Understand that saying yes to something is saying no to something else. So make sure your yes does not mean that your no is to those things that you value, like time to exercise, time with your community, or time to write that paper you care about.
INTRO
It was not long ago that I was in the same boat as many of you, struggling to be known for my area of expertise, feeling like my contributions were lost in the shuffle, and unsure how to advance my career.
I spent a lot of time juggling tasks that didn't quite align with my goals, and I missed out on a lot of precious moments with my family. But I've had my aha moment, and now I'm all about channeling my energy into activities that truly propel me forward and bring me happiness. I'm Stacey Ishman, and I'm the host of the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast.
I'm a full professor who's built clinical, research, and administrative programs while mentoring and coaching young academic physicians from medical school through their first 10 years of practice. Please join me as we dive into all things career advancement, finding your niche, and working towards that elusive work-life integration. Hello, and welcome back to the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast.
I'm Stacey Ishman, and today we're going to be talking about choose your own adventure, when to say yes and when to say no. When you start your career, there are a ton of opportunities and responsibilities and expectations, and you're required to make an enormous number of decisions. Now, there's data out there that the average adult makes 35,000 decisions a day, and there's also data that the average physician makes even more, especially as we make complicated patient decisions.
But these decisions are often about you. How do you want to practice? What do you want it to look like? What should your clinic appointments look like? How do you want to drape the drapes? There's so many things, and you've been used to taking care of everyone else's decisions, but probably haven't spent a lot of time figuring out what you think and what you want. It is totally normal to feel overwhelmed.
It's also normal to feel like even little decisions take too much energy. I can tell you when I started, I literally couldn't figure out in the operating room when they said, what suture do you want? What, what draping do you want? What kind of gloves do you want to wear? And it wasn't that I didn't know how to wear gloves or pick suture. It's that I had so many people's voices in my head.
I hadn't really paid enough attention to what I liked. So what we're going to talk about today is based on some practical guidance from Simon Sinek's work. And we're going to talk about the art of saying yes and saying no.
Although to me, this hearken back to those choose your own adventure books that I loved when I was a kid, thinking through all the different eventual outcomes. Don't do that now. It'll probably drive you crazy unless you find it fun.
But the whole point is you really can help create your future and your reality.
And I also recommend that you learn to make a decision later. You don't have to say yes or no to everything now.
And so honestly, I tell people to practice this out loud. I do it with residents. I do it with trainees.
I do it with young faculty because people will come to you and they'll say, I have this great opportunity. I have a role that you would be perfect for. I have an article you should write.
I have a chapter that'd be great for you, or you should be on this editorial board. And what I really recommend is you start off with a, let me think about it and I'll get back to you. I'll consider it.
I'll look this over, but don't say yes or no right away based on guilt or obligation or just feeling overwhelmed. Give yourself a little bit of time so you can consider the yes or the no, and then you don't have to take back a commitment or feel like you're refusing something in the future that might've been a great opportunity.
Now, I know I've been sort of a broken record in terms of when I talk about things, but really it all comes back to understanding your why.
And Simon Sinek really has the same thought process. His core philosophy is that everything should start with your ultimate motivation before you even think about, should I or shouldn't I? And the reason for that is you want to make sure that it actually is in alignment with your own values and goals. If you haven't figured out your primary motivation, this is really the first step.
Go back, think about what you want. Think about the career you want. Think about what you want it to look like.
How much time do you want to invest in it? What are you hoping to attain? Are you trying to write a grant? Are you trying to get funded? Are you trying to write a lot of papers? Are you trying to build the best cosmetics clinic? Are you just trying to make sure that you take the absolute best care of patients? But it's your opportunity to decide where those fit and to figure out where your personal life fits in those too. And so there's plenty of great resources out there if you haven't done it. Simon has a book called Start With Why and many YouTube videos and TED Talks that would be really useful if you haven't figured this out yet.
And one other thing I think is really useful is talk to the people closest to you. So I talk to trainees all the time who are like, I can't figure out if I should pick a specialty or a subspecialty. And I often tell them, talk to the people you live with.
They will often tell you that when you come home, even on the days when you're exhausted, there are certain things that will float your boat. Are you more happy when you're on the pede service? Is pathology the thing that makes you feel excited even when you're exhausted? But the people around you will give you some excellent perspective. And if you have a significant other, talk to your significant other.
If you don't, talk to your roommate, talk to your friends, talk to the people that you make a phone call to or sit next to or Zoom with. So I totally recommend that you take that time and figure out your why.
Now number two is, does it align with your vision? Now this isn't just about what might be good today, but what might be good long term.
And if you're not sure about the difference between your mission, your why, and your vision, let's talk about that for just a second. Because the vision is really the roadmap. So let's say as an example, I want to create a coaching business and a course for early career faculty members.
That's my vision. That's what I'm going to do in order to help promote my mission, which is to help early and mid-career academic physicians more quickly and efficiently attain success and promotion in their work and professional lives. So the vision is how you get there.
