The Planning Fallacy: Meeting the Mental Health Need in 2021
By Andrew Bundy
One of the things that I know to be true is that I can’t estimate how long a project will take. This problem runs from work obligations to a Lego set. Most people know how it feels.
You open the Ikea box, look at the diagram with the two happy guys building the shelf, and think, “This should take me an hour.” Four hours later and a call into a helpline, the shelf is more-or-less assembled.
The Planning Fallacy
This happens for most people due to a cognitive fallacy “The Planning Fallacy.” According to this fallacy, most people are not very good at figuring out how long certain tasks will take, especially if there are multiple steps and any one of those steps could run into a difficulty or a snag.
This fallacy not only impacts building shelves, but it can also hit private practices. As the world slowly emerges from the pandemic, some news outlets and community agencies are sounding the call to prioritize mental health in 2021.
However, many mental health professionals are already dealing with burnout from the increased strain on the mental health system over the past year.
Take Steps to Mitigate Stress
For a mental health practice, adding therapists and new clients can create a large amount of stress, leading practice managers to work later and later, doing tasks that would normally be handled during the day but had to wait for more urgent tasks. Even figuring out how much of a day is spent working on specific duties can be difficult.
Combining a fast-growing practice, additional need for mental health services and only 24 hours in a day, the strain on a private practice can be intense.
Rob Magill of Magill Counseling Associates was able to mitigate that strain by working with a virtual assistant to grow his practice. He sat down with Move Forward Virtual Assistants recently for a conversation about how Magill leveraged a virtual assistant to manage workflow and find new clients.
Adding a Virtual Assistant
Small Business Trends discussed how to look for a virtual assistant, which can become important for therapists who are looking to meet the growing need for mental health services but also keep person-to-person interaction to a minimum during the pandemic and beyond.
One of their first pieces of advice was being clear as to what you are looking for. Magill, for example, was able to work out which duties his virtual assistant would do and how that assistant would interact with the other therapists in his practice.
As time went on, Magill added an office manager to handle duties he did not hand over to the virtual assistant. However, the virtual assistant’s duties were clear, allowing them to serve potential clients, manage the schedule, and maximize everyone’s time.
Tracking time and tasks
Time may be one of the main reasons why hiring a virtual assistant in 2021 is important. Even if you are not looking for a virtual assistant, the pandemic created a strange form of “COVID Time,” where some months seemed like years, but other days seemed like seconds.
For busy therapists, they found themselves juggling more clients with the typical day-to-day needs of a therapy practice. Lifehack found some tools that would help people focus their time and productivity. One of them was called Toggl, which is used to see how long particular tasks take. Everyone spends time on some aspect of their job, but people rarely know how long they spend.
Figuring out how much time you can free up by giving some of those tasks to someone else can help determine the amount of time needed for a virtual assistant. That may become even more important as many people adapt to telehealth, expanding a practice’s reach to those who may have difficulty getting into the practice.
Telehealth is here to stay
Private Practice Coach Allison Puryear said in a recent podcast that many people like telehealth, so that’s something that is likely to continue even after the pandemic.
A virtual assistant can help make sure the client has connected to the online meeting, troubleshoot technology issues, and secure all paperwork, which might be something that a typical therapist is doing on their own. A therapy session online that is connected and clear is better than trying to figure out a microphone while a person is trying to share something personal and difficult.
Telehealth, adding therapists, and meeting the needs of new clients are all multi-step processes that could easily be impacted by The Planning Fallacy. Finding some tools to help manage time, and even admitting that it might be a good idea to find a mental health virtual assistant, could help a busy mental health practice meet the need predicted in 2021.
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