More Goals

     I just completed my OB rotation, and as expected, it was quite busy. Fortunately, I worked with some wonderful people this month. I feel more comfortable teaching on a few topics, performing Cesarian deliveries, and dealing with postpartum hemorrhage. I did not write out any "cheat sheets" like I planned, simply because I didn't feel like it was a high-yield use of my time. Maybe I was wrong, but that's just what happened. Overall, it was a good month, though I was definitely sleep-deprived for most of it.

      My original goal for next month was to establish a long-term financial plan. Though I still want to make progress on this front, it is also important for me to prepare myself for getting married, focus on finding a future practice location, and be more intentional about the small bits of free time I find during the day. I hope to carve out larger chunks of time to journal, write my vows, read, meditate, and pray, while using smaller chunks of time to work on financial stuff, future practice stuff, and medical study. Let me make my goals for September more concrete:

1. Write my wedding vows

2. Carve out 2 half-days for reflection

3. Contact two hospitals in addition to the hospital I'll be interviewing at this week

4. Read or skim 21 journals

5. Write out a rough budget for next year

6. Get my investments more on autopilot

7. Notify important parties of my upcoming change of address

8. Keep a very detailed time log of at least 7 days this month

         I have copied and pasted and these goals into my Reminders app and put a few sticky notes around my house as well. I will give you a report at the end of the month. Though I probably won't fulfill all of these, I'm shooting for at least 80%. My challenge to you all this month is to also bite off a little more than you can chew. Push your self to accomplish things you may not quite have enough time for. 

        Writing a post on this blog every month brings me back to the kind of goal-setting I really need in order to be effective. As I have been doing every month this year, you should regularly be asking yourself a form of the question: How can I make the things I want to accomplish in my life more concrete, more short-term, and more public? Asking this question every month has transformed how I think about attaining my life goals. I hope it does this for you as well.

      

Balanced Progress

Last month was indeed a time of balanced progress, as I hoped for:

-The direct primary care conference in Kansas City was even more inspiring and future-shaping than hoped for, and I made some great professional contacts I hope to utilize in the future. 

-Brandon Alleman and I have almost finished writing the business plan for a resident-led direct primary care clinic focused on the uninsured working poor of Wichita. 

-I have an interview scheduled for one month from now at a hospital I am interested in working at in western North Carolina. I hope to get a couple more interviews set up over the next few months.

-The central line working group and noon conference committees I'm a part of have made some great progress in the last couple of weeks. 

-Although I sustained a minor shoulder injury at the beginning of the month, I am back to working out twice a week as well as doing weekly yoga, ultimate frisbee, and sprinting sessions. Mindy and I are also trying to walk more in the evenings, although that hasn't happened as much yet as we would like.

-I am gaining a lot of wisdom about how to interact with people through reading How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I couldn't recommend it more highly. 

-Mindy and I made some good headway on wedding planning, engagement pictures, financial planning, and general relationship-building. Photos will, of course, be available on Facebook soon.

This month, I am back on OB-- my second to last month on that service. I feel that my major goal should be to learn, teach, communicate, connect, work hard, and excel in all things OB. Hopefully the areas of my life listed are on autopilot enough that I won't regress in those areas. The concrete goal I have is to make several "cheat sheets" about various topics in Obstetrics, to both clarify things in my own mind and to better teach the interns currently on the service. Though it's not exactly opening up a new area of my life, focusing on OB is the most important thing I can do this month, besides focusing on my relationships with God and Mindy. As my final year of residency gathers steam, I feel an increased pressure to extract as much intellectual and relational marrow out of this time as possible.

Are you setting concrete daily, weekly, or monthly goals? You should be!