You didn't get into veterinary medicine to spend your days reacting to chaos.

But somewhere along the way, leadership became about putting out fires instead of leading with intention. Your days feel like survival mode. You're handling staff conflicts, managing schedules, dealing with whatever crisis just walked through the door. And at the end of each day, you're not sure if you're actually moving toward anything or just getting through it.

Most veterinary leaders are drowning because they're building habits without knowing where those habits are supposed to take them.

You can't build the right habits if you haven't defined what you're building toward. The planning system comes first.

Start With Where You Want to Be

Most leadership advice tells you to assess where you are, identify your problems, and work on fixing them. That keeps you focused on what's wrong instead of what's possible.

I want you to try something different. Instead of starting with today's veterinary chaos, start with your future.

What does your world look like when leadership feels good? Not perfect or stress-free, but good. What does a great day look like for you? What kind of leader are you in that future? How do you spend your time? What matters most to you?

Leadership and Line in Your Veterinary Hospital

This isn't about setting goals. It's about envisioning the leader you want to become and the life you want to have. When you can picture that clearly, you have something to move toward instead of just reacting to what's in front of you. This is the starting point for everything else.

Take some time to write down what you see when you think about what your future looks like. Instead of writing vague notes like "less stressed" or "better leader," be specific. Describe what that looks like. What are you doing differently? How are you showing up for your team? What has changed in how you work?

This exercise helps you create clarity, and clarity is what most veterinary leaders are missing.

Identify Your Priority Areas

Once you have a picture of what the future looks like, the next question is: what would get you there?

You can't work on everything at once. Your time and energy are limited. So you need to identify the three to five major areas of your life that matter most and that, if you focused on them, would move you toward that future.

These are your priority areas.

For some leaders, it might be health, relationships, team development, financial stability, and personal growth. For others, it might be communication, time management, professional learning, family, and creating margin in their schedule.

What Matters Most

There's no right answer here. The question is: what matters most to you? What areas, if you invested in them consistently, would create the kind of life and leadership you want?

Write these down too. Three to five areas, no more. If everything is a priority, nothing is.

These priority areas should connect to things you want in your life, not just things you have to do at work. You spend more waking hours at work than anywhere else. If you can't get what you want out of life while you're there, something needs to change.

The veterinary profession gives you opportunities for growth, learning, making a difference, building relationships, and finding fulfillment. Make sure your own priority areas reflect that. Work and life don't compete with each other when they're both giving you what you need.

Build Daily Habits in Those Areas

Now you have a vision of the kind of future you want, and you’ve selected priority areas to get you there. The last step is the one most people skip: building daily habits that move you forward in those areas.

This is where the rubber meets the road. You can plan all you want, but if you're not practicing something every day, nothing changes.

The smaller you start, the better you sustain the habit over time. That's what the research shows. And once you've got the habit built, once your brain has a neural pathway for it, you can extend it.

Small Steps Build Momentum for You and Your Veterinary Team

For each of your priority areas, ask yourself: what's one small thing I could do every day that would move me forward here? Then do that thing, building repetition, establishing a path forward. Let momentum do the heavy lifting.

You might ask yourself questions like: What do my teammates need from me today? How should I plan my day so I feel good about it at the end? If I focus on one accomplishment today, what would it be?

Those questions keep you connected to your priority areas. They remind you what you're building toward instead of just reacting to what might feel  urgent in the moment.

Plan, Schedule, Choose

Here's a process that can help you pull it all together: plan, schedule, choose.

Plan your day with intention. Even five minutes before your shift starts makes a difference. Think about how you want to show up. What does success look like today?

Schedule the things that matter. If you don't put it on the calendar, it won't happen. That includes time for yourself, check-ins with your team, moments to think instead of just reacting to what comes your way.

Choose how you show up. You can see your team as overwhelmed, or you can see them as growing. You can see the day as chaotic, or as a chance to be at your best. These are choices. Practice them consistently, and as these choices become habits, your perspective will change. 

Leadership in veterinary medicine is hard. But it doesn't have to feel like drowning. When you have a plan, when you know where you're going, the chaos doesn't control you anymore.

Where to Start

It’s easy to think, "I don't have time to envision my future, I can barely get through today." But you get through chaos by envisioning something better, not by focusing on the chaos itself.

So start small. Take fifteen minutes this week and write down what you want your future to look like. Just get it on paper and identify two or three priority areas. Then pick one small habit in one of those areas and practice it tomorrow. That's it. You don't need to overhaul your entire life this week. You just need to take one intentional step and repeat it.

Leadership isn't built in a moment. It's built in the choices you make every single day about who you want to become and what you want to build in your life and your veterinary career.

You didn't get into this profession just to survive it. So what would it look like to lead like you're building something instead?

What do you think? Other veterinary pros want to hear from you! Share your experience in the comments below.