The mission is your ultimate goal. And it helps provide you some direction and filters out distractions because you can really define success. If somebody says, do you want to be on this editorial board? And I really am not focused on that, which might help me get a national reputation, will help me establish the literature.
But if it turns out I just hate reviewing articles, success isn't going to look like much if it's good on a resume, but I hate the day-to-day of it. It also helps you evaluate opportunities. So you assess whether you say yes, if it brings you closer to your mission and your vision.
If it doesn't, it might be good to decline it. The other important thing is setting boundaries. There are going to be times when the same task makes a ton of sense and when it doesn't.
If I'm nine months pregnant and I'm about to start a big new venture at work, whether that's writing a new grant or starting a new clinic, that might not be the right time for me to say, sure, I'd love to be on an editorial board. It might be, I'm really sorry, now's not the right time, but if there's an opening down the road, please get back to me. It's also an opportunity to sponsor others.
And so it may be this really isn't in my wheelhouse, but you know what? My colleague would love this opportunity and be amazing at it. And I can recommend them. And the other thing to do is to understand that saying no is also saying yes to things that matter.
The third concept is that every time you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else. So if I say yes to being on that editorial board, I'm saying no to having some time in the evening to go to my son's track meet, or I'm saying no to getting as much sleep as I might otherwise, or maybe no to working out in the morning because I'm finishing something up. And I think it's clear that editorial boards are not on my top 10 list.
I had the opportunity to work on them. I thought it was so invaluable. I understand really the amazing parts of it.
It's just not the thing that lights my fire. And I'm so grateful for the other people to whom it does. And that I've been able to help sponsor some of those people to get into roles that really weren't right for me.
But saying no to things that don't align with your mission and vision gives you a number of great things. First of all, it helps you respect your limits. And while this is not a strong suit for most physicians that I know, or you know, me, acknowledging and respecting your limits is fantastically important for maintaining your productivity and well-being.
And it's also okay to know you can say no to something because you just don't want to do it. It may be something that makes sense on paper. But if it doesn't make sense to you, it's okay to say no.
The other reason to say no is to focus on your priorities. If I know I'm trying to get a grant done, if I know I'm trying to get a clinic launched, if I'm trying to get a course written, maybe this isn't the time to actually take on something that wasn't on my list of goals and doesn't necessarily lead me to my ultimate priority. And then it also prevents overcommitment.
By saying no, you avoid spreading yourself too thin and ensure you can actually give your best to the commitments you are taking on purposefully. The last big point I want to make is to focus on balanced decision-making. So when you think about yes or no, don't just consider the right now, but think about the long-term aspects and look at it from multiple perspectives.
This is another time it might be great to enlist a coach or a mentor or a colleague or a family member so you can decide, does this make sense now and down the road? And it may be that there's some extra work now but some extra payoff later. So look at the short and the long-term goals. This is like, do I want to work out? I don't know if I have time, I don't know if I feel like it today, but do I want to feel good? Do I want to be fit? Do I want to actually be more active long-term? That might be the long-term goal.
And so obviously we're not making lots of those decisions or hopefully we're not, although I'm going to tell you I'm grappling with this one today. But a short-term sacrifice is oftentimes necessary for a long-term gain. So really take it back to and then look at the risks or requirements and the rewards.
Evaluate the commitment of time, the energy, the resources, and then what you get. Is there a tangible outcome? Do you get a new skill? Does this build a relationship? Is this an experience that's really going to bring something to you? Is it going to be fun? And then have a holistic perspective. Look at it multiple angles.
Think about your life and your job and your well-being. And like I said, talk to others who know you. And as you look at these opportunities, there's some questions I find particularly useful to assess the situation.
SUMMARY
Number one is, does this opportunity align with my why or my purpose?
Number two is, if I had to do this tomorrow, would I be excited or filled with dread? This one's so good for me because there's things I feel like I should do, but I think, gosh, if I had to do that tomorrow, would it be pretty easy to say yes or really easy to say no? And that helps.
The third one is, what will I have to give up to say yes to this and is it worth it?
And the fourth is, will I regret not taking this opportunity now or in five or 10 or 20 years?
So in summary, I recommend you say yes when the opportunity aligns with your long-term career goals. It resonates with your personal values and passions.
It offers unique learning or networking possibilities, and you have the capacity to fully commit to it. Now say no when the opportunity conflicts with your core priorities. It does not contribute to professional growth.
You lack the time or resources to do it justice, or you have some gut feeling that's telling you it's not right, even if you can't articulate the why. Thank you for joining me this week, and I look forward to talking to you next week on the Medical Mentor Coaching Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please rate, review, and follow us on Apple or Spotify.
And if you have any thoughts on topics that you'd like to hear about, please message me at LinkedIn or email me at [email protected] or contact me on my website at medicalmentorcoaching.com. Thank you.
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