There are three pieces of advice that I wish I had taken on board at the start of my career:
- Let the small bad things happen.
- Work with the very best people.
- Don’t take yourself so seriously.
(I expect I probably was told both of these, in some guise, at some stage. But I certainly hadn’t “heard” them in the way that I try to use them now.)
Let the small bad things happen.
This comes from Tim Ferriss (of the Four hour work week). It is another way of framing prioritisation. As clinicians, we are adept at knowing what the most important tasks are. We know what must be done first and what can be left to the end of the day. This aphorism suggests by truly focusing on the critical tasks, it will be at the expense of other things. If you are to get something big and meaningful done, it will mean other things get ignored/neglected/missed/delayed. If you are willing to accept that sometimes you will make those mistakes, you can concentrate on the most meaningful tasks. For example, during certain phases of training, job applications are the most important thing you will have on. Totally concentrating on your interview preparation may mean letting an audit slip and missing the cycle. That is completely worth it if you perform better in the interview.
If I had embraced this advice earlier on, I would have put more energy into the rate-limiting projects and spent less time on things that will not matter in 10 years’ time.
Work with the very best people.
My experience with this is from a research perspective. In science, the very best people tend to continue to do excellent, meaningful work. This is why many major funders (NIHR, Wellcome, NIH, HHMI, Gates Foundation) fund individuals for 3-8 year fellowships, rather than just projects. This generally also applies to institutions. Clearly, identifying the ‘best’ people is difficult and has lots of caveats, which is beyond the scope of this blog. (Happy to discuss my thoughts if you’re interested.) Working with the ‘best’ people or in the ‘best’ place will have problems.
If I had taken this advice on board earlier in my career I would have sought out the best people in the country (/world) to work with before I did.
Don’t take yourself so seriously.
It is easy to be ‘heavy’ and serious, but hard to be light. It takes much more effort to see things with a jovial spin and laugh when things get hard. This has been a consistent message across many books I’ve read. I could probably afford to be reminded of this ten times a day now. But had I truly heard this earlier in my career I could have been a bit easier going. I’m continuing to work on this. It’s important to make life a bit brighter to me and those around me.
See:
The happiness project by Gretchen Rubin
The art of possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
The four hour work week by Timothy Ferriss
