 Alright guys and welcome back to channel. Now there's a lot of things that I've learned after four years of medical school and three years of residence, most of them being medicine. And that's the problem is that there have been a lot of skills, particularly adult skills that I need to survive now to become successful tomorrow, that school hasn't taught me, hasn't probably taught you. This video will talk about exactly what those are and exactly where you can learn them to improve. Let's get started. In case you're new here, welcome. My name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician, and my entire job on this channel is to help make your life easier regardless of what kind of student you are and doing it with less stress. And so in today's video, we're going to talk about some of those adult skills that you just wish you had learned amongst all of those books and piles of syllabus chapters and lectures. And after going through the video, if there's something I missed, add it down in the comment section. If something you wish this school had taught you, just completely fail to do so. So number one is having a good conversation. Now I learned this the hard way in medical school where it's very easy to become secluded away from individuals, especially when you're in your medical textbooks. And sometimes when you do get the chance to enter the real world, when I was interacting with my at that time fiance and my wife, when I was acting with my family and friends, it was very easy to talk only about medical school and being a medical student. And a lot of times we just don't know how to have conversations about other worldly activities. But as I've learned now as a full time physician, yes, people initially care about what you do and kind of what your work is like. But if all you talk about is your work-life balance or your time as a student, people become less interested in you because your life is really one dimensional. So having good conversations and being able to talk to people, what about themselves and being able to have them extract all the interesting things and feel like you're somebody who they can convene in. And any conversation they want to have really is a nice skill. Those are the people that you want to hang out with. And so becoming that person for other people is truly where you get to grow as an individual. And one of my favorite books that's really taught me this is how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. So if you guys are interested, I'll link it down below. But in case you don't want to read another book and you want to put action immediately, one of the best things that I've learned to do is usually getting myself like two to three day blocks where I just don't talk about things that are very repetitive in my life. Being work, school, academics, sometimes it's the empty journey, which sometimes I've been probably annoying my wife about when I talk about over and over again. So having these things, you're just like, man, this is not my best conversation starter because I'm probably like overdoing it. And you'll be interested in finding that when you do this activity, it's not really about you talking about something different, but more so you tend to just listen more because the things you talk about are kind of off the table and people will start convening in you. And this is really where conversations start and you become that person that people have to go to. Now skill number two that school doesn't teach you is time management. School is great about adding things to your schedule, but doesn't really tell you how to manage those. Now as a student, you know, we become more efficient just because of necessity. The quizzes and tests become more frequent, the information becomes more overloaded and medical school is very easy for me. Take essentially a college level class in a span of about two weeks and then be tested on it over and over again for years. It was pretty brutal. And so you can understand simply out of necessity and simply to be able to tread water in medical school, time management became a thing. And usually the default situation is that if it could become more efficient, I would just spend more time doing it, which is not the answer. And here's why. When you're a full time, whatever it's a doctor or a teacher or a lawyer or whatever you end up doing in your personal life, your time becomes even more valuable. And so the things that you never learned how to be efficient on just adding more hours, once those hours become less and less available to you, then you really don't know what to do with yourself. And this is really where it becomes anxiety and stress and burnout really come to the equation. And a good thought exercises. Think about times where you thought you were busy. Think about high school where you thought your schedule was full. Think about college where you thought things couldn't get crazier. And if you do professional school like me in medical school where I was like, man, this is like the most insane my life will ever get. And then I do my first year residency and game over. Then I do my second year and then third year and things just become more complex in your life. And the best way to combat all of that is by becoming efficient at whatever stage you are right now. So then when time is more limited, you're one, better at understanding how to prioritize. And two, understanding how to be efficient and say no to the things that don't really help you progress and move forward with your time. Now, I really don't have one resource that's really helped me with my time management over time. Certain resources and kind of influencers, including Cal Newport, which was in some of my favorite books when I was a student. I'll link those down below as well as his website. As well as YouTube channels like Mat Diabella, Ali Abdaal, who do a really good job of kind of breaking down how to live your life a little bit more simply and kind of more productively and effectively. And also with the sense of purpose is really kind of what you want. And then use those ideas to inspire different things you want to try out. And then you eventually end up in a productivity kind of loophole where people just drag you in and you work on becoming a little bit more efficient. And that's really where life becomes a little bit more fun. Now, adult skill number three that we don't learn absolutely pretty much at all is how to manage your money. Now, this is a huge problem for obviously a lot of students, but it becomes really complex for a certain population who may do a lot of schooling. So I went to college and I had loans in medical school. If you want to watch a video of how many loans I have and how much loans I have, you can watch this video right here. And it becomes even more complex if you are somebody like me who has been a first generation college grad, which I really appreciated. But neither myself nor my parents really knew how you manage the debt that comes with education you're pursuing. And usually when you're on this timeline of pursuing education, working or working full time is usually not likely. And if you do, you're really just kind of trying to make it through to be able to pay for your expenses. But things like personal finance, budgeting, investing, saving for the future. And also asking yourself questions like which form of personal investments will help you progress and actually