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Friday's Digest - The Newsletter for Doctors & Scientists
Six months have passed since starting this newsletter.
Friday's Digest - The Newsletter for Doctors & Scientists
For two decades, I've been developing tools that have improved my practice in medicine, dentistry, and scientific research.
Join me every Friday to discover a new tool you can integrate into your workflow as a doctor, a scientist, or both.
I believe in sharing knowledge, embracing automation, boosting productivity, and finding joy in the process.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Table of contents
Table of contents
Preface
Main Article
OMFS World
Shay’s Guide to Writing a Newsletter
Preface
Preface
Next week I’ll have my first vacation here, and it will be my first vacation since August 2018.
Needless to say, this kind of work-life balance is not something I’m proud of. I firmly believe in taking time off as much as possible, but I did poorly practicing what I preach.
🕰️ Immediately after residency, I started my research fellowship in Portland, and immediately after that, I went to medical school.
I planned to take some time off during med school, but Covid-19 screwed things up.
🏃🏼 By the time the pandemic settled, I had to take USMLE Step 1, Israeli MD board exams, USMLE Step 2, complete my medical internship, and fly to Boston for the fellowship, all back to back.
Lesson learned - vacation time is an absolute necessity. I wish I had done a better job at it.
🎊 Today, I’m celebrating my 6-months journey of writing a newsletter.
It turned out to be an extremely demanding task and very different from what I’ve done so far in life.
🤔 I find myself contemplating how long this newsletter journey will last. Right now, I don’t have an answer. We’ll see…
Happy 6 months birthday!
Happy 6 months birthday!
"Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly."
― John F. Kennedy
Main Article
Main Article
📅 Six months have passed since starting this newsletter.
👨👩👦👦I started it with very general aims in mind: Keep in touch with family and friends, serve as a personal diary I never had (except for 3 days in the first grade 😄), and have something my children can read years from now.
🤔Otherwise, I had no idea where will it lead me.
Often, others will tell you how writing a newsletter has changed their lives.
Often, others will tell you how writing a newsletter has changed their lives.
🏆How they grew from zero to thousands of readers in record time, and they can now quit their day job and concentrate solely on their writing craft.
Well, my experience is different.
Well, my experience is different.
🏊So today, I would like to share the hardships of writing a newsletter and the challenges I face every week.
🎭Consider it the less glamour “behind the scenes” of writing a newsletter.
4️⃣I’ll start by presenting four main challenges and then describe how I deal with them.
4️⃣I’ll start by presenting four main challenges and then describe how I deal with them.
📰If you’re interested in starting a newsletter of your own, below you will find a complete guide to starting your own newsletter. I learned it all on my own, mostly the hard way, and there's no reason you go through the same hardships. Following the steps will save you tons of time and frustration.
But first, let’s discuss the challenges I face:
⏳Allocating time - It takes me 5-7 hours every week to write it, and my schedule is busy to begin with. Since I’m rounding in the hospital every weekend but don’t want to eat away my family time, I get up early even on Saturdays and Sundays, usually 5:30-6:00. On weekdays, I get up on 5:20, and recently I changed it to 4:20. I needed more morning time to work on a literature review. So allocating time to write a newsletter is not easy.
📴Lack of feedback - Feedback includes replying to the email newsletter, commenting on public platforms, or hitting “like” on social media. My target audience is the busy person, and busy individuals don’t have time to articulate feedback. Other readers enjoy the privacy and simplicity of a newsletter, with no “like” buttons or comment boxes. Whatever the cause may be, having little feedback is a significant challenge.
😶🌫️It’s a lonely process - you write into a void. Everything I know about writing newsletters, I learned on my own. Everything I do is based on my gut feeling. Since writing my newsletter is not a team effort, the feeling of “what’s the point?” is my enemy. It’s lurking and discouraging me.
👨🎓Potential harm to my “status” as a doctor and a scientist. That’s a big one. It might be only in my head, but publishing a newsletter and posting it on LinkedIn, is not something that is welcomed or rooted for. It seems to take away some of your professional credibility.
"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."
— Thomas Mann
So how do I deal with it?
So how do I deal with it?
⏳Challenge: Allocating time.
Solution: Refer to issue #3 (time management) and issue #4 (prioritization). There you will find a system that will help you find the time. In short, I sleep less on weekends and use my “third-spaced time” method, as I explain in these issues.
📴Challenge: Lack of feedback.
This is a tough one. When I started publishing, it was new and exciting for my audience, so the amount of feedback I got was substantial. However, it naturally wore off after a couple of months, so I had to find other ways to measure the quality of my newsletter.
I will save the tech talk to the guide below, but let me just mention that there are applications out there to help you measure the success of your newsletter.
But the numbers are not the goal.
If you think about starting a weekly newsletter, I advise you to aim to help one person every week. That’s a very measurable goal, and with time, you’ll achieve more than that.
Solution: If you helped just one person a week, it was all worth it.
😶🌫️Challenge: It’s a lonely process. The loneliness of the process is probably one of the most challenging aspects of writing a newsletter. So instead of writing into a void, I perceive every newsletter as a postcard I send to my past self. In some newsletters, I even incorporate “story time” and refer back to specific experiences from my past.
Your past self is an excellent representation of your audience, facing similar challenges and eager to know how you ended up dealing with them.
Solution: Write to your past self. Aiming at yourself two years ago is a good starting point.
👨🎓Challenge: Harming your “Status”. If you are considering starting a newsletter but are worried about what your colleagues or peers think, it will probably get better with time. However, it heavily depends on the type of your profession.
As someone from the dental/medical/scientific community, writing a newsletter is far from common. It feels like uncharted territory. Whether this newsletter will affect my path as a surgeon-scientist remains to be seen.
Solution: None. Perhaps in issue #52 😃.
So far, we've touched on the main challenges I face weekly. But writing a newsletter has many positive aspects:
So far, we've touched on the main challenges I face weekly. But writing a newsletter has many positive aspects:
👣 It’s a journey. This is the only project I have with no defined destination, and there’s something very freeing about this.
🎙️ It allows me to keep in touch with my friends, family, and colleagues back home. There’s no way I could have kept in touch with so many of them every week without this newsletter.
✍️ My English writing skills have improved. I’m not a native English speaker, so practicing my “general” (as opposed to scientific) English is a bonus.
👨💻I had to understand social media. Fast. Writing original content on social media is surprisingly complicated. I signed up for LinkedIn 3 months ago and learned a lot along the way.
"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."
— Franz Kafka
If that got you interested in writing a newsletter, I prepared a guide that will walk you through this process. Scroll down to “Shay’s Guide to Writing a Newsletter”.
OMFS World
OMFS World
🩺For the non-MD medical professional - Abnormal uterine bleeding can be caused by a number of different factors, ranging from hormonal imbalance to pathological conditions like cancer.
Factors linked to estrogen excess increase the risk of endometrial hyperplasia or cancer and include obesity, nulliparity, tamoxifen use, early menarche, or late menopause. An endometrial biopsy is obtained for women under 45 who haven’t responded to oral contraceptives.
In the case of endometrial hyperplasia, options include progestin therapy and hysterectomy.
Shay’s Guide to Writing a Newsletter
Shay’s Guide to Writing a Newsletter
📰So you’ve decided to start a newsletter or want to upgrade your existing newsletter.
📰So you’ve decided to start a newsletter or want to upgrade your existing newsletter.
💪Good for you!
🧐I recommend that you first define your aim as a writer. Do you want the process to be as simple as possible, or do you want to dive into all the nitty-gritty tech stuff?
3️⃣Pick one of the following options:
🏃♂️Option #1 - Keep-it-simple-writer. You just want to start writing and don’t care about anything else. By “anything else” I mean: writing efficiently, having a custom domain (www.shaysharon.com), publishing on multiple platforms, etc.
🤓Option #2 - Let’s-get-serious-writer. You already write a newsletter and want to take it to the next level.
🧗♂️Option #3 - Advanced-online-creator. You like using advanced tools and are interested in understanding how to reach more potential readers and share your craft.
🏃♂️For option #1, keep-it-simple-writer:
🏃♂️For option #1, keep-it-simple-writer:
Open a newsletter account. I use ConvertKit. It’s free as long as you have less than 1000 subscribers.
Send the “subscribe” link to anyone you think might be interested in reading it.
Start writing.
🤓For option #2, let’s-get-serious-writer:
🤓For option #2, let’s-get-serious-writer:
Sign up for your own custom domain (such as www.shaysharon.com). This will allow you to keep the same address and links regardless of the newsletter service you use. This domain can be used for your website, a subdomain used for your newsletter signup link (such as newsletter.shaysharon.com), and a custom email link (such as yourname@shaysharon.com) to send the newsletter from. I use the custom domain service of Google Sites.
Set your custom domain in your newsletter. You can use ConvertKit, which allows using a custom domain for free. Set your landing page to something like newsletter.shaysharon.com and your email address that your readers will receive the newsletter from to something like yourname@shaysharon.com.
Open a website. I use Google Sites, which is free but does require some html and web design skills. You can also use paid website hosting services that will make it easy. Whatever you do, always use your custom domain! This will allow you to migrate between services while keeping the same web address. Your website should contain a general description of who you are, your bio, and possibly your CV.
Copy-paste your newsletters to your website. It will keep your newsletter publicly accessible (rather than just to your subscribers). Coupled with your custom domain, it will allow you to keep the exact links to your previous newsletters, regardless of the web hosting and newsletter service you use.
Publish your content on social media to reach a bigger audience. I use LinkedIn and I’m still learning. You can also use Twitter but so far, it has been less beneficial for me, so I decided to keep Twitter focused on my research and LinkedIn on my newsletter.
🧗♂️For option #3, the advanced-online-creator:
🧗♂️For option #3, the advanced-online-creator:
I suggest you follow all the steps from option #2, and in addition:
Publish on three separate newsletter platforms. I use ConvertKit because it does an excellent job sending emails and managing subscribers. However, ConvertKit is less intended for increasing your online exposure. For that, I use Substack and Medium.
Create the newsletter on a tool separate from your newsletter service. I use Notion. I copy-paste the final version from Notion into ConvertKit, Substack, Medium, and my website. If you write directly on the newsletter website, you may stumble on bugs and glitches that will cause you to lose part of your newsletter. It happened to me several times. Not a pleasant experience.
Measure the traction of your newsletter and focus on subjects your readers showed interest in. I use Google Analytics for my website, and Shieldapp for LinkedIn.
Write efficiently. This is my process: ideation → title → outline → non-stop writing (no backspace, no editing) → non-stop editing (backspace palooza) → correct grammar → Hemingway editor to simplify sentences → text formatting → add emoji and theme image → final proofread → send a test email to myself → check link integrity → proofread the phone-screen version → upload to newsletter services and my website → post on LinkedIn.
Good luck! If you start a newsletter, send me your subscription link.
I’ll be your first subscriber!
I’ll be your first subscriber!
Epilogue
Epilogue
That’s it for this issue.
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Have a great weekend!
Shay
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