 Alright guys, welcome back to the channel. In today's video in the TMJ show in the DocTalk series we are talking all about how to make the happiest version of your life and your medical journey. So that includes how to be more productive, how to have more time for you, and also how to do things for extra curriculars that way you can have the future career you ultimately want. And there's definitely gonna be a lot of gray gold nuggets, so go ahead, stay tuned, let's get into it. Alright guys, welcome to the TMJ show. Today we have Chelsea with us. Chelsea, how are you doing? Good, how are you? I'm doing well thanks for asking, so how can we help you? So I've been watching your YouTube channel for about maybe two years now. I'm a huge fan. I really appreciate the work that you do. And so essentially I'm just really looking for tips on how to be, I guess, more efficient. So my first question would be, how do I best manage studying enough to do well? Doing extra curriculars for career development and just basically enjoying my life? Sure, so tell us a little bit of background of where you are on your medical journey first. So I'm studying in London, so my course is a bit different to the American course, but I'm in my second year out of six years. So this is my last preclinical year before I hit the war next year. So I hope that gives a bit of context. Sure. And then what is your daily schedule like on a week-to-week basis? When does your day start? When did it end? Well, now during COVID it kind of starts like around maybe six, six-thirty. I get up, I like, you know, have breakfast, get ready for the day, just chill for a bit. And then I start my lectures at nine. So I have lectures from nine to four-thirty-ish, sometimes five. After that I would have dinner, maybe chill a bit with my flatmates, and then I would study in the evening for about maybe two hours, two and a half hours. Yeah, and then go to bed nine ten-ish. Sounds good. And what are those specific times again that you're studying? So I try to start studying at like seven, and I end around nine, nine-thirty. Okay, in the evenings. Anything in the mornings? I used to, but I just, I figured out that I don't like studying in the morning, so I just don't do it then. Okay, totally. I mean, I always study whenever you're the most capable of. So your question is how to be efficient and still enjoy your life and then prepare yourself for a future in medicine. Is that like a good summarization? Yeah. Yeah. So the first part that you mentioned that the most important to you is like, is having this time to do what you want, right? So what are those components in your life that matter? If you had free time, what would you be doing with that? Um, I play the flute. Cool. I play volleyball. I like growers skating, and family is really important to me. So just spending time with my family. Perfect. So the first step in having this grand plan for the next four plus years of your life, including when you're actually a doctor is scheduling those components first, right? So you know, you don't like to study in the morning, you have your study times already scheduled before you get into like, how do I be more efficient? How do I have the extracurriculars? Like you want to be able to focus on those. And so you pick how much of that you want to include. But for me, I have to have a part of me that's scheduled daily, right? So I enjoy working out and just like you, I enjoy time with my loved ones. So those two are scheduled into my day before for me currently as residency, but even when medical school is a part of it. So just to give you an example, you would look at your week schedule, and you would schedule the volleyball days that you would play the day to do a roller skating the days you would hang out with your your loved ones, and have that part of your schedule ideally daily, even if it's 2030 minutes, that means that part of you that includes enjoying your life is always done that parts checked, right? You don't have to be like, oh, I'm doing this, this and this, and I'm busy. And, you know, I hope that now I can include time for my loved ones. It's opposite. Include those first, you'll be happy more fulfilled. If anything, you'll be more efficient for the studying and extracurriculars, right? So that's how I do it. I work backwards, look at my calendar, schedule those things in first. Do you know what kind of medicine you want to go into when we're talking about extracurriculars? Not exactly. I'm sort of looking at surgeries and maybe cardiothoracic. And I also quite like geriatrics, not sure. Cool. So are you doing any types of extracurricular? Yeah, I needed a cop there. I was saying, are you doing any type of extracurriculars at the moment? Yes, I'm part of the medical education society at my university. And I just I coordinate events for first and second years. So lectures, assembling questions, like SBAs and stuff like that. So I'm doing that. And I'm involved in teaching medicine, basically, to the first years. I'm also involved in a quality improvement project at one of the hospitals that is attached to my uni. And that's specifically within geriatrics. So we're looking at how to reduce inpatient falls. So there's that. But other than that, not much. No, I mean, honestly, that sounds like a full plate. And so the part that I'm glad that you mentioned is that you have an interest in one of those being geriatrics. And then one of your extracurricular lines with that. And so one thing that you'll be able to do, and this answers your ultimate question of how to be more efficient is once you include you into your schedule first, that that is a recipe of how you keep yourself happy. And two, you ask yourself what type of things are you doing right