grow. Something like medical school obviously will help me have a higher salary in the future. But also which investments you probably have paid for yourself that really haven't given you any dividends. Those things that you buy usually the tangible things. They won't really tell you those differences and then add on complexities like taxes and interest and credit cards and all of the things that the world of finance will either do really well for you if you know what you're doing or will kind of use you as a victim to make more money themselves. No one really teaches you how to manage their money. Especially if you're in a situation where your education is worth to pay off and a higher salary like yourself. Being a physician is going to be financially something that my family and myself will be supported by. But no one really teaches you in medical school and residency like how to manage your money. What insurance do I need as a doctor? How should I save? How should I live when I first get a real salary as a physician? When do I pay my debt off? What rate do I do it? When should I buy a house? How big of a house should I buy? Those are all questions that you ask in the individual moment. But if only school had kind of taught you that so that way when you are working towards your education and or having a small income on the side, you then kind of already know what directions you're going to take once that money is actually there. And so certain outlets that I've learned finances through the past few years include YouTube channels like Graham Stephan which does a really good job of making finances very entertaining. As well as things like blogs such as Mr. Money Mustache if you want to learn about the fire movement and how you can retire pretty much in a short amount of time but just using basic principles and math to check out that. As well as certain books and I'll link them down below. I think there's a book that's called like the Random Walkdown Investing. It's like the one thing I read that really just changed the game on how I save, how I invest. And so so many more. If you guys are interested in even more of a bundle on how to manage finances especially as a medical professional then there are more videos that I just constantly keep adding just because I'm a geek about it to them at a leave academy. So if you guys are interested you can check those out or if you want to check out some of the videos that we've made about money and finance here at YouTube I'll also be linked down below in a playlist. Now adult skill number four that no one ever taught me about is like how to manage things like healthcare and health insurance, dental insurance. Seems like a very minutia thing but I went to the dentist today and I basically was given a bill that was going for $700 for a cleaning that honestly doesn't seem too extravagant. I'm asking myself like how much of this do I need? How much of this is actually being paid from insurance? Which things should I be taking advantage of that I'm not? For example, I can get contacts apparently for $150 every single year with my insurance which kind of new but don't always take the advantage of. And ironically even myself as a physician we're just not really taught about how to manage insurance and personal insurance and liability insurance, auto insurance, health insurance all until we actually have to do it. And then we just kind of put the trust in what our company is supporting us and hoping that we have a good service. And sometimes a lot of us you may have been burned where we think we're paying for something good and then something happens. Like I've paid for, you know, warranty insurances on things like laptops and laptops gone bad and somebody said, oh, this is the situation where we can't help you. And honestly would have just saved a lot of headache if somebody on the education trail had said, okay, we're gonna have a class about insurance and what type of things to look for when you're buying a house? What kind of insurance do you need? When you're buying a car? Do you need insurance or not? The answer is yes. When you're buying health insurance what kind of things should be looking for higher deductible, higher premium? This is like small minutiae things but until you start making this accelerate and start having to care about your own health insurance and care and your parents aren't paying it for you, it suddenly becomes, oh man, I have to actually think about that. And so if you guys are interested in learning about different types of health insurances and other types of resources for all the different insurances that you need as an adult, I'll link those down below. And the next adult skill that school doesn't really do the best job of teaching as they're at least doing well is managing meaningful and romantic relationships. Now, especially when you're in a situation where education pretty much takes the majority of your life, medical school being a great one, thinking about your future, your future partner, doesn't always come to a certain kind of aware that it should happen or you should find the right person, but sometimes you become so busy you're not really sure how to dedicate time until you can be looking if you haven't found anyone. And then two, when the opportunities come that you do get to interact with somebody who may be a good fit for you of how to make that work with a busy schedule. I see this problem in medicine all the time where students and physicians are just not sure how to make it work with somebody who just has a completely different life than them and doesn't understand the life of a doctor which is very understandably busy. But even once you get into a situation where you are in a relationship, how to manage that and how to have proper communication with somebody really is only limited to practice and trial by error. Now, this is obviously a skill that school never taught me well, but I lucked out because while I was through the schooling process I met my now wife and we've been through together for quite some time and you guys want to see our tips of how to manage a relationship and kind of a busy kind of life, particularly in medicine, you can check out this interview that I did with her a couple of years ago. But one of the things my wife and I pride ourselves about and then again school never taught us this experience did is that we don't really fight, we don't actually have arguments and that's mainly because one, we don't like confrontation. And two, we're just good at understanding and how communicating of when the other person bugs us. And I know per se I definitely have a lot of bug worthy qualities and she's literally allowed me to make early agreement to a YouTube studio. So I can understand how I can get very annoying but having those kinds of communications and understands between the other person really comes with time. Again, school doesn't always allow both the time or the ability to do that and sometimes you just have to say I'm going to dedicate time in my life to explore relationships, explore communications and connections with people and even if you're in a situation where you don't find that person in the near future, literally giving yourself the opportunity to look and have time and interact with people and become again really good conversation starter and a good listener will develop those skills that are super important to make those relationships