 So if you're a medical student and feel like medical school is suffocating, stressful, and anxiety-provoking and just want to go from earth to this video is for you. Let's get to it. Alright guys, welcome back to the channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician helping you succeed on your medical journey and doing it with less stress. In today's video, I want to break down some of the key habits as well as just things that I keep in mind on a day-to-day basis when I was in medical school and also as my current life as a physician. And these are things that I'm looking back on hindsight 2020 that I wish I had done even more of. And so if you're early on in your medical journey, truly ask yourself how you can become more successful, but just taking one thing from this video and trying to apply to your day-to-day life. And so starting on number one, focus on having just three core priorities every single day and getting them done. So one common mistake that all medical students, including myself made, is that we always overload or to-do list because we want to feel more effective, more productive, more efficient. But that doesn't really happen. If anything, we just get more discouraged when we look at the bottom three things that we didn't get done and we don't really focus on the seven things we did. And so one of the early practices that I developed in medical school is to really just hone in on, okay, Lakshman, what freaking thing are you going to get done today? And just focus on getting those done. If you get those done, success. If you get more done, cool. If you get less done, get those things done. And so for example, one of the things I simply do now is I have a bunch of post-it notes that I have here on my desk and I'll simply put the three things that I want to get done. So as you guys can see, these are my three priorities for the day to do an oil change, to record these videos that I'm currently doing for you guys, as well as doing some house chores while my house is empty, my wife is gone. I want to make sure the house is nice and clean before she comes back. And yes, it would be nice if I can get more done in a day. And who knows, maybe I will. But I do give myself permission that if all those three things are checked off and I can say, luck's the best of day is yourself. Do whatever you want. Chill. Do nothing. Go to sleep. Good. Do more. But having those three core priorities helps me focus on what I need to get done and what is not essential. And then more importantly, when I'm done, I'm done. And in case you want to learn more step by step of how I do things, I come up with my core priorities, how I actually get done, as well as other productivity strategies in medical school and as a doctor. Check out resources like the domination bundle down below, which includes tons of resources for medical students, including things on productivity, such as the time mastery course, which helps you double your productivity in simply one weekend. All those programs will be linked down below in case you're interested. And the second important habit, which I admit I'm a complete geek for is to track your efficiency. Now personally, I like to track everything because I believe that need to be measured can be improved, but particularly for things like studying typically will track the wrong things. Most of us will track grades. And that typically works, but we don't always understand that not everything is under control. So when you take an exam, you could have had a different array of questions that may have given you a higher grade or a lower grade that doesn't really tell you if the knowledge base was correct of your study approach was correct. You just got lucky with the right questions and you've had enough knowledge that you did well or you got unlucky with the mixed match of questions you didn't know and you got a lower grade. That doesn't necessarily mean that you didn't study correctly. So instead, a better question will be like, how can I track how I'm studying how efficient I am? And so one of the things that I will show you here that I do for a lot of the students that we have here at the Medellin Academy. But just an example, I want to show you a few ways you can do things like track your studying. So here we're in the rapid study accelerator. This is a program within the Medellin Academy that helps you understand how you get better study in the best way for yourself and also improve over time. But one of the best things I love about this program is that all of our students go through some kind of tracking system. And so this is our study efficiency calculator. So the students that go through the program are instructed to put in different pieces of information from your day to day as a pre-med or a medical student. And then they can essentially get a score and seeing how they're improving over time. You don't necessarily need to track the same things that we do in the program. So instead of ask yourself what typically relates to the higher grades is it's spending more of your time on something that is more effective or doing things in a certain way or did you need to do a certain study strategy towards the very end before test day? Ask yourself those little nuances and then track how much you spend doing those things or the efficiencies that you spend or the focus level you had. Give yourself a score and use that to better give yourself feedback so then you can improve on a day to day basis. Now daily habit number three that's super important is to make use of those really small moments. Now it seems like when you're a medical student or you're a doctor that your time is super limited and life is just busy, you have no time for X, Y, and Z fill in the blanks. But technically that's not true because we see other students that have the same responsibility as