 One of my favorite charts in the world has to be this one. This is by James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits that shows that 1% improvement every single day could lead to a 37 times improvement over the span of a year. With 2022 finally here, here's how to guarantee that you can become 37 times better in school in your own personal life today. Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician. I love making videos and content to help you succeed on whatever journey you're on, but doing you with less stress. If this video gets edited and released on the right time, then today should be new year. So happy new years to you, my friend. In this video, I'm going to talk about the model that I personally am going to be using in both my life as a physician, as well as my personal life to improve and try to aim to that 37 times improvement from where I am today on January 1st. And before getting into what model I plan on using, I think it's important to mention why I'm actually changing my model in the first place, because let's be real, no one's new year's resolutions really last in the duration of the 12 months. And for me, I felt like 2021 was a fantastic year in both areas of medicine, business, personal relationships. I did feel like at every phase, there was some part of anxiety and stress that just came from things going well, things not going well, a roller coaster of life that was going on. And I really just want 2022 to just feel more like an upwards roller coaster versus one where I feel at the very end, it's like, did I make any progress or not? That leads me to the model that I'll be using this year, which I'm just coining to keep it as simple as possible. The simplicity model. Now, for me, the simplicity model was inspired by the hecticness of 2021. And essentially what I wanted to do is ask myself, what are the main pillars of my life that I want to make sure I'm always making progress to? And what kind of things can I do individually on each of those pillars to actually see that signs of progress? So just to give an example of a student that's who typically watches most of my videos, your main pillars may be one being academic, another one being the relationships in your life, another one being your fitness and your personal health. And finally, your hobbies and kind of side projects that you're doing. Those may be the four pillars that this example student may want to do. The next step that I've done in my simplicity model is to really order those pillars by the ones that have been hit and damaged the most over the span of the last year. So for example, in 2021, you may have noticed that your time as a student may have led you to have big sufferings and kind of sacrifices in your relationship and your fitness as well as your hobbies and then less so in your academics because you're spending so much of your time actually doing those. And so in this example, whenever I've identified which pillars have taken the biggest hit in 2021 for me, the next thing I'll be doing is the tax system. Now the tax system is essentially evaluating each pillar and saying, OK, if this took a big hit, I need to really give some focus on a daily basis. If this one not so much, then more on a weekly basis. And if this was something that I really crushed it on and I'm going to always succeed on, then maybe a monthly basis. For me, most of those pillars that I had in my life that I talked about academic relationship, fitness and hobbies all kind of took a hit at a different spectrum, but it's something I still want to work on. And so I'm going to be focusing on these on a daily and a weekly attack system. And essentially what this will mean is how micro focus you get on making sure you're improving something. So for example, if you're really struggling in medicine on a specific pillar like relationships, then you can't really just say on a weekly basis, I'm going to work on the relationships. No, if you really want to have that 37 times improvement by the end of 2022, it has to be something you do daily. And you may also say, well, fitness was also took a big hit 2021. If we gain weight, I can't run as far or like barely do anything without getting short of breath, maybe relationships and fitness are something that you need to make sure on a daily basis, you attack compared to other things like academics and your side hobbies. Maybe there were some successes there, but not consistent. You can do those on a weekly basis. So for me and those examples, dude, I may say I'm going to have an attack system on a daily basis for my relationships and my fitness pillars. And then on a weekly basis, I'm going to focus on the academics and the hobbies. Now, step number three, once you've identified your pillars, as well as your individual attack system strategies to really have both 1% and a 37 times goal. Now, just like we showed in that chart at the start of the video, to really get that 37 times improvement, you really first have to start with that focus on 1% improvement every single day. So it's going to be important for you to have a super simple goal that is very easy to say as to a 1% goal that is ultimately going to lead you to where your 37 times goal is. So for example, if we're going to go down and say, okay, look at each pillar, I'm going to focus on my daily ones first. And the first thing on my daily pillar is my relationships and my 1% goal may be, okay, I need to call one important person in my life every single day, whether it be for five minutes on a phone call, duo, Skype, Apple, whatever you guys use, and then that at least starts the ball rolling for what your 37 times goal will be, which I may say my 37 times goal may be to have a big trip with my wife or another big important person in my life by the end of the year. Now I'm setting myself up saying at the end of 2022, if I went on a big, amazing vacation with my significant other, that'd be pretty awesome. But if I also took those small steps to make sure that I talked or called somebody that was important to me for five minutes every single day, that's something that it could easily say yes to and definitely we'll start improving that relationship pillar. If you're somebody who is struggling with fitness and that is something that you've decided is going to be a daily pillar that you're going to attack, then your 1% goal may say, I'm going to do a workout for 30 minutes a day or that's going to also include 10 minutes of running because I want to improve my cardiovascular health. And then my 37 times goal is I want to sign up for a half marathon or a marathon. I've never done one, seems challenging, but at least doing something every single day or again, get the ball rolling by the end of the year. If I can say, huh, I've done a half marathon where I couldn't run two to three miles, that is a big success. And this way you can look at your pillar of fitness and saying, compared to 2021, that was definitely a success. Now on the other end of the spectrum, let's say you're a student who says academics was okay for me, but I need to make some more improvements. So it's going to be something I'm going to attack on a weekly basis because otherwise it just gets too overwhelming. The 1% goal may be on a weekly basis. I'm going to focus on trying to decrease how much I'm studying by about 20 to 30 minutes each week and evaluate places where I can become more efficient. That simply means on Saturday, you can say, okay, like what type