How to strike a balance in medical school

Definitions & Key takeaways

It's important to strike a balance in medical school by taking time for yourself and your hobbies, and setting aside time for studying. To do well in medical school, you need to be able to focus and concentrate on your studies, but you also need to take care of yourself mentally and physically. A few tips on striking a balance in medical school include forming good learning habits such as spaced repetition, good sleeping habits, healthy diets, etc. Another tip is to try to manage your money. Money is a necessary commodity, especially for a person with sometimes limited resources as a medical student. Spending it wisely will allow saving for learning resources such as books, subscriptions, travel fares, etc. Finally, learn to say no to things that take your professional time. This will allow you to focus on what's important and spend time wisely.

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All right. How are you feeling today?
Hey, guys, Doctor Sai here and I'm gonna talk to you a little bit today about how to find or strike balance in medical school.
Something that I think a lot of people struggle with. Uh, and I certainly struggled with early on that, uh that has gotten uh better and better as life has gone on.
But certainly I wish I had more balance in medical school. So that's kind of the topic of today.
The first tip is to form good habits and I'm gonna kinda categorize in two categories. There's learning habits and there's kind of personal habits.
So in terms of learning habits, um what I mean is making sure you do things that, that optimize your time studying. So interleaving, we know that that works.
That's where, you know, if I'm studying biochemistry, um I mix it up and then I study anatomy and then I study histology and then I go back to biochemistry.
So mixing it up is really important. It's a little harder, but you'll remember stuff for longer.
So each hour you spend learning is actually more uh efficient. So that's one strategy another one is space repetition.
If I know something, then I should probably repeat it a little bit later. If I don't know something, then I should repeat it kind of more quickly.
So, those are some good learning habits that I want you to really focus on another set of, kind of good habits would be personal habits.
So, uh, how do you sleep, uh, when you wake up, do you eat, uh, a good healthy meal? Do you drink a lot of water during the day?
Do you have good sleeping habits? The, the, the truth is that, that makes you a better, uh, happier person, makes you a better, uh, healthcare professional.
But also these are the things that your patients are gonna struggle with, uh, in terms of their own conditions, you know, making sure that they have a good diet, uh, that helps to reduce the amount of flares they get from their celiac disease or that they're, uh, exercising so they can lose weight.
Uh, which means that they have less, uh, osteoarthritis on their knees. So, these are good habits that I want you to form so that you can actually help your, uh, future patients and empathize with them because learning good habits is, is really hard.
So first thing in medical school, try to yourself get really good, um, learning habits, be efficient with your learning and also good personal habits.
Tip number two is manage your money. Uh, we don't talk uh enough about money and money affects all of our lives.
Uh The first thing to do to manage your money would be to establish a budget. A lot of people have never really budgeted before.
So when I was going through, one thing that I did is II tracked what I spent on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and, and kind of tracked it over, you know, week on week.
And I actually started noticing certain patterns like spending four bucks for a cup of tea is just, uh, maybe a small purchase when you're just spending that amount right away, but it adds up quickly.
Right. And so I started thinking, wait, wait a second, let me try to take on a personal challenge.
My personal challenge was what's the least amount of money I can get through a month on. So I ended up cooking meals at home.
I found free fun activities on weekends that didn't, you know, uh, empty my wallet. I, uh, made sure that I ended up hanging up more, more with friends.
I didn't go and spend a lot on, on clothes or other things like that. And I ended up, uh, getting through one whole month on $200.
Uh, not including rent, but that was a big accomplishment for me. And I have spent much more than that, you know, in the month since, but I have reined it in at times and it's just good to have that exercise because then you just become more cognizant of how money is being spent.
So the second big tip is again, manage your money. And third just say no.
So just say no means learn how to say no to things that take up your time uh professionally. So of course, you're gonna wanna study hard, of course, you're gonna wanna get involved in certain organizations, you're gonna take on uh research projects, You're gonna wanna do a lot of things professionally.
But I encourage you to learn how to say no because the there's a lot of uh times when you're gonna start feeling like, hey, I'm getting pushed all my time is getting taken up.
I've got this tiny, little bit of time left for myself, for my friends. And uh and as you go through medical school, part of striking a good balance is, is pushing back and saying no, I need more personal time to do things that I care about.
Maybe learning a new language or playing piano or whatever it is that kind of refills your cup. So that's a big theme for me is is making sure you kind of are always taking good care of yourself.
And um and that's what I'll leave you at. So again, uh make sure that you form good habits, both learning habits and personal habits, make sure that you are managing your money and also think about how to just say no uh to activities that would otherwise take up your time so that you can do things uh for yourself.
So if you like these tips, if you're thinking about how to be even more balanced, there is a fantastic book that we put out how to learn in the health professions.
Uh There's a video series that goes with that book, so check it out, you can buy it in a bookstore. Uh You might really enjoy a lot of the tips that are there.
It really expands on a lot of the stuff I just talked about. Thanks again.
Have a great rest of the uh day. Take care.
Bye-bye. Start your free trial today at osmosis.org.