One Year As A Doctor
Welcome to Issue 87 of Yath’s Blogletter, a newsletter where we explore mindful self-growth and learn to navigate life.
Dear friends,
It has been a little over one year as a doctor now and there are several lessons I've taken away and reflections I've made over the past 12 months. Here are a few of them that apply to all walks of life.
Don't Ask, Don't Get
It's very simple. If you don't ask for help or advice, you won't receive it. Generally, humans are not great at reading minds and signals. So, if you're in a tricky situation and need support — ask for it and 9 out of 10 times you'll receive it.
Work-Life Balance Fallacy
True work-life balance doesn't really exist in the realms of traditional careers. It certainly doesn't within medicine — the hours are crazy and at times the workload is intense. But as a bigger concept, I think there is no such balance. You have predominantly work periods. You have predominantly life periods. There is seldom an equal balance between the two.
Perhaps, you could in theory strive to get closer to an equilibrium, but this requires deviation from traditional careers. Even a 9-5 doesn't cut it. Maybe a 10-2 would, but that requires you to carve out something pretty niche and high yielding.
Share Your Concerns
It's important to pay attention to your body and mind. Work can become stressful on busy days and around busy periods (like winter months in the hospital or around project deadlines in the corporate world). These are the days when a moment of reflection and debriefing can help.
I try to chat to my colleagues at the end of a rough shift or chat to my fiancée and kind of just get some things off my chest. I always swear by the mentality of a problem shared, a problem halved and so debriefing and opening up helps me overcome stressful days faster.
Make Fun Plans
Often when assessing motivation and mental wellbeing, it's clear that people are generally more motivated and happier when there is something to look forwards to. This is why I make fun plans.
I try to look ahead in my work schedule and make plans for days and weekends off. There's a delicate balance to this — you want to ensure you give yourself some time for general house chores and life admin. Every second off work filled with motives can quickly become a chore in itself.
Have Passion Projects
This is a sticky one for me. I tried to keep up my passion projects (like this newsletter and YouTube) over the past year but failed quite badly. I think my main priority going forwards is to allocate some of my free time to progress on my passion projects.
There are many wins to be taken from having something on the side. It can act as a stress reliever, mind cleanser, or even a cheeky money-making machine (sadly this is not the case for me due to be an internal struggle with consistency).
Work Smart, Not Hard
This is common sense but it pains me when I see my colleagues working very hard and finishing hours late every shift. I have found having systems (to-do lists, colour-coding, box techniques, etc.) and prioritisation methods allows me to be most productive at work.
If we can batch similar tasks, then we should be more efficient. I've also learnt to leverage the team available. For example, efficiently dividing up jobs for patients following ward-round between the team means we all work equally and end up finishing on time (mostly).
Quote of the week:
The key lesson in all these ideas is to always be experimenting. Try new things and see what happens. ($100 Start Up)
Recommendation of the week:
App 💻 - Numi
This is a ridiculously cool calculator for mac (sorry windows). It converts common text into calculations. So, you could type something like 'add 6 months to today' or '1000 GBP in USD' and it will do just that. Also if you're a Mac user, it neatly sits in the menu bar making it ultra convenient.
Thanks - be safe, be happy!
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