Strategic Indulgence

Your discomfort needs direction

As a physician, you’re always putting in hours and hours of your time devoted to your craft. You pour into your patient day in and day out. If you continue at this pace, you’re on track for burnout. The amount of discomfort you put yourself through needs to have an outlet. Without it, you become resentful and jaded. Allowing yourself to indulge in a controlled manner can keep giving you the small bites of motivation to continue doing what you’re doing. Without it, you can lose focus and become disconnected from your work. After all, when you wake up every day, you want to have some reason to go to work. We all want to be there for our patients but also have personal goals that our careers help us fulfill.

Be selective in your choices

The way you indulge needs to be thoughtful and methodical. There are so many things available to us that can provide instant gratification and satisfaction, but it's short-lived. You have to curate how you enjoy yourself. It should be meaningful and align with who you are. A lot of times this may fall into the category of your hobbies. This way, you can continue to learn and expand skills in a different category of your life while still “having fun”. Don’t fall into the trap of cheap thrills and short-lived happiness. With your income, you have access to a lot of different “fun” avenues; be wise with how you spend it!

The importance of your own space

Being alone is another kind of indulgence. You face 100s if not 1000s of decisions in any given 24 hours. This can quickly lead to decision fatigue, where you can’t make the right decisions for yourself. Setting blocks of time for yourself is a methodical way to do deep thinking and planning. Auto-pilot can only get you so far. Eventually, you need to make some course adjustments to continue to move forward in the direction you want to move in. Big-time founders take think weeks to re-focus and recalibrate their lives. If they can take some time away from work, so can you. Not only can your time and space provide you with a break, but it can also provide you with new perspectives and ideas on how to grow your career and your finances. Just like an artist can get inspiration from a new environment, so can you.

In conclusion,

The way you treat yourself needs to be meaningful. Every action you take should be with a certain kind of purpose. We have limited time on this earth, so make each moment important, and you will feel like you have all the time in the world.

A.K, MD