What's Inside:

• 🔢 Why Metrics Matter
• 🩺 Med-Diaries
• ✏️ Insights - This week's podcasts, movies, books and other cool things

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Why Metrics Matter

[NOTE: In today’s post when I use the word metrics, I’m referring to all forms of data, statistics and measurements]

Metrics have proven to be effective in science, social media and personal growth. Scientists use metrics to prove their hypotheses showing significant data results. On Social media and YouTube, metrics tell us about view count, likes, followers and so on. They influence our decisions on what to watch and who to subscribe to. From a creator perspective, the number of views and likes tell you which of your posts are performing best. Bodybuilders use metrics with weight, reps, body fat percentage and muscle mass to analyse their performance.

I’m sure you can appreciate that metrics matter in so many areas of life. If you take the concept and apply it to your personal life, your habits and personal development, you can really accelerate progress.

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Instead of just working out regularly which will definitely yield results providing you do it right, it's a well-known fact in the fitness industry that following a plan and tracking progress will take you much further in the same amount of time.

You can visually see your performance far better if you use metrics. Weighing yourself each week over the course of a workout plan will show you whether you’re making progress, how much progress or if you’ve reached a plateau.

As a medical student metrics are important to me when preparing for exams. Knowing how much work I complete in a day and how much there is to do allows me to stratify my daily workload to prepare for exams in adequate time. That’s why I use the Anki streak counter to track my daily cards and my flashcards streak.

Plotting your data and metrics doesn't just help you visualise success in a linear form, it also shows you stagnation, burnout and inefficiency. If you're tracking your output, your progress, and how you feel, the days when you don't move the needle forward will stick out like a sore thumb. You're able to identify problems and difficulties way before it's too late, allowing you to pivot and make the necessary minor adjustments.

I bought a Fitbit Charge 4.0 back in September 2021 and I’ve been tracking my sleep score every night for the last 10 months (time slept, quality of sleep, resting heart rate).

It’s been the single best investment of the last 5 years.

Tracking my sleep has shown me how much sleep I need. I’ve noticed certain habits (meditation, reading, no caffeine) improve my sleep score and make me feel more rested. I do a lot of physical activity so learning how to optimise my sleep has made my recovery a lot better.

Tracking the important metrics in life is a game-changer.

You don’t need to buy a fancy smartwatch to get started either, simply using pen and paper will work for most things. The beauty of it is that you don’t even need to look at the results to see progress. Just starting to track a metric will make that habit or activity feel more important. You’ll be more aware of whatever it is, be it exercising, sleeping or meditation. The more aware you are of a certain thing, the more likely you are to carry it out regularly.

I genuinely wake up every day excited to see what my sleep score is, especially on days when I know I’ve slept well and done my evening routine. In the evening I’m conscious of my sleep quality and tend to switch off sooner - a gradual change I’ve developed in the last few months.

Regardless of what you’re looking to improve in, you should use metrics.

Until next week ✌️

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🩺 Med-Diaries

I had my first set of summer exams last week, hence the absent blog post. It was probably the first time I’ve gone into an exam thoroughly prepared but felt like I was tight on time. Clearly, the difficulty level is stepping up in medical school so that was a nice little wake-up call for the upcoming exam (June).

I’ve noticed a lot of my fellow students are quite worried about that exam, which is expected because it was tough but I thought that was expected in medicine, especially as you progress with the years. I’m not sure how true this is but I feel like people often hyperfocus on the negatives (the things they didn’t know) versus the positives (the things they do know). Of all the post-exam conversations I’ve had, not 1 person mentioned the positives, people have been very focused on ‘Ugh I didn’t study X’ or ‘That question made no sense.’

I can’t help but think if you have that negative lens it’s bound to impact your thoughts and feelings. Anyways, results day is next week so we’ll find out how it actually went.

In other news, I seriously upgraded my Anki decks in the last few weeks from this reddit page. If you’re a medic, UK or US then this website is a lifesaver. It has premade decks for anatomy, cadavers, atlas pictures, histology etc. There are some pathology and clinical medicine decks although I prefer to make those myself. I learnt how to tag things in Anki and it’s working wonders. If you use Anki and don’t use tags, you should really get onto them soon. They’re very helpful to use. I also got a quick subscription to skillshare to blitz through Ali Abdaal’s Anki Masterclass. If you’re new to Anki that’s a pretty good course to take you from A-Z.

In other news, I’m back on the study grind for my final exams for 2nd year. I’m taking a social media break for a week so it’s been a very quiet week for me.

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✏️Insights

🎙️ Podcast: The Joe Rogan Podcast: Naval Ravikant​

• I’ve been rinsing this podcast lately. I’ve never really listened to the Joe Rogan podcast much before but I realised he’s basically interviewed every famous or successful person ever. This episode is amazing. Naval is such a knowledgeable, calm and wealthy individual. Asides from the gems he drops in this episode, I’m just fascinated by how he speaks so eloquently without rehearsal or stuttering.
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  If you’re into tech, investing, building wealth, meditation & mindfulness and learning about what it means to be happy, this episode will be worth a listen.

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📚 Book: Money & Finance Books

• I’ve set a goal to be financially stable before I graduate from medicine (Go big or go home). This year I’m going to read all the big finance books and seriously implement the lessons and see where I’m at by 2023. I started with ‘I will teach you to be rich’ by Ramit Sethi a couple of months ago (great book). I’m also downloading the following books:
• Money: Master The Game by Tony Robbins
• The One-Page Financial Plan by Carl Richards
• The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
• The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco
• The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

Over the coming months, I’ll add reviews of these books and important lessons in this blog section (not financial advice, just interesting lessons).

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🎥 Movie/TV Show: ⛔

• I’m on a dopamine detox this week. No Netflix or TV. The next blog post will be about how this week has been.