11/06/2026
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭/𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞…
So little confession - I’m a bit of a reformed productivity geek, and have spent an ungodly amount of time playing around with different systems for organising myself.
One of the best and most well known ones is David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” framework.
I don’t use it completely now, but have kept a few of the habits I learned from it.
One in particular is what’s known as a “someday / Maybe” list.
Essentially, it’s a place to park things that seem interesting, useful, or worth exploring, just not right now.
Great idea in theory - I can get it off my mind and out of my head, without worrying I’ll forget it entirely.
However in practice, I’ve realised mine often becomes something a bit less helpful: a graveyard for my best ideas.
Yeah, some of them are legitimately never going to happen: reorganise the home office, train and qualify as an acupuncturist, set up that compost bin we’ve had in the shed for 3 years…
But many were the opposite - things that would have genuinely helped, but got mentally filed under “𝘠𝘦𝘢𝘩, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥, 𝘐 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘥𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵… 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘢𝘺, 𝘮𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦.”
And every now and then I’ll look back at something on that list and realise that if I’d acted on that when I first spotted it, I’d probably have been sitting back and reaping the rewards for a good while now.
It’s not just me either, a lot of colleagues and business owners do the same thing.
Not with the urgent stuff of course (well, hopefully!).
But when it comes to those the things that feel important, useful, and clearly relevant… but don’t need doing right this second
CPD weekend that looks genuinely useful, but will probably come around again next year.
Considering the new hire that would take a lot off your plate… once you found them.
Or maybe it’s just the missing layer you know you need, but can still justify putting off for another few months.
It always seems to make sense in the moment… but it’s also where the cost creeps in.
And because nothing falls apart, it’s hard to recognise
Patients keep getting better, you keep learning new “stuff”, and the bills get paid…
… but at the same time, you stay in the same loop, dealing with the same non-urgent problems.
Maybe with some new tools, some new ideas, or some new thoughts on how to piece things together.
But when a case gets weird, or doesn’t go as planned, there isn’t always a clear enough way to decide what matters most.
Superficially, that uncertainty can become strangely easy to tolerate - especially if you’re busy and your patients are still getting results.
But below the surface, the cost of that second guessing starts to build up, and drain at your mental energy.
Over time, it can start to suck the joy out of practice.
Maybe you don’t hate it, but you just don’t love it like you used to.
Things aren’t terrible, but it’s like the colour starts to fade.
It’s hard to notice, but you can end up normalising a level of clinical uncertainty that you don’t actually want to keep carrying.
That’s a big part of why I put together Quadrant Analysis Foundations.
Not because everyone needs another course.
But because I think a lot of good chiropractors are tolerating a problem they don’t actually need to keep tolerating.
So if these emails have been resonating, don’t quietly file this away in the same mental drawer as all the other things you knew mattered.
And despite how insanely valuable it is when you start applying it, I’ve priced it as low as I possibly can - about the price of 2 patient visits.
You crack just one case using QA, it’ll have already paid for itself - and I’m betting you’ll crack a load more than that - to say nothing of how much more fun and fulfilment you’ll be having in clinic every day this summer.
All you have to do is choose how you want to spend the next year or so…
… keep doing what you’ve been doing, dealing with the same uncertainty and second guessing…
Try another tool, technique or seminar and hope this one will finally give you “the answer”...
… or invest in a decision framework that will show you how to think more clearly, ask better questions, and make much better use of the skills and methods you already have.
Like I said the other day, QA isn’t for everyone- and if it’s no for you, that's completely fine.
I’ll be back to my usual content-laden emails next week.
But, if you think this might be for you, and you’ve been struggling with the uncertainty of clinical practice, we’d love for you to join us.
You can join at the link in the comments, and start diving in when we go live tomorrow...