of things lux did you do that didn't actually lead to better grades? But on the flip side, you may have spent more time doing it just because you thought you have to. Each week, I can make the effort of decreasing my studying by 20 to 30 minutes. That means each month, I may be decreasing my studying by upwards to an hour. And then going to the end of the semester, you may be at a system where it's so efficient that you know exactly what you need to do and not have to spend extra free time. And on the flip side, my 37 times goal may be any of the study only five hours a day. That is a big goal if you're studying like 10 to 12 hours, going to five hours is ridiculous. So going on a weekly basis or every two weeks and saying every week, just focus on taking down 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes and see where your efficiency will come from. And it's very easy. Yes, sit down, evaluate. But then again, you get the ball rolling to get to that ultimate 37 times goal of having that five hour study period. And then finally, if you are somebody who is trying to improve on their hobbies, maybe you've had some time to do so, but one consistent, your one percent goal may just say, I'm going to spend one hour twice a week, whatever that may be spending time either learning a new skill or practicing old one I want to improve on. Maybe you love playing the piano, but I haven't had too much time to do it as a student. So you want to spend 30 minutes or an hour twice a week doing so. You put those in your calendar or for me, for example, next year, I really want to learn how to cook. I feel like one of the responsibilities is my wife just takes over because she's much better than I am is because she actually knows what she's doing. I would actually on the flip side like to know what I'm doing and actually be able to cook a meal for her. So on the days that she's really tired, I can say I got this. But right now, unless we're making basic tacos or salsa, can't really do much. And so that would be a good goal for me to spend in 2022. And then my 37 times goal may be I want to cook a big meal for my family. I want to spend these two hours a week that I'm learning the skill. And then I'm going to flip it and actually cook an entire big meal for my family, whether it be for Thanksgiving or a holiday or just having a signature meal that people like whatever you just made, that was amazing. That would be really awesome. And it's going to be something that I'll be planning on doing in 2022. But it starts with that 1% goal to ultimately get to that 37 times. So to quickly review what we talked about this far, to really get to a 2022 that you're just super proud of because you are such a different person, not just one times better or two times better, 37 times better. You have to start with those 1% improvements. And so the first thing you have to do is identify the pillars that you really want to make sure are the core aspects of your life, reorder them based off the ones that really took a hit in 2021. For whatever reason, you'd either you didn't give enough focus to it or you tried and the rest of your life was too hectic. And then start to ask yourself, OK, am I going to attack this on a daily basis or a weekly basis, depending on how much attention it needs? And then finally, within each of those pillars say, OK, what's my 1% action? And what's my 37 times goal? And then you'll be able to say, OK, like that is a manageable 2022 that I'll be proud of. If I can be that student who calls a family member every single day, goes on a big trip, works on my personal fitness in 30 minutes, runs a half marathon, learns how to cook and studies five hours, that would be a pretty awesome 2022. Now, obviously this is going to depend and vary completely on your own personal decision, but this is the approach I'm planning on taking. I'm really excited to see how such a simple model again, the simplicity model is going to lead to big and crazy results, both from me, my personal relationships, business and we'll see. Also goes to show you and one thing I'm hoping to do in future videos in the year of 2022 is to show that medicine doesn't have to be your career or your personal life. Ideally, it should be both. And I argue that having high qualities in both your personal and career is really going to lead improvements into each other's and having a career that you're not happy with or a personal life or not happy with is really going to start to affect the other aspect. And so if you want to be a happy doctor, if you want to be a happy student, it's really important that you start improving all those aspects of your life. So you're happy, you're motivated and you're excited for every step forward, both as a future physician, if you're in my shoes or in whatever personal aspects or aspirations you have. And one important thing about the simplicity model, the more I thought of it that I really need to mention is that you are going to have events that are going to look like a roller coaster of 2022 where things are failure. So your academic goal, you may be failing a quiz and realize that that kind of sucked. But then you take a step back and saying academically, like failing a quiz or getting straight A's wasn't a goal. I needed to study five hours. That's my 37 times goal. But it's OK if you fail a quiz because now I can say, OK, maybe I don't take away 30 minutes this week. And instead I asked myself, where can I dedicate more time more efficiently? On a similar note, for your fitness pillar, again, your initial goal was to work out for 30 minutes a day and go over and a half marathon by the end of the year. If you gain some weight because you had a busy Thanksgiving, if you know what I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean that you failed. That pillar, again, was not focused on your weight goal. It was focused on your daily exercise and your ability to do half marathon. So keep everything in perspective of what you want your pillars to do. Now, obviously, if you want to lose weight and you're gaining weight, then you need to do some recollection of what you need to actually do going forward. But if you focus on just the one and the 37, everything both good and bad don't seem like such a big deal. Everything also starts to feel like a big sense of progress. So guys, hopefully with this approach, you can start to see how 2022 can just be the best year of your life. If you guys did enjoy this content, go ahead and let me know in the comment section down below. If you did enjoy this video, all I asked really quickly before you click off is to hit that like button, hit the subscribe button and notification bell to make more content like this as well as more things to help you on your medical journey and doing with less stress. If you're listening to this on a podcast, really appreciate you leaving an honest review on iTunes, more listeners or we have the more people can help with these messages. If you got anything out of this episode, a quick thanks to either like a subscribe or a review on podcasts would be super appreciative. As always, my friends, thanks for being a part of my journey. Again, happy New Year's. Hopefully I was a little help to you guys on yours. If you did enjoy this video, definitely check out this video on how you can use on key like a pro as well as this video right here on how to study in medical school step by step. Until then, friends, I will see you guys in the next one. Peace.