truly high quality when your life gets busy. Initially I thought about leaving this kind of topic out of the video but I realized that if there is one thing in school that I didn't really learn as well is how to manage my relationships outside of school and thankfully I just had a support system and a wife that really helped kind of build that time and that bond that made school so much easier and so when you're going through a tough part and a challenging part of your life those outside relationships can be so important and so vital to help you grow and that person grows and then you kind of grow together as well as individually but unfortunately that's not a skill that school teets as and sometimes we just have to develop those time management skills to dedicate time to develop those relationships and those conversations and regardless of what type of relationships you end up developing whether it's romantic or support based you are going to be much more successful much more happier much more fulfilled in your life on everything you choose to do and before we get to the last few things real quick is there anything I'm missing so far in this video that you wish school would have taught you go ahead and drop those on the comment section and by the way while you're there just hit that like button to really support the channel I truly appreciate it but the next worldly skill that school probably should teach every single buddy so much better is prioritizing your physical as well as mental health now there is so many things that are involved in physical and mental health but unfortunately when you're in academics the main focus is doing well in academics get that grade be at a certain percentile to look more impressive to colleges and medical schools and residencies and there's always an idea of trying to impress but sometimes there is a lack of focus on impressing yourself and growing yourself and so sometimes that includes understanding how to take a break so you mentally can be relaxed and not stressed how to do things for your own physical health so what kind of exercises are fun for you so it doesn't feel like work but sometimes it feels like something you should be growing in so I've learned that I enjoy running not because I enjoy running but I enjoy feeling like I can run four miles a day and then five miles today and then seven miles the next week and then etc. and going forward so currently I'm in the form of training for a marathon mainly not because of physical desire to be able to run 26 miles but for the mental capacity of saying I just did a goal that my body couldn't do a year ago but having that ability which again school didn't teach me to say these are areas in my life that are not quite optimized maybe you're not the greatest runner you don't have the best endurance you haven't run another half marathon you haven't run a marathon develop a skill to where that becomes a goal and maybe you can check something else off and then moving on to the next thing for example I'm not the best cook I wish that I could just have like a month or two session of like taking a course or watching YouTube channels where I just make crazy things and learn small things about cooking maybe in the future but those are things that I know I need to work on to improve my physical health my mental health and just my overall progress but again school doesn't teach us and then last but not least is to really identify your true passion we go through a timeline of school ideally to reach a success we're usually in the form of a job so if you go to medical school you want to become a doctor you want a job as a physician if you go to computer science you want to have a life as coder or working for a software company but there isn't always a connection where the thing you end up doing is completely your passion maybe there's some overlaps but there are some things that you wish you could be doing on the side perfect example for me is I created an MD journey simply to share my own experiences but then it became clear to me that one thing that I really do enjoy doing is to self reflect on things that are working or not working and then just kind of putting it in the form of either blog posts and email and now here a video or a podcast and helping other people and then as you do it more you start to develop a momentum that says oh I'm actually decently okay at putting ideas together and saying these are the things that you should consider doing in your own life because I've either screwed up try not to do that or this worked for me maybe you should try and putting those in the forms of videos and so I realized that in addition to my desire to help people who are sick as a physician I also want to help people through my own experiences and you can probably find your own passions that are not being completely fulfilled by your own work or academic life and so you can ask yourself like what would I want to spend more of my time and if they told you that you had to work for free to you know have enough to be able to live for a month with all your food and mortgages paid like what would you do more of instead of actually focusing on work or academics and that really starts to ask you questions like where can you develop interest where can you grow your passion and what kind of things you can do on the side to again make your whole life a little bit more complete but those guys are some of the worldly and adulting skills at school just hasn't taught me didn't teach me well and hopefully and thankfully I've developed some of them some of them still working on let me know in the comment section what type of things that you feel like I may have missed on that maybe you feel like school didn't teach you but now suddenly you have been able to pick those up later on those questions and comments down below if you do have a specific question for me whether by medical school or something else there is a link down below to ask me anything and essentially if you drop your email I'll basically send you a video response to that question or your questions and if those questions are appropriate for the general audience I may share those on our YouTube channel and as I hinted on earlier in the video if you are trying to learn some of those adulting skills especially in medical school things like time management managing your money relationships interacting with patients finding that side passion and motivation which is all of our best step-by-step things on how to study rotations board exams but also things like time management money management a bunch of adult skills you'll need to know as your future of the physician if you guys are interested I'll be linked down below but regardless guys if you did enjoy this video hit that like button hit it 2, 3, 4, 5 more times apparently you have to hit an odd number of times to make sure that you don't unlike your life so consider hitting it 3, 5 or 7 times but don't hit it 2 or 4 times I guess and consider hitting that subscribe I've actually enjoyed making it for you and thanks for being a part of my journey hopefully that was a little help to you guys on yours and I'll see you guys in the next one if you did enjoy this video then check out these two videos right here how to use Anki like a pro and how to study in medical school step-by-step you'll probably enjoy this one but until then guys I'll see you all in the next one take care of my friends peace