What Is The Ideal Therapist Schedule?

I’ve always been so curious to know what the ideal therapist schedule is. Haven’t you? Is there a “perfect” schedule that we should be striving for?

I’ve wondered how many clients per week we should see to maximize happiness, and how many clients per day. How many should we ideally see back-to-back? Can we see them during regular business hours, or do we need to be open to seeing clients during nights and weekends?

In today’s article, I set out to answer these questions utilizing responses from an informal survey I sent to my email list.

I was happy that 125 of you responded!! Woo! This blog post will include some of my thoughts and commentary about the responses I received.

If you’d like to hear more of a deep dive into everyone’s responses then you might like to check out my podcast version of what an ideal therapist schedule looks like.

What’s The Ideal Number of Weekly Client Hours?

The first question I asked was: On average, how many hours per week do you spend seeing clients – not including admin & other tasks?

Keep in mind: I’m fairly certain that most of the email subscribers who took my survey are in private practice because of the nature of the content I create.

That being said, I received a wide range of answers. In the pie chart below you can see that approximately 75% of responders fell in the range of 10 to 24 client hours per week.

Breaking it down more:

30% of folks see clients for 10-14 hours
20% see clients for 15-19 hours, and
25% see 20-24 clients per week

There were about 25% of folks who fell outside of the most common range of hours.

Personally, it’s taken me a long time to realize that somewhere around 15-20 clients per week is full-time work for a therapist. Even if your admin time is minimal, seeing 15-20 clients takes a considerable emotional toll. There’s not much margin left, for most people, after that many therapy hours to keep seeing more clients.

My personal experience lines up with what the majority of therapists indicated was their client load per week. This seems to be the sweet spot for an ideal therapist schedule – on average.

Average Weekly Admin Hours

I wanted to ask about admin hours because I know these hours can vary greatly. It all depends on whether you are in private practice, take insurance or not, or work for an agency.

The amount of paperwork, billing, and trainings can fluctuate quite a bit depending on what kind of setting you are in.

The next question I posed was: How many hours a week do you spend on work tasks other than direct client hours (e.g., notes, billing, marketing, consultation, trainings, etc.)?

You can see how folks responded in the pie chart below.

I was a little surprised by how many hours therapists are spending on admin tasks. Based on my survey results, about 20% of therapists are doing 10-14 hours of admin per week. Ten percent of people said they work 15 or more admin hours per week (4.8% said 15-19 hours and 5.6% said 20+ hours per week).

These numbers stress me out a little bit! I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to spend 15 or more hours a week on notes, billing, consults, trainings, etc. More therapists than I’d realized are putting in that many admin hours.

Working Nights/Weekends

Another topic of conversation that comes up for therapists is the reasonableness of being able to work typical business hours. The question of if you can work 9:00 am to 5:00 pm on weekdays is a common one.

So I asked:

Below you can see the responses to this question:

Clearly most therapists are working during the typical business hours. But, there were more folks than I thought meeting with clients during evenings and weekends.

Maybe those responders absolutely love working those hours. Although, in just a bit, we’re going to take a look at some more detailed responses that demonstrate that not all therapists are enamored by their current schedule.

Do You Choose Your Own Schedule?

The next question was: Are you in control of setting your own work hours? The options were: Yes, No and Somewhat.

The vast majority of therapists (84%) said they set their own hours. Almost 14% said they are somewhat in control of their work hours. And, only 2% of responders indicated that they were not in control of setting their schedule.

I would be curious to hear more from the folks who responded that they are somewhat in control. I wonder what parts they do have control over and what parts they do not?

Are You Happy With Your Schedule?

In the survey I asked folks to rate how happy they are with their schedule on a Likert scale from 1 to 5.

A “one” means they are super unhappy with their current schedule and a “five” indicates they are extremely happy.

Here are the results of this question:

It stands out that from everyone who responded, no one said they were super unhappy with their therapist schedule. Yay!

The category that had the most responses was “four,” which is only one notch below “extremely happy.” Close to 90% of people rated a “three” or above on this Likert scale.

It’s pretty impressive that overall folks who responded are generally feeling happy with their current therapist schedule.

What Would You Change to Make Your Schedule More Ideal?

I decided to ask an optional question to get some more detailed feedback. The question was:

Of the checkboxes that I provided, 36% of therapist checked “fewer client hours.”

Thirty-five percent checked “less admin time.” This response makes a lot of sense to me given how many hours many people said they were spending on admin tasks in the earlier survey question.

Twenty-six percent of therapists said they would be helped by having more clients to see.

Only 11% checked the box for “being in control of my own schedule.”

Wanting More Control

There was also the option to write in a response. After reading through the various comments, I tried to categorize the responses. The theme that popped up most frequently was: wanting more control over one’s schedule.

This is interesting to me because, when asked, 84% said they did control their schedule. So the idea of somewhat being in control and somewhat not is coming up again.

One responder said: “Being fairly newly qualified, I accepted clients whenever suited them so that my schedule is too spread out. I would like to condense the hours into blocks that suit me.”

This is a good example of a therapist who in theory, has control over making their own schedule but has lost some of it. Their clients participate in influencing their schedule.

Based on this response and others, I sense folks are asking the question, “Even if we are, in theory, in control of our schedules, how much control do we actually take?” Good question!

Wanting to Work Traditional Working Hours

Another common theme was that many therapists wished they could work fewer weekends and evenings. This, for them, would make a more ideal therapist schedule.

For example, one therapist shared, “When I started my private practice, I set my hours in a way that was similar to the hours I worked at an agency because it was what was familiar. It’s a lot of evening work! I’ve been in private practice for 3 years and am finally starting to shift my schedule to the hours I actually prefer and make sense for my life/family. It’s been a process to discern what I really want and what works best for me, and I’ve had to work through the guilt of reducing evening hours. I’ve been surprised at how many clients are able to make other times work!”

Wanting Changes In Pay

Finally, therapists frequently mentioned pay-related concerns.

One responder said: “I end up being more generous with my availability for the sake of wanting to earn more. I know that I would much rather have fewer hours, but because of my financial situation it seems impossible right now.”

There are definitely ways to improve this situation, but it’s a hard place to be! You feel like you aren’t entirely in control of your own schedule because the amount you’re getting paid isn’t enough to meet your financial goals.

So, What is The Ideal Therapist Schedule?

After combing through all of these responses, I think we can draw some conclusions about what the ideal therapist schedule looks like:

An ideal schedule allows you to earn the income that you want, while having the flexibility to set your own schedule. And of course, the actual hours you work may look different from person to person, depending on each therapist’s preferences.

Next Steps

I hope that those of you who do have the ability to set your schedule feel empowered to observe and reflect. How is your current schedule working for you? Are there any tweaks you can make to allow it to feel more ideal for you?

My article on how to determine what a successful private practice looks like may also help in reflecting on your practice.

I encourage therapists who are unhappy with partial or minimal control of your schedule to consider whether finding a workplace that mimics where you thrive best might help. Or you could see if there are ways you could advocate with your employer to gain a bit more control over your schedule.

I hope that those of you reading this article will leave feeling like you can make some changes, even if it’s the smallest tweak, to your therapist schedule to make it work better for you.