 To the outside world, becoming a doctor means that you're a hard worker, incredibly smart, and the cream of the crop in terms of occupation. But if you're on that journey, you know that what goes unnoticed is the years of training and hours that inevitably lead to sleepless nights, anxiety, stress, burnout, and doubt. At every phase, you're either compared to the average on a standardized test or to the performance of your also brilliant peers. And as I've seen time and time again, it's very easy to be discouraged on your journey and start to believe that you don't have what it takes. But I'm here to tell you that all of that is not true. Here's how you crushed it on your medical journey while still enjoying the process. When I started medical school, I had one goal, to enjoy the process while becoming a freaking amazing doctor. And then I started medical school and all of the horror stories I heard about had started. This includes the 10 hours of studying, not getting the grades that I wanted, wishing I had more time for myself, and truly wondering if one, if I chose the right path, and two, if I was good enough to stick through with it. But thankfully I did exactly what I had done up to medical school, which is to look at exactly what all the top students were doing. I didn't want to be that stereotypical student who's doing well, but also stressed out of their mind. But I also didn't want to be that student that was very relaxed without getting the performance and results they wanted. So I started to look around and ask myself what the top students were doing and using so I could imitate them through my own process. Here's what I found. Number one, always focus on progress versus the rehaul. It's common on the medical journey and any kind of journey to try something and if it works out great, if it doesn't, to completely abandon it. So for example, maybe you start with a new study strategy and don't quite get the grades you want, so you completely abandon it and instead to choose a different strategy or resource altogether. But as I've learned, this continually makes you unsure of yourself and your abilities. Instead, I found it more valuable to start with something I thought would work, evaluate the performances after doing it for a little bit, and then tinker. For example, when I started medical school, I was studying primarily with flashcards and outlines. But this was taking me anywhere from 10 to 12 hours a day. And when I started to reevaluate, I asked one important question that really changed the game, which is, what would happen if I took five hours away? What would I do differently? In this conversation, I started to have with myself said, well, you're obviously going to do flashcards. Outlines are boring anyways. And sorry if that offended you. Maybe your outlines are worth a novel, mine weren't. So I made a tinker, I made a pivot, and I started to transition nearly 80% of my time doing just flashcards. And I found that that did work for a little bit. I went from 10 to 12 hours to studying eight hours a day, and it felt like progress. But eight hours a day still felt far fetched from the initial goal of enjoying the process while still doing well. In the short term, while I was spending last time doing flashcards, it took me two to three hours making the damn cards themselves. And so I found myself, just like many of you, getting tired before I even getting started. So then I made my next pivot or my next tinker, and I created the screenshot method I've now taught throughout various YouTube videos that you guys can check out below. And essentially what I was doing is upgrading and not reinventing my study system. The same way that all of us upgrade our phones and our laptops to a version that's a little bit better than as predecessor, but not all that different, is the same way you should evaluate everything on your journey, including your studying. And so I used the same approach every part of the medical journey. So for example, when it came to patients and patient interactions, I asked myself, well, what worked? What didn't? What should I do more of? What ideas and transitions can I make? And also, what kind of things should I do more of to make sure I get the same results as the past? And I kept on improving and improving this process throughout the journey. So if you're overwhelmed at the moment on your journey, simply ask yourself, what's the one thing that's causing you the biggest stressor in your life? And ask yourself, how can you simply simplify and refine and improve the process day in and day out? For many of you, that one stressor is going to be figuring out your studying. So if you're interested, check out the programs down below or free videos and resources that I put out weekly on the channel as well as the blog. Number two, create mandatory time for yourself. I'll get to it one day to really be the model for every student and medical student for sure. I'll get to workouts one day. I'll get better one day. I'll make time to call my family one day. I'll sleep in one day. I want to learn about finance, self-improvement, etc. One day. Well, the news flash is that day never comes. And if you don't believe me, take your past experiences to prove that you're lying to yourself. For example, when you're a high schooler, you thought you were busy and you had a lot on your plate. And so at that time, there were things that you wanted to do, but you told yourself you're too busy, you're going to get to it again one day. In college, you got even busier with your pre-med classes and used any extra bit of time you had for your extracurriculars and maybe some time for yourself. In med school, that time got completely obliterated. As you guys can see in this chart, each year you get busier and busier. But the time to develop good habits like finding time for yourself, that needs to start now. Here's exactly how you do it. For your week, first find all of the time that's already been obligated for you without necessarily you having much input. These includes time for class, labs, lectures, meetings, appointments, dinners, put those on your calendar. Now, next thing you should do is to find one hour a day, minimum two hours is the goal to schedule for yourself. And this is time that you have put aside and obligated for yourself for things like fitness, family, and more. Now, two hours a day is the ultimate goal, so if you find this to be too much in a simple way, it's to start with an hour increased by 30 minutes each week. And following this tip for a month, you'll find that your day will start and end with things that matter to you, not the future doctor you, just you. And number three, remember that learning is a lifelong process. Being tested as often as we are on our Michael journey, it feels like we need to know everything now. Newsflash, you don't. First of all, I've learned that most things I've learned is utter useless. I don't care what the fourth step of the Krebs cycle is because it doesn't matter to me today. By the way, it's obviously when alpha ketocutorate becomes succinyl-coate, death. But I do care about how to manage a patient who comes to the hospital with a heart attack. And even then, when it feels like I need to know every right step to avoid screwing up, the answer is I simply don't. I need to, one, know the initial steps, and two, know where to look if I don't know the answer. And after being a doctor for almost two years at this point, I've realized that I still almost always forget at least one thing. And so every time I go through the process of looking up the basic guidelines to make sure I've given all the right meds and did the appropriate workout for my patient. And each time I do this, I tend to remember more and more. And this process keeps me humbled and also reminds me that medicine is learned through practice. And in the same fashion when you're studying, while it may seem the initial goal is to learn everything, the actual goal is to get into your testing phase as quickly as possible so then you can say, I actually know this and I don't know this, let's review this even more. The more opportunities you give yourself to do the latter, the more prepared you'll be going into exam and also your future as a physician. And so take some of that burden off your shoulders and understand that you'll be learning and relearning each and every day of your future career. And most importantly, remember that no one will grade you with a multiple choice test when you're a doctor. So stop grading yourself now. And don't forget to remember that while being a doctor is surrounded around this idea of service and sacrifice, don't forget to learn to serve yourself by not sacrificing. I hope that you guys can see how you can use these pieces of advice to crush it on your medical journey while doing it with less stress. If you found this video and episode helpful, I really ask for two things. One, definitely consider putting the tips that you learned in this video into action. Often we consume more pieces of advice than we can actually apply. And two, support this video on YouTube by hitting that like button, dropping your comments down below with a main takeaway or other pieces of advice that you'd like to give to somebody on their medical journey and also consider hitting that subscribe button for more videos just like this one. For all of you that have made it to this video, thank you so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully that was a little help to you guys and yours. If you did enjoy this video, then definitely consider checking out this video on how you can use Anki step-by-step like a pro on your medical journey. But with that guys, thank you so much again. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.