us and it feels like they're just balancing 101 different things and it's not that they're necessarily more talented or smarter than us. Often they just better use the small bits of time that we often take granted for. For example part of your study technique as a medical student may include doing flashcards or practice questions and you may give yourself a certain amount of due on a daily basis on a weekly basis but you may wait for a certain study session where you sit down at a laptop and you do those questions but instead of you think about all those bits of time where you really weren't doing anything and you could have done a question here, a question there, you could have either made that session shorter or completely have gotten rid of it. In the year of medical school when I was walking about 20 minutes from the car garage to the actual call room for the hospital that I could be doing something so I would either do flashcards or I would listen to an audiobook. Whatever it may be I made better use of those small moments whether it be waiting in line for my food at the cafeteria just doing one question at a time and saying okay now you can just like relax. But getting one thing at a time often helped me not have to do anything by the time I got home. And if you want to put yourself through a fun experiment just focus on those little bits of time throughout the day and just keep track of them saying oh one minute there, two minutes waiting in line here, one minute waiting on a phone call here, two minutes waiting for my attending to get show up and just add those up. And when you do you realize how much free time you have that really you can't do much within a minute but you can do small things within the big tasks that you really don't want to get done and just do them within the small moments of time so you can have bigger chunks of time for your personal satisfaction. Now daily habit number four is to make time for your outside growth medicine can take up entire bits of your life four years eight years however much you allow it but if you just go through learning medicine often most of us gets disappointed because the career we expect it to go into isn't exactly what we end up in. I love my job but it's not necessarily the job that I was thinking it was going to be doing when I was applying to medical school. But again I love being a physician but I also like other aspects of my life that I've developed when I was in medical school like making videos for you guys or writing a blog post writing an email creating courses creating programs learning about fitness those are all things that I learned as part of my outside growth outside of medicine but I made time for it so usually I pick a day of my week whether it's Sunday or a time within my day to say okay this time during this day is blocked off for me to work out for me to not for me to read for me to hang out with x y and z for me to learn a new skill but not to be a medical student because typically being a 24 seven medical student is going to lead you not to like the career path as much but instead once you get to that finish line of graduating medical school going into residency becomes much more enjoyable because other aspects of your life that matter to you are still there and finally daily habit number four I used to actually do this on my checklist when I first started doing this but I would have a time when I said after this you're like done working like just done and it allows me to have more time for myself and now for my wife my puppy but whether it be eight o'clock whether it be nine o'clock or seven o'clock pick a time every single day it can vary depending on your busyness what's going on in your life but once that time passes be okay and not feel guilty of having to work more again you will appreciate the rest that you gave yourself and the permission to do something else but having that kind of time is the first step for being strict of taking care of yourself while you use the rest of time to be as efficient and productive as possible those guys are my daily habits and tips that I really used in medical school that I still use to this day as a doctor and hopefully you can start using them in your day to day and start to notice that increase of success as well as satisfaction happen now if you enjoyed this video go ahead and comment down below what was your favorite tip that you really enjoy or something else that you like to do that helps improve that success rate while minimizing some of that burnout let me know I really want to know in the comments down below and engage with you guys but with that being said guys if you did enjoy this video hit that like button my really main request of doing so is because there are people probably like you who are looking up tips of how to do better but really we're all asking ourselves how can I do better and not make it so damn stressful and hopefully this channel helps you do that if you hit that like button maybe you'll increase the chances that somebody else who sees this video also be able to get those same pieces of advice that you have in case you're lurking here on the channel and you haven't hit subscribe yet or if you're new here and you enjoy the content hit that subscribe button to get more videos just like this on a weekly basis hit that notification bell to know when new videos go out and if you guys enjoy this video then probably watch this video and how you can crush it on your medical journey it's probably one of my favorite videos that I've recorded for you guys as well as watching this video and how you can use Anki like a pro to really help improve your grades but as always guys thank you so much for watching this video thank you for being a part of my journey hopefully it was a little help to you guys and yours and I'll see you guys in the next one peace