now that correlate with your future interest so that you know, quality improvement project is perfect, because you continue it and then you realize whether you like Jerry or not, or maybe in the future, you learn that this is like not for you. That's perfect to. And so just like we scheduled in time for your volleyball, your level ones, you schedule in times for those quality improvement projects to the beauty of all of this is that it helps you do the ultimate thing that you want, which is how to be more efficient overall as a person as a medical student, because now you have less time to study. Okay. And while that may seem anxiety provoking initially, what it forces you to do is saying, Okay, now instead of having four hours to study your two hours to study, I have an hour and a half. So what do I need to take out for that 30 minutes that I already kind of in the back of my head? No, doesn't really work. And how can I get to the parts of my studying that worth the best? Alright, and a good test of this is imagine if the test surprisingly tomorrow instead of next month, what would you do differently? Right. And that's a good question to ask yourself, because it forces you to say, Okay, I wouldn't do this, I wouldn't do this, I wouldn't do this, I would just immediately go into these steps that I know work, whether that goes practice questions for some people, flash cards for other people, you know, writing it on a board for others, like that whole method is different from person to person. So you find what that is for you. But this whole strategy of including yourself first, making those extra curriculars also a part of your day to day, or your week to week, just to help your future interest grow. It also forces you to be more efficient and you're studying without adding more hours or falling asleep later waking up earlier. So that's my ultimate answer of how to become more efficient. Make sure you're happy. Make sure the parts of your career growth that are also important to your happiness and your future happiness are part of it. You don't have to get crazy, you don't have to do a quality improvement project or work on it every single day, right? But even, even if you're just working on it once a week, and it's scheduled, you're like, Okay, I'm making moves for my future career. And the final thing is like, Okay, I have less time doing the things that was before studying for my classes. Then you get really very honed in on what doesn't work. And you take that out, and then you start to create this new system that's a little bit more perfect for you. And then the following week, you're like, Well, this still doesn't work as well. So I'm going to keep adjusting and you become more and more efficient with the same amount of time. That's really useful. I particularly liked what you said about like keeping myself happy first. I really haven't been doing that. Some of my exams are in like a month, like five weeks now. And all I've been thinking of is basically, oh, I really should be studying when I'm trying to do the things that you know, I like to do. I'm just, I'm just not very good at striking that balance. It's either I do too much, I just burn myself out, or I'm doing too little. And at the end of like, say two weeks, I realize I haven't done anything for the last two weeks, I really need to like start studying. And that starts, you know, panicking anxiety, and you just start to feel like, what am I going to do now? Yeah, I mean, you you just painted the scenario of every single medical student in the world, is that that no one knows the perfect balance. But honestly, if you treat medical school like your job, at the moment, no one's paying you, right? And most people in other words, parts in the world, you're paying them. But if you treat it like a job, that your job is between whatever hours you set yourself. For some people, it's three hours a day. For some people, it's 10 hours a day. If you set it as a job, your goal during the hours is to get the most amount of knowledge in and retain. Like that's ultimately what you're supposed to do. Then if you have an hour to work out an hour to spend time with your family, like when I come home, medicine is like done, right? Then I get to focus on those things. But it's much more natural for me because you know, I go to work and that's it. But that's how medical school should be to you set your work hours, and then you get you set your new hours as well. And then the anxiety of that improves over time. So people struggle with this balance because they see 24 hours, seven days a week that are available to medical school. But the problem is, and you're going to know this really quickly is that when you start to go into the wards and the rotations, your time is even more limited. When you come home, you're going to now be even more trained and the desire to study is not going to be there. You're just going to want to go to sleep and then show up into rotations again and repeat, but you're still going to have to study. And so you have to figure out what your work hours are going to be, where your you hours are going to be, where the happiness time is going to be. So that way, this just feels like a natural job. But the beauty is that your job right now is just to learn as best as you can. And the tests are your evaluation, sure. But I always think about this like two to three years in advance. So I would whatever I'm doing now doesn't seem to be as I don't blow it up in my head. But you know, you're going to have a patient in six years, you're going to take care of Chelsea that is possibly going to rely on the information that you're learning now. So it's much easier to learn this naturally. You say, how can I keep this in the back of my head in