 So can you have a life in medical school? In fact, in this video, I'm going to tell you how I was able to write several books, spend less than five to six hours studying a day at all my weekends off and still was able to maintain a strong relationship with my now wife. Let's get into it. All right guys, welcome to another video in the MD journey or the TMD show. If you're listening on to the podcast, my name is Laksh. I'm an internal medicine resident helping people just like you succeed on their medical journey with less stress. Today, I want to talk about a very important topic, which is can you have a life in medical school? And obviously from my intro, the answer is yes. The question is really, how do you do it? How can you be consistent? So I'm going to break them down to a step by step approach that I use in medical school and hopefully it helps you out too. Before we get started, if you're new to this channel or if you haven't subscribed, go ahead and hit that subscribe button as well as hit that notification bell to be notified on videos that were dropping every Wednesday and every Sunday with tips just as gold, just like this one. And if you enjoy this video, make sure you support the channel as well as a video, do better on the YouTube algorithm and hit that like button as well and hit it one or two more times just in case it didn't work. But let's get into today's video. So really want to talk about can you have a life in medical school? Now keep it simple. The answer is absolutely yes, but you have to have a system to do it where the most important things of what having a life to you are included in your life. And we'll talk about that before we start. I really want to make sure I put this huge asterisk on this video because somebody will comment down below later on and that's saying, well, if I'm studying for a board exam or have a huge exam, or if I have several tests or a big project, I won't be able to do what you're saying. So before I break down the system, I really want to give you the most important concept of this video. And that's to understand that your default state in medical school shouldn't be that just when I have free time, I'll find time to include things that are important to me. Instead, you should always try to create time and flexibility into your schedule that the most important things are part of it. So it shouldn't be, well, when I have time, I'll try to fit it in. It should be, I'm going to try to fit it in. If I don't have time for those busier examples I just gave, then I can adjust. But again, your default should be that your hobbies and your priorities should be part of your life at all times. But with that being said, let's get into my three part system to really help you have life in medical school. So the first thing you need to do is to pick two to three priorities that you never want to lose. Now, ideally, I want you to do this when you're first starting medical school. But if you're watching this video as a second or third, you know, upper class in medical school, the same concept applies. You know, what two to three things of your life before medical school do you want to still keep as a part of it? And I usually break it down into three categories myself. You know, one of them is the people, one of them is a hobby or hobbies, and then one of them is growth. And I'll get into each of them. But obviously there's going to be people in your lives, whether significant others, family members, or friends that you just want to keep a part of your life. And you don't want to feel like medical school is impeding on how much time and bonding time you can have with those individuals. So you want to identify who these people are. And then the second thing is identify any hobbies that you really want to either pick up or continue before medical school. This may be things like fitness activities, maybe things like cooking, drawing, watching TV, like if that's a hobby for you, like keep it up. And then finally, number 30 is something I feel like people miss all the time. And that is what you want to do for growth, you know, you're going to go through four years of medical school. Do you just want to feel like you became a better physician? That's about it. At least my answer to that is absolutely not. So what do you want to do for growth? Do you want to read more books? Do you want to learn a separate skill outside of medicine altogether? Identify each of those priorities for you. You know, who are the people? What are the hobbies? And then what do I want to do for growth? Now, step number two is you want to go ahead and schedule those specific items into your week before any of your medical obligations kind of take a little piece of your time. So I'll go ahead and just give you my example for medical school. So for me, my people were, you know, my fiance and now wife as well as my parents, family members. And so I wanted to make sure that there's always something in my schedule to account for both of those individuals. So in terms of family, I would always skype in every evening. So I would make sure that I was not studying, you know, after 9 p.m. That's what I would call home. In terms of spending time with my fiance, I would make sure that every weekend was blocked off so I can make a weekend trip to spend some quality time with her. In terms of hobbies, things that I wanted to continue were things like making sure that my fitness was still in check as well as things like growing the MD journey and learning how to do YouTube writing blog posts. Those are things that I enjoyed. So I wanted to make sure I had time. So I would schedule, you know, a one hour workout block in the morning where I would schedule a one hour session where I could work on something regarding the MD journey or the YouTube channel in the evening. I would put those in my schedule. And in terms of growth, I really wanted to make sure I was reading about topics outside of medicine, things that you don't learn as a physician. You guys can check out a video here where I tell you how I read 50 books last year, and I'm about to read 100 books, you know, in 2020. So that'll be linked down below. But I made sure that all of those three categories had a specific time on my schedule because I could not justify, you know, an extra hour of studying or prepping for more flashcards or doing whatever from medical school to take away from those priorities because, again, they were priorities. And then I would use that extra time to make sure I scheduled time to review and read from my classes and attend lectures, etc. So again, fill in your priorities first, find the open gaps and saying, Okay, well, where can I fit in my studying now? That's going to be tricky for a lot of you because you're going to be forced to take a lot of time out of your studying schedule. And that's honestly the good thing to do because you become more efficient, you become more inquisitive of like, do I really need to be doing this? Or can I be doing this in a more efficient way? And that really gets your mind turning on how you can be more productive in medical school to, again, still have time for the things and the people that matter to you most. And then step number three that I really recommend you guys do is if you can try to take a full weekend day off or any day of the week, if it's possible. And really, this just allows you to become, you know, re-energized in medical school and be away from your textbooks or syllabus, the PowerPoint, the Lunky Dex, you know, everything. And just enjoy time for yourself. This can be a full day where you can spend on your priorities or full day, you can just essentially do nothing except relax and just gives you revitalized again for another week where you're putting in a lot of effort and a lot of work. And this way you can continue to stay motivated. So again, guys, you can absolutely have a life in medical school, your default stage should be to make sure that your priorities are part of it. And that three step process, I just broke down where you schedule your priorities before any part of medical school takes an obligation of your time is really the best way that I found to keep the most important parts of me to still be there, even when medical school gets a little hectic. And I still do this to this day, even in residency. So I highly recommend that if you aren't doing this already, try to see how you can fit your priorities in a little bit better by becoming a little bit more efficient and the rest of your obligations. And I promise you you'll feel like your life is back. That's pretty much it for this video, guys. Hopefully you've enjoyed it. Let me know what you guys think in the comment section down below. If you again, haven't subscribed to the channel, go ahead and hit that subscribe button as well as notification bell to get two videos like this brought to you at a weekly basis. If you enjoy this video, make sure you hit that like button to support the community, support the video, ideally get in front of more people. Before I let you go, I want to give you two kind of resources that you guys can check out if you want more help in managing your time management as well as stress management. So one, I'll go ahead and link down to a playlist that will help you become more productive in medical school to be able to apply some of the concepts that we talked about in this video. And two, you can check out our time mastery program, which is kind of a 10 step program to really just kind of take it to a different level when it comes to productivity and time management. You guys can check that out in the description as well. That's pretty much it for this video, guys. Hopefully you've enjoyed it. Thank you so much for making it today and thank you for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I've been a little help to you on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.