Or, My Yard Explains Your Financial Situation and Exercise Routine

Something had to be done. A meteorogically impossible series of intense floods and prolonged droughts had plaqued my intern year in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. Fresh out of dental school and spending 80 hours a week puzzling over fluid orders and how to use my expensive stethoscope, I’d neglected that enduring image of a modern man’s ability to care for his own: my yard. It looked like a late Jurassic forest floor. On this particular spring day there were seven different flowering weeds in our lawn in addition to stalks of crabgrass taller than our son (in truth, not saying much. He couldn’t stand).

I was puzzling over how to get my grass in order and contemplating smoking some of it in frustration when my kindly 88 year old neighbor zipped over our driveway behind a tennis-ball adorned walker. He chuckled, glancing back at his immaculate lawn, even more befuddling considering I was an athlete until recently and he needs additional support just to stand. “Don’t worry about the flowers, just mow those. It’s the crab grass; we call it Jamaican weed. You need to pull those out by hand or they’ll take over everything.” He winked at me, which for some reason was okay because it was probably a common thing to do when he was flying over WWII, and added, “I’ll let you in on a secret though. Once you get rid of those…it’s a lot less work to keep it that way than try to play catch up.” Helpful advice, but…I glanced around my yard. An impossible task. It would take me and a suitably sized team of fieldhands days to pull all of those stalks, and we’d be left with mostly bare dirt. Nonetheless, I made it a point to spend 20 minutes pulling those smooth green bastards out whenever I had the time, all the while wondering if I was making any difference.

At this point you either stopped reading or are wondering what the hell this dude’s lawn has to do with the balance of my life. The answer is everything. Because I was handling the problem like any of us would–with discrete amounts of dedicated effort that over time would allow me to complete the task. In healthcare, professional school, whatever–we are all motivated, organized, intrepid, action oriented. We are experts at time management and efficiency, and if you aren’t, just wait until you’re a resident. None of us could just let it slide, but we have too much going to devote a week of labor to clearing the lawn.

So what’s the point? I was completely wasting my time. It doesn’t matter if I spent twenty minutes a day for the entire spring and summer, which would add up considerably, because–guess what? I’m a surgery resident. Even though I might be on a rotation that gives me that twenty minutes consistently right now doesn’t mean that I will have that luxury in a month, and if I do, I might not want to use that time, or that energy, to pull Jamaican weeds. Next year I’ll rotate on general surgery, and even with my intelligent time management and diligence, history will repeat itself and my lawn will devolve to Mesozoic era vegetation. In the end I will need to dedicate that time or money to a full scale rehaul, or just let it fly and hope it looks presentable enough on the day I graduate and prospective homebuyers visit. They probably won’t spend a ton of time examining the lawn anyway.

Even though my neighbors might judge my manliness on the homogeneity of my lawn (heck, one of them manages a country club), that is not the point of this story, and it is definitely not the purpose of my writing about it. It is an allegory to the aspects of life we push aside amidst  the throes of medical school, dental school, intern years, residency programs and fellowships.

I can’t argue that  these fields don’t require dedication of an unbridled intensity, because there is a lot to learn and we owe it to our future selves, and more importantly our patients, to stay on that perpetually advancing forefront of knowledge. But for millennials like me, the additional burdens-the years of mediocre income, the expectation that education supersede family life and wellness, and most of all the adage of “you have to do it this way because that’s what I had to do”- don’t go unquestioned. I believe we can be enthusiastic students, responsible residents, and excellent practitioners while maintaining our ties to family and friends, as well as our health, some free time, and some revenue on the side. The purpose of this blog is detailing how I came to believe that, and more importantly, how I am achieving it.

Multiple experiences, resources, and mentors helped me develop the strategies and inspiration that every day foster my dream of  becoming a successful surgeon while reserving time to create a side business, stay in shape, travel, spend time with my family, inch closer to financial independence, and have my own hobbies.

If you’re wondering about my lawn…well, you don’t need to pretend to care. I saved myself 