case somebody needs this in the future? Then it just becomes a fun game of every day you're adding to that pool that stays in your brain to possibly help somebody four to five, six years from now. But it's still work hours. It's like, these are the times that I work. This is the time that said for me. So I shouldn't feel guilty during this time because it's for me. And if I don't do this now, it becomes harder to create that system when you're on your rotations, because for you to like work on efficiency and productivity, when really all you want to do is come home and sleep is the recipe for a disaster. Because if you're already having, you know, two plus years where you haven't been able to focus on yourself when you're feeling that burns out feeling, which is very natural. And it's going to be much harder to do later in the line where unfortunately, you're only busier. When you go into the latter parts of your medical training, you're only going to get busier. When you're an actual physician, you only get busier. So create the good habits now, which are focusing on yourself, treating your education like a job. And so creating whatever those hours are for you. And finding during those hours, what are the best uses of your time in case you are stressed or limited on time. So that way you can use those most effectively. It's kind of that's the combined recipe to make this successful. And each part of it gets better over time. You just have to make sure that all of those are included. I guess hopefully you guys are enjoying this conversation that we're having with Chelsea on how to use her UK education to become a little bit of a combination of a more happy, having those extracurriculars that fit with her future careers and also using her time as efficiently as possible. If you guys are enjoying this, just take a quick second on YouTube to go ahead and hit that smash button down below. If you're listening to this on a podcast, go ahead and just take a second to either follow or subscribe based on the podcast platform you're listening to. But let's get back to that. How would you sort of deal with a situation where you do set your work hours? So say I'm a medical student from nine to five. And then after that, I'm just, you know, a regular 20 year old trying to enjoy life. What if after work hours, I realize I haven't done as much work because I would have liked to and therefore I'm spending my like personal time, my free time just thinking about that. Like how, how would you deal with that? I think there's a combination, right? So there is a bit of anxiety because the part that you're focused on is how much information that there's left to learn, right? Like you're, you're saying the exam come up in a week or two and you're worried that whatever information that's going to show up, you're not ready for it. That's where the fear comes from. There is amount of knowledge that you need to be prepared for, but you feel like you haven't used the past time to do it and you feel like your current time could suddenly improve your grade. Right. So there, there is a part of your brain naturally overblowing things because we live on anxiety where anxiety driven creatures where that is the form of it's supposed to be a natural, healthy form of stress that makes us do things, especially when the due date is tomorrow. But for medical students, the due date, there's no clear due date except the exam. And so it's nice to have a reminder that there is information that you have left to be learned. But there is a little bit of a natural practice saying I can't learn everything, but I just have to have a system that makes me feel more confident over time that I am getting better at learning everything. So what I mean by that is let's say you're walking into an exam and let's just say you have an exam every month which is very kind of common practice for most medical students every two weeks to every month is kind of like the typical schedule. The way I usually recommend it especially to a lot of the students that I coach is that you know have a list over time of either information that you know is going to show up on the exam. So as you go through your lectures, like start creating a list of all the topics that would show up for lecture one, lecture two, lecture three. And as you're going through your flashcards, your practice questions, however you study, if you miss something add that to your list. Now you have a very overwhelming list at the very start of all the information that could show up. But now when you study from that nine to five, look at that list and saying I feel more comfortable with A, B, C, this one I don't feel as comfortable with. That's okay. It's an identification of what's going to be weak and what's really strong. As you get closer and closer to test day, you start focusing on the information you haven't covered as well as information that is very weak on your list. And so I usually tell a lot of my coaching students to grade their topics. So like if you had a hundred topics, I would grade each topic from a scale of one to five. Five being super difficult, one being very easy. And obviously the things that have no grade next to it are things that you haven't got a chance to review. So every time you come to your review, you're like, I'm going to do 30 minutes of new topics that I haven't done. I'm going to do 30 minutes of old topics that are really difficult. And as you get closer and closer to test day, that list becomes smaller in terms of things you haven't seen for the second time. And it also becomes smaller for things that are very difficult because ideally you've seen them a few times. So the answer to your question of like how do you one out of your when it's like five to nine, how