Life Update

Every night when I go to bed, I place my phone next to me.

I turn the internet off (so I won't wake up to emails and messages that come in all the time).

And I switch my phone from vibrate to ring.

So if a call comes in, I'll wake up and answer it.

The last time I turned my phone off was two years ago. It's been on ever since.

When I speak with colleagues about work hours, this example (keeping-my-phone-on at night) always comes up.

Some of my colleagues work part-time: Some of them work 4 days a week instead of 5.

Some of them leave work at 14:00.

And some of them are like me.

Which is better?

Number 165!

Main Article

I've been having a very specific fantasy lately.

An afternoon fantasy.

🔵 14:00

The hospital is not one building. It's several. And to get from one building to another, you go outside.

So a few times a day I'm walking across the campus, between buildings.

And a few times a day, I pass people leaving work.

It's 14:00 (2pm). Sometimes 15:00.

They are holding their bag over one shoulder, and they walk through the gate.

They have most of the day left.

While the sun is still high.

And there's a part of me that watches them go and thinks:

They're going to have a beer 🍺.

They're going to meet a friend.

They're going to the gym.

They're going to sit somewhere outside with nothing they have to finish.

I know it probably isn't like that.

I know they have things to do and things going wrong. And their own version of difficulties.

But that's the fantasy.

Some doctors have the option of signing out at 14:00. It's a matter of choice.

Usually, they're the doctors who took the clinic job outside the hospital.

And by 14:00, they're already gone from a place I'll never walk past.

🔵 The Day I Have Completely Planned

Here's another fantasy.

Not leaving early.

A whole day.

Working 4 days a week instead of 5. One weekday that belongs to ME.

I've built this day so many times in my head that I can walk you through it hour by hour.

I wake up at 8:00. Later than usual, but not late.

I do the chores first. Clean up, take out the trash. The small things that pile up.

And then I go outside, and everyone else is rushing to work.

Today, I'm not part of that group.

Then I go for a run. I stretch in the park.

Shower. Cut myself a good salad. Eat lunch slowly.

Then two hours of siesta. 😴

I wake up around 14:00, go back out to the park, and read a book.

And then I go pick up my kids from school.

That's the day. That's the whole thing.

Nothing in it is expensive or dramatic.

I haven't had this kind of day in years.

Some of that is life. Things happen, and they don't ask whether this was supposed to be your day.

And some of it is just the job.

But here's what I want to say to whoever is finishing training right now. To whoever is making career decisions right now.

That day off I just described? You can have it if you want.

For doctors, it's the four-day clinic job.

Outside the hospital, 08:00 to 14:00, and very often a better salary than the one you'd get inside the hospital.

If you want it, take it.

You will be very good at it. You will be paid properly. And you will be in the park at two in the afternoon.

🔵 The Ones I Wanted to Be

When I go abroad, at conferences, I meet the surgeons I wanted to become.

That's not a figure of speech. When I was younger, these were the people I was aiming at.

The cancer surgeons.

The ones doing the operations I wanted to do.

And more than once, one of them has told me quietly that they're thinking about stopping.

Not stopping surgery. Stopping the oncologic part.

Because of what it's like to wake up with it.

To think about work when you're not at work.

Decisions you've made.

Whether to operate. How much to take. What you tell a family. Whether you were right.

It doesn't stay in the building. You go home with these decisions.

Even if you leave at 14:00, in your mind - you never left.

You can be in a park at two in the afternoon with a book open on your lap, and be somewhere else entirely.

The time off isn't the variable.

That's what nobody tells you when you're choosing.

So when you're sitting with those two contracts in front of you, don't count the days.

Everyone will tell you to count the days.

Ask yourself what you're willing to be thinking about when you go to bed.

If the honest answer is "I don't want to be thinking about work" - you already know which contract to sign. And it's the right one.

And if the answer is "This! I will be thinking about this because I'm good at it" - then sign the other contract knowing exactly what you bought.

I don't have a clean answer to this one.

I'm not going to pretend I do.

I just know that I sleep with my phone on ring.

Readers' Favorite

If you liked this one, go back to How to Choose a Job That Won't Cause You to Sacrifice Too Much? - it's the same question from the other end, before you've made the choice.

Epilogue

That's it for this issue.

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See you next week!

Shay