If you’re like most practice owners, you work hard.
From part-time therapists squeezing in private clients alongside a full-time job, or super-busy, multi-therapist practice owners, we know you’re short on time and work well beyond the normal 9-to-5 workday.
So when do you get your work done?
This month, we took a look at when therapists use Owl to finish the work they can’t do in sessions. We’ve gone over our data on days-of-the-week and times-of-the-day so you can see how you compare to other therapists working in private practice.
To see how your schedule and workload stack up to others, read on!
DAY OF WEEK ACTIVITY
One of the first things we wanted to understand is how busy therapists were on various days of the week. In the chart below, you can see the relative activity levels by week day.
A few things jump out here. Tuesday to Thursday are the busiest days of the week, with Tuesday being the day when therapists seem to get the most done. Notably, Mondays and Fridays are less busy, possibly because these days are less popular with clients, or therapists are just getting started or wrapping up their weeks. And perhaps most interesting is that 10% of all the work in a typical week gets done on the weekends. It seems there is no rest for the weary!
TIME OF DAY ACTIVITY
Things get even more interesting if we look at activity by hour during the day.
Therapists seem to be early birds, generally starting between 7 and 9 a.m. Presumably checking calendars, following up on overnight correspondence, reviewing session notes, the day ramps up until the peak of daily activity between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. It stays busy right through the lunch hour!
There is also a noticeable tail to the day that extends well into the evening. In fact, 35% of therapist activity happens outside the “normal” 9-to-5 eight hour day. And we’re happy to report that there are several Owls among you – night owls – who get work done between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. (make sure to get your sleep!). Clearly therapists are a hard- and long-working group!
Finally, we looked at time-of-day statistics by days of the week. There is a very typical “curve” of activity during the main weekdays, as you would expect. As before, Mondays and Fridays tend to be less active, with Fridays having less afternoon and evening activity. No doubt therapists, and probably their clients, look forward to their weekends too! Finally, working on Saturdays and Sundays tends to be spread out more during the day and even into the evenings. Of course, it looks like Sunday nights may be a key time for therapists to get a jump start on the week to come (or catch up on things left hanging on Friday)
SUMMARY
Remember: If you’re feeling a little busy as a private practice therapist, there’s a reason! You’re working hard during the week, but also on weekends too! Your typical day often goes well beyond the normal 9-to-5 work hours of a “regular” office job. You’re not alone in this – everyone in the therapist-entrepreneur path you’ve chosen is in the same situation, and we hope you find the job as rewarding as we do in helping you make it easier!
Practice Wisely
Methodology Footnote:
For the above analysis, we’ve used Owl’s server activity to give us a sense of when people are using Owl, and therefore when they’re actively working with their practice. All data is anonymous and aggregated from this low-level activity report. Obviously, there is some work that gets done outside of using a tool like Owl, but we think these system interactions are pretty descriptive of when therapists are getting work done. Also, we’ve looked at data from the last nine months, and normalized time data for North American timezones.