do you not focus on everything from your nine to five is during your nine to five focus on this list and the only focus is tomorrow this list needs to be smaller than it was yesterday. And then you keep doing it day by day. And then you're five to nine in the evening. You want to ask yourself like is this time really going to affect that list dramatically? All right. Or is my or is it going to affect my happiness more and usually the answer it affects your happiness more when you start the day with school and you injure day with school and you go to bed and it feels like you're repeating the process. But if instead you have you know you don't need to have four hours to yourself. But if you have dinner and then you have a workout or if you watch a movie or you go out with friends like that's a part of enjoying yourself as a 20 year old. If you can have segments of those not even every single day every other day a few days a week but you schedule them first. Then you can say this time is responsible for me being focused during the nine to five. Otherwise I'm always be burnt out. Always be tired and always be anxious. So there's a little bit of practice of over time of being okay with not knowing everything. There's also this practice of knowing what you need to know. So over time that list becomes smaller. You can go confident into test day knowing that you're as prepared as you could be without sacrificing your happiness. That's the two parts of that. How early on should you be looking to tailor your portfolio for a particular specialty? Because I know I'm only in my second year. For some reason I just feel like oh if I don't start now it's going to be too late and I just want to keep my options open which I'm sure you can understand. And this goes this is like the common theme that we're talking about here is like how do we let anxiety get out of the way and make sure we just do things that feel natural. So you already have two interests that you mentioned but maybe another interest pops up or one of those two interests fall down. So you mentioned cardiac thoracic surgery and geriatrics. So your goal right now being into your second year is saying if four years down the line when I'm applying for a job or going into residency or if you know some people choose to go to the states to do their further practice. I just want to have enough of a growing experience portfolio that paint me in this future specialty. So if you're thinking of a future in geriatrics the first step would be one are you interested in geriatrics. So just like you're doing you're doing a quality improvement project now as that starts to be a little bit more free of your time. Maybe the project is wrapping up the project is done or there's like a low period where you're just waiting for other people to do stuff in the project before you take over again. Then those are great opportunities to say maybe I can use the same time to you know shadow the physician that I'm working with on this project in the clinic or find other geriatricians in my area that I could see what clinic is life is like. That way you know it's just another more of exposure of check yes or no whether the specialty is for me. That's kind of what the initial phase is and you know you can do the same thing with cardiothoracic without the pressure of I need to do X amount over the next few months. It just needs to be an exposure phase initially. As you get closer into your rotations your wards and whatnot same exposure kind of practice exists without the pressure of feeling like you need to do a certain amount. Now the whole idea is building your portfolio that we could tell a story six years from now to somebody and saying this is really what I want to do and here how I shown proof that this is what I'm interested in. Let's say you chase the cardiothoracic part down. Maybe you find somebody who's letting you join in a surgery relatively soon and then maybe you join in on a research project several months from now and then you do your surgery rotation and you realize that you just love surgery in general. It's not necessarily cardiothoracic but you love surgery in general. There's a story that you're building over time of this person who is specifically interested in one component and then realize this is amazing and then you can broaden out. So to answer your question like how soon should you start pursuing career paths it's as early as you think you have an interest in it but just to explore the interest because the goal is over time you have the pathway that you have that is designed around your interest that is built upon prior interest. So you have clearly some experiences or stories or interests that I pointed to towards cardiothoracics and then ideally you can continue to add more experiences that either affirm those or take those away because then in the future if you just say I like geriatrics and I thought I like cardiothoracic surgery but I really just like cardiology and I like geriatrics but it's really because I like clinic life and I liked internal medicine then I want to choose a field of just cardiology. You see how both of those combine into a future who somebody picks a field that's perfect for them but it's not designed around this pressure if I need to do A, B and C just to explore both of those fields very naturally and move to the next step. If you're shadowing somebody and it seems amazing ask how you can work in a research project with them. The research project is not an interest find what other things you would be doing to explore that either shadow more work with those people on quality improvement projects if you do that's what you enjoy but don't feel pressured to do the research the community service and the shadowing just to