four of those guys will come back repeatedly because we seem to provide things that people like, and when they come for the first time, they often return.

And so, the conversation moved away from Sinus Grafting and dentistry to just how to manage all the madness and the nonsense of family life and work life and trying to be the best dentist you could and trying to push your career forward while still being a partner to someone else, or making sure that your kids have something to eat at the right time of the day.

Inevitably, we were talking about the incoming and all the information that seems to come in rapidly that we can't keep up with.

And it also turned to the discussion about notifications on your phone.

It's worth reminding anyone who wants to read this blog that I've been advocating turning notifications off your phone in every single way for about eight years.

Eight years ago, I realised that there was no way I could keep up with those and every time my phone rang, pinged, or buzzed in my pocket, it just made me more and more anxious about the things I was not getting to.

It doesn't seem to me that turning notifications off on my phone has been detrimental to my progress in my career or my personal life, but I do watch with a little bit of amusement while other people's phones rattle off the table every time I'm out for a meal.

The other thing I discussed was sender filters on emails again; this has been going on for at least eight years, where you get an out-of-office reply from me that says, effectively, you won't get an email back any time soon. If I do send an email back, it's a moment of joy for someone else, and if I don't, I've managed expectations, and it's expected.

So, I never get bothered by emails; I answer them when I can and pick the ones I answer.

Finally, I haven't posted anything on social media since 2015 (a picture of my breakfast on Instagram @ColinCampbellfa, if you want to see what my breakfast was like eight years ago.

I promise that that has not had a detrimental effect on what I'm doing.

It's had an enormously positive effect on what I'm doing, so if you're looking for some easy fixes and we discussed this at the table at the meal, why not just turn your notifications off for a week and see whether your life is better or worse?

There will be a little bit of kickback, perhaps from your partner or from someone close to you who says I tried to get a hold of you, but that will soon disappear. All of the rest of the people who think that they have an HDMI cable plugged into their head that can access information straight into their brain at the push of a button will start to realise that they don't, and they'll have to wait just until you have a minute and until your life is a little bit quieter.