Friday's Digest - The Newsletter for Doctors & Scientists

Friday's Digest #146

My "End of Day" Ritual: The Habit That Stops Work From Invading My Home Life

How do you separate your work life from your home life when you’re job is so demanding?
I do these 3 things

June 13th, 2025

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.

Life Update
Tools and Tips
Readers’ Favorite
Stuff

Life Update

This week, a manuscript of mine got published.

If there's one thing I absolutely hate, it's the "author's proof."

This is when you look for last-minute mistakes that need correction— misspelled words, grammar mistakes, or errors in figures.

I have a system for this.

First, I read it from start to finish, going over EVERYTHING.

Then I use Grammarly to look for mistakes.

Finally, I go over the authors' list and Google their names to check for errors.

But this time, I wanted to see if AI could help me.

So after completing my regular system, I uploaded the manuscript to Google's Gemini and ChatGPT, asking them to find errors.

Gemini did a wonderful job. It even found two technical glitches that neither I nor Grammarly caught. VERY subtle ones, but it found them.

Then I tried ChatGPT.

It did much worse.

How much worse?

Well, ChatGPT spent 5 minutes just extracting the text from the PDF I uploaded.

Then it gave me a "corrected version" of my manuscript.

Looking at this "corrected" version, I had no idea what had changed.

Now, I don’t like being in this situation.

I absolutely HATE it when AI writes FOR ME.

I write things MYSELF. I don't want anyone else doing it for me.

So I asked ChatGPT, "What errors did you find? Can you highlight them for me?"

And the response?

"Okay, the user wants a list of corrections I made, but I didn't actually proofread or modify the document in my previous response."

Get it?!

ChatGPT was asked to proofread it, and it generated a text that was supposed to be a corrected version.

But it didn't do anything! It just gave me a so-called "corrected" text.

Bottom line?

Gemini is the best AI tool for doctors and scientists. By far.

Gemini is like my assistant. It HELPS me with technicalities. It saves me time and frustration with all the things unrelated to the actual writing. But it leaves me with the actual writing.

It doesn't GENERATE text for me.

I'm the scientist. I'm the writer.

ChatGPT tries to replace me.

And I couldn't tell exactly what it did.

It's a very dangerous place to be.

Especially for doctors and scientists.

Bye-bye, ChatGPT.

Number 146!

Let’s go!

Tools and Tips

"How do I stop my work life from invading my home life?"

That's funny.

As I'm writing this, I'm smiling.

Why smiling?

Because in my line of work, I can't completely separate my work life from my home life.

If there's an emergency, I will leave everything and go to the hospital.

If there's an important message or an urgent work-related call— I will answer it.

But it doesn't happen often.

Have you noticed the words I used about my work?

"Emergency," "Important," "Urgent."

And that brings me to my first rule:

🔵 "Is it urgent?"

When I'm not at work, it has to be urgent for me to give it my attention.

By "urgent" I mean anything that can't wait until the next day.

At first, when someone called me at home, I felt uncomfortable asking, “Is it urgent?”.

However, as time passed, my environment became accustomed to it.

When I'm not at the hospital, I prefer not to deal with work.

Of course, I balance this with my long hours.

I'm available for work-related issues starting at 5:40 am, five days a week.

And with my 60-80 work hours a week, it's hard for anyone to say I'm not available.

But even if you work just 30 hours every week, you can do the same.

Asking “Is it urgent?” will feel uncomfortable at first.

But it's worth it.

VERY MUCH worth it.

🔵 End of Day Ritual

For most of us, it takes time to get home after work.

Usually, it's because of traffic.

So, if we leave work at 5 pm and get home at 6 pm, we feel like our "home life" started at 6 pm.

But it doesn't need to be this way.

Your "home life" can begin the moment you leave work.

All you need is a ritual.

For me— it involves changing my clothes (I always wear scrubs at work), putting my headphones on, and listening to YouTube or a podcast.

So I feel at home the moment I perform this ritual.

🔵 Not Having a Home Office

Before we moved into our new place, I dreamed about having a home office.

And indeed, one of our rooms is dedicated just to that.

I have a desk there, and most of my tech gear is there.

However, I don't have a chair there (I really wanted one, but I couldn't find the chair I wanted).

I don't have a computer screen there.

I don't have a couch there.

All the things I dreamed about are not there.

Why?

Mostly, it's because I don't have time to set it up.

But there's another reason—

I like the fact that I don't have a dedicated work area at home.

I don't have a HOME office.

My office is at WORK.

Readers’ Favorite

Why Do People Walk Away From You When You Fail?

Read it here.

Stuff

📱Application I use - Instagram.

My friends told me I should open an Instagram account.

So I did it. You can find me on Instagram here.

I like using LinkedIn.

I don’t like Twitter. I don’t like Facebook.

But maybe I’ll like Instagram.

Remains to be seen.

Epilogue

That’s it for this issue.

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See you next week!

Shay

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