fill your portfolio just to build your story because you'll probably be surprised six years from now that person who thought this would be interesting and I absolutely hate that and that happened to me the fields that I thought I was going into didn't end up being my field like I thought I was going to be a pediatrician I worked with autistic kids for a year pulling into it and then I realized that working with kids is great but one they don't communicate as well because obviously like they're super young and two you have to deal with parents which I was not a fan of but I realized I enjoyed the medicine interacting with patients so that's why I'm an internal medicine now but that story changes right so the more experiences you have despite what you choose at the very end of it you'll have a story of saying this is like here's my story I thought I was going to do A, B and C I did these projects because to tell me if I liked them or not and I did like this and I didn't like this so that's why I'm here and so somebody doesn't have to see a huge portfolio they just see a very natural progression to point them to the ultimate career you choose so each experience you choose should just be affirming your interest and then identifying a little bit better of what you want to do and ideally whoever employer you choose whatever residency you choose in the future or depending on like where somebody somebody else is listening to this and have the same questions they can say like here's a very natural understanding that this person had these interests and this is ultimately where I'd let them and I can see why they want to do this at the very like very end of it does that make sense yeah now that makes complete sense and it's totally reasonable now that I think about it so if I were you know the person that is to look at applications for say for a surgical specialty rotation it's like I I can't expect anyone to have done everything since the time they started medical school to essentially land them in this place it's a bit extreme I think and yeah I guess I just have to try to take a bit of the pressure off of myself to feel like I have to be doing everything in alignment with his specialty in order to be considered but life isn't like that it is I mean this is you have the beauty of you have the beauty of both time and the most important thing you want is like you know I'll just say there's two surgical specialty rotations that you're going for and one of them does want somebody who is like completely dedicated from day one to the surgical specialty and even if that means that that person sacrifices their happiness or evenings or weekends that's who they want but that ultimately just based on what you told me is not the specialty rotation that you want to go into because then you're going to be in a rotation that forces you to sacrifice your weekends and your days and your loved ones the volleyball and the roller skating so you can still and end up in a rotation in a specialty that fits perfectly for you but if the that future rotation is demanding that of you and it doesn't correlate with the ultimate things you want now as well as in five years and it may not be the best match and that's perfect to learn right yeah yeah I guess that would sort of be like indicative of the person that they want and if if yeah like you said if you haven't been that kind of person or that sort of lifestyle has an appeal to you and you probably don't want to go into that specialty so yeah yeah thank you very much um for your answers all right guys before we get back to the episode I want to talk about the sponsor of this episode which is our med school domination bundle that we have for you here at the MD journey it's essentially a bundle of books and courses with the blueprints and step by step advice that I use to help me succeed in medical school and really become a combination of both happy effective and still being able to have the ultimate career that I wanted if you guys are interested in checking out the books and courses that are included in the bundle that'll be linked for you down below but most importantly you'll also be able to find the feedback and testimonials from past students that includes medical students pre-meds nursing students physician assistants all to help you succeed on your medical journey but do it with last rest I'll put a link down below but let's get back to the episode I just wanted to ask what was like your sort of defining moments in medical school where you realized that you actually don't have to do as much as you think you should be doing like how did you actually find that balance and how did you sort of you know move on from being sort of the anxious student I it's a bit of a growth exercise but I think the more you start hearing other people whether it be your family your loved ones your significant other or complete strangers saying are you even in medical school like how do you balance that there is a part of you that doesn't look like a medical student they don't look like that stress example that everyone seems to be hold true then you mean that and you realize that you're on the right side you're on the right path because I freaking enjoyed medical school I enjoyed the people that I was with I enjoyed what I was learning I enjoyed the the thing I would be able to do one day which I'm doing now which is take care of people so over time I realized that I am still enjoying this I'm still doing well all right I didn't want to use less hours just so I could spend more time just goofing off I use less hours and made them efficient as possible and again that's an excessive exercise over time but if my loved ones didn't think that I was in medical school just because I was so relaxed