Family is finally here! The apartment feels like home now.

Air Canada has not made it easy… On top of almost causing them to miss their flight because of buggy airline software, they left their luggage standing in the rain for three hours in Toronto. All their clothes and possessions were soaking wet! So bon voyage Air Canada, until you get your act together, we’ll be flying with another airline from now on.

But enough complaining for now.

Issue number 4 is here! Let’s do this.

Table of contents

1. The Boston Experience

2. Main Article - Prioritization

3. OMFS World

4. Stuff (Book, Show, Gear)

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” -Winston Churchill

We can learn so much from Winston Churchill, but this quote is one of my favorites. I believe in focusing on your craft, making others’ lives better, and always speaking the truth. Everything else will just fall in place.

The Boston Experience

Let’s talk about Brookline.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦The city of Brookline is in Massachusetts and is situated close to Boston. The city covers an area of 6.8 square miles and has around 59,000 people. Brookline is well known for its strong public school system, which is why we chose to live here. The city is divided into districts, and to qualify to attend a particular school, you must reside in that district. What happens if you can’t find an apartment in that district? So here comes plan B into play: Our kid needs to score lowon an English proficiency test, qualifying him to join an out-of-district school, since these have built-in support for children who don’t speak English well.

📒But how do you ask your firstborn to do poorly on the exam? Well, you don’t. We tried some “It’s ok to guess” on him, and “if you were asked to identify a complicated word like -encyclopedia-, just guess”. However, his response was, “then I just have to look for a word that has the letters c and p”. Damn! Where did he come up with this?! So we just ended up letting him do his thing. You know, no fingers crossed and hope for the worst kind of thing. To be continued…

🔑Another thing about Brookline is that it seems a very safe place. There are no heavy locks on the doors, and bikes, chairs, and outdoor furniture are left on the street. It just feels like you can leave your door unlocked at night, and nothing will happen. Our bikes are just sitting on the road next to the front door, unlocked. This is a significant change for us, and I must say, an extremely positive one.

A video I loved as a kid, and adored by my own kids

Main Article - Prioritization

The question I’ve been asked the most over the last few weeks is, “how do you have the time to write this newsletter?” Well, my answer is twofold: time management and prioritization.

⏰Every newsletter begins with ideas, and ideas come in a matter of seconds; you just need to write them down. So throughout the week, whenever I stumble upon a subject I want to touch on in the newsletter, I write it down or dictate it to my phone. How long does it take me in total to do that? About 2 minutes every week, and when I reach the writing stage, I start writing, no blank screen and no writer’s block.

✍️What about the writing? So this one takes me around five to seven hours total each week: a half hour for the outline, three to five hours for writing (usually done late at night on weekends, instead of sleeping), and an hour and a half of proofreading (usually done over twenty 5-minutes sessions while commuting or walking the long corridors of the hospital). So the time management here is pretty self-explanatory, but prioritization is something I want to dive into - why do I value writing a newsletter more than I value sleep? And what about the rest, such as family, fellowship, research, USMLE, house chores, and leisure? So it’s a good thing you asked! Let’s talk about prioritization.

✈️In our fast-paced, constantly-connected world, it can be easy to feel like we should be able to do it all. But the truth is time is limited, and we can only achieve a few goals at any moment. This means that it’s essential to define what is most important to you and make sure your actions align with these priorities. However, most of us don’t pay too much attention to our priorities; we are “auto-piloting” our lives.

So this is how I do it; I picked four guidelines for you:

❗️First, you must consider what is most important to you. It can be a broad subject (family, research, establishing your business) or a focused one (take your kids on a bike ride, prepare for a surgery/test, write a grant proposal). Then you should define one absolute priority - this priority will be fulfilled at any cost, any time, no matter what else you have on your plate. For me, research is an absolute priority. If one of my students messages me - I will do whatever it takes to respond right there and then. If one of my main collaborators emails me, I will respond very quickly. If I am overwhelmed with a list of tasks, I will single out the research tasks, complete them, and then move on to the other ones. Here’s some homework for you - what is your absolute priority?

🎯Second, you should prioritize transforming active tasks into passive tasks. What do I mean by that? Suppose you need to write a few paragraphs and send them to your colleague for review, or assume your student has sent you an idea to comment on. When you are done with whatever you need to do (active), they will continue to work on it without you needing to do anything (passive). In other words, the extent of the project and its timeline haven’t changed, but the amount of work you are required to do has decreased. If you are in a position that allows you to delegate work, prioritize these tasks, and delegate them as soon as possible. This way, your list of active tasks will shrink, and the persons you delegated the work to will appreciate you being prompt and respectful of their time. Now, are there any active tasks on your list that can be made passive?

Intermission - the legendary Fredy Mercury working the crowd:

🐸Thirdly, “swallow the frog”. We all procrastinate annoying tasks. Why do we do it? Because we dread them, they’re unpleasant, and we would rather do anything else. But what if we could swallow the frog? i.e., complete those annoying tasks first thing every day? We would reduce our stress, get the ball rolling on these tasks, and feel a sense of accomplishment. Once you see progress, these tasks will no longer be so annoying. I think that research students suffer the most from these frogs. It took me two years during my PhD to start swallowing the frog (and believe me, PhD is practically a frog farm), but once I had, the number of tasks I perceived as frogs dramatically decreased. So what is your frog today? And what does it take to swallow it? (Let me answer this one for you: not too much. So just do it!)

8️⃣0️⃣Lastly, the 80/20 principle states that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes. This is one of my favorites, if not the most. It is a simple way to prioritize what’s important and an easy way to make sure you’re focusing on the things that matter most. Here’s how it works: First, identify the 20% of your activities responsible for 80% of your results. These are the things that you should be focusing on. Second, eliminate or delegate the remaining 80% of activities. I use this principle to complement the 2-minute rule I mentioned last week: For every task that takes me more than 2 minutes to complete, I first consider its most important 20% and complete them first. Works great with pretty much anything. For those who feel this rule is too theoretical, try asking yourself: If I only had one hour for this project, what would I do? And if I only had 15 minutes? This way of thinking has done wonders for me while studying for my MD finals, USMLE, and preparing for surgeries. It also touches Parkinson’s law, also one of my favorites, but I will leave this one for another week.

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” - Cyril Northcote Parkinson

So that’s it for prioritization. I think I covered about 5% of what I have to say on this subject. Let me know if you want to read more.

As always, OMFS world is next. Feel free to skip to the next orange headline if it’s not up your alley.

OMFS World

👩‍🎓For the student - Finding an OMFS mentor for the basic science project during the pre-clinical phase is an excellent way for a dental student to gain insight into the OMFS field. As a surgeon-scientist, I’m a big believer in basic research training, particularly during dental school. If you are unsure whether you want to pursue a career as a surgeon-scientist, a Master’s degree may be an excellent way to get a taste of what the field has to offer. For those who will pursue the PhD path, or even go for a research fellowship - it will change your lives.

🥼For the OMFS resident - Admitting your mistakes may not be easy. As a resident, you will make mistakes – it’s inevitable. What’s important is that you learn from those mistakes, so you don’t repeat them. Acknowledging your mistake may seem obvious, but it can be difficult to do as a resident who is constantly being tested. If you find yourself making a mistake, take a deep breath and admit it. Trust me. This is the only way. Always.

“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” ― Mark Twain

🩺For the non-MD OMFS - As a resident and even as a board-certified non-MD OMFS, you will want to bridge gaps in your medical knowledge. You may want to look up medications that your patients take, understand the nature of their past cardiac interventions, or are simply motivated to understand the management of diabetes (good for you!). Whichever it is, you will face the dilemma - where do I get this information from? So there are the resources that everyone is talking about, such as uptodate.com, medscape.com, Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, the Washington Manual of Medical Therapeutics, and more. However, you don’t want to get sidetracked or overwhelmed by books and lengthy texts. So my recommendation is simple: Medical students always have the best and most updated studying materials. From PowerPoint presentations, through PDFs, and to the best notes possible. If you’re really into it, ask for their Anki cards. But I must warn you, Anki cards require tons of self-discipline. You may ask yourself: What the hell is an Anki card? Well, for that, we will need to discuss the topic of how to study and how to maintain self-discipline. But we’ll save those for our upcoming issues.

Stuff

📚Book I read - The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch is a book that explores the idea that 80% of outputs stem from 20% of inputs. Koch applies this principle to various areas of life, including achievements/time (80% of our achievements come from 20% of our time) and happiness/experiences (80% of happiness stems from 20% of our experiences). This book can help you define what matters to you most and will answer the question: “how do you find time for this?”. Highly recommended.

📺Show I watched - Casey Neistat’s YouTube channel is the mother and father of vlogs (=video blogs). Casey released a vlog every single day and maintained an unparalleled cinematic standard for this frequency. On top of that, his fascinating life story is intertwined in his vlogs and will teach you a thing or two about never giving up on your dreams.

💡Gear I use - If you are a surgeon/dentist looking for the perfect headlight, you want a lightweight, high intensity, and a long battery life. You also want a headlight accessible during surgery without disturbing sterility in the operating room. In the last few weeks, I tried two that met most, if not all, of these criteria. I wore these during short (2-3 hours) and long (8-14 hours) surgeries.

🪫The second place goes to MedLED Chrome MC7 PRO: Although priced around 4,000$, two residents/fellows can team up and get two for the price of one, which brings it down to around 2,000$ (no financing, though). The intensity is good, and the headlight is a cordless one-piece that includes the light, straps, batteries, and a charging port. Its disadvantages are the weight on your head added by the batteries and the short battery life (4.5 hours). In my line of profession, it means adding around 1,000$ for extra batteries and a desktop charger.

🔋The first place goes to Ronin X6: Priced 3,250$ for fellows/residents, it comes with a couple of large batteries; each lasts at least 6 hours. The battery is placed on your waist, so you have a cable running from your head to your waistline. However, Ronin is much lighter on the head, and it comes with a fast desktop charger (three hours for a full charge vs. a lot more for the MedLed). What I also like about Ronin is that I can access its buttons through my sterile gown (on/off, intensity), which is impossible to do with MedLed since its controls are on the head (non-sterile). Ronin’s batteries also have a built-in charge indicator, which is really nice. You also have an option for financing - pay over 36 months with 0% APR.

All in all - Ronin is the clear winner for me. Lightweight, lasts throughout long days in the OR. If you have suggestions for other headlights that you want me to try, please reach out.

Epilogue

So that’s it for this issue.

Most of you preferred the newsletter to be shorter than #2, but then most of you chose the newsletter to be longer than #3. So this one is in between.

There will be no newsletters published over the next two Fridays since I’m taking the USMLE Step 3 exam (priorities, remember?). It will allow you to work on time management and prioritization and share your experiences.

In the next issue, we will touch on self-discipline, which I will link to my last two years studying for the USMLE exams. In the meantime, please ask yourself: “When it comes to self-discipline, what is my biggest challenge?” Let me know your thoughts; I will use them as a basis for our next issue.

And if you enjoyed this issue and think of someone who may enjoy it as well, please forward it the way you would with any email. They can click subscribe at the bottom of that email if they want.

Have a great and well-prioritized weekend!

Shay