and I had free time to do things like the MD journey that just meant that I had that nice balance right so people can look at you and say you don't look stress you look happier you look like you're really enjoying life you feel like you have things figured out and everyone wants to figure things out for what that means is that they just want to see an example of other people who are doing what they want to do with with the time that they have so if for me that meant that I already had a workout in my classmates like how in the world are you able to fit in fitness that seems silly question right if you think in retrospect that can you fit 30 minutes into your life like to work on your personal health but it feels like a natural sacrifice that we have to do when we're in medicine so if you ask yourself like what is the optimal life that I would want to live with this busy you know hellacious schedule that there is as a medical student we're have like this many hours this many slides this many years of sacrifice and ask yourself like what do I now want to sacrifice that's why I said happiness is number one then those components are a part of your life everyone sees that you're still fit you're still hanging out with your loved ones you know you're still hanging out with your family you're still doing and exploring new hobbies working on projects like this and they just like how does you just have it figured out but I didn't it was just a progress kind of thing you know I would work on the empty journey and realize that oh man I've like I should have spent less hours here and more hours studying but then it was less and over time or I would spend less time with my loved ones and I wanted and more time on a test and I realized that whatever grade I got those last extra three hours didn't impact the final grade so then I could spend more time with my loved ones and it's just a lesson like here is my optimal picture of what my life would look like and here are the things that I will not sacrifice and as you start seeing people compliment you or you start to realize that this is this has been great I've enjoyed this week because I've gotten to hang out with these people and work out and watch movies and whatever you know those are 30-minute sacrifices but they're not sacrifices they're investments in a future happy form of you that is more motivation and more encouragement to continue to remain that balanced because you just continue to walk with a little bit of a life doesn't stress me out as much because life is the way I've designed it and there will be stressful parts but I know how to tackle those and I also know things aren't as big of a deal you know I didn't want to become the best med student on my institution that's not the goal because my goal is just to use the time that I had to become the best medical student I could be during that time so bottom answer is just using the time you have effectively to create the life that you want without stressing yourself out because everyone does that and no one wants to be that version so we might as well not do that and use small things over time to become that unstressed version that doesn't mean that you won't be stressed okay as everyone that's on instagram even myself on youtube that point this picture that you'll be this happiest medical student every single day is not true but if it is true more often than not then that's all that matters powerful words well thank you so much well as Chelsea it's a pleasure having you thanks for asking all those great questions and we'll link all of your social media stuff down below so no everyone can show you their love but also just keep us updated on how things are going so you know how to reach me so just let me know how things are going but thanks for joining us and hopefully you have a great day thanks for having me of course see you later all right guys hopefully you guys enjoy this banger of an episode that we had which I'll see a lot of great questions that are really just got me going in terms of giving advice that I really wanted to or have given throughout the channel but all in one place we talked about productivity we talked about how to study better and we also talked about this important concept of how to truly make yourself feel like you haven't figured out in medical school how to have this life where medical school is scheduled into your life instead of your life into medical school hopefully you guys enjoy this episode if you did just take a quick second hit that thumbs up down below really takes a second for us to go ahead and make these episodes to edit them for you so all you do is just take a second just hit that like button down below truly helps me out also tells me you want more content like this keep it going and if you guys haven't done so already go ahead and hit that subscribe button down below on YouTube to get two videos just like this and also go ahead and follow me on Instagram at the MD journey to get little short bits of advice just like this on IGTV given to you every few days and as always I have to thank my guests and Chelsea was a great guest asking some amazing questions during this episode really got me going also show her some love down below in the comments ask any questions that you guys have for me or for her down below and I'll be happy to answer them but that being said guys as always thank you for joining me on my journey hopefully I've been a little help to you on yours now if you enjoyed this video then check out this video on a full walkthrough of how you can use Anki to study like a pro this really helps me out in medical school hopefully helps you out but thank you guys as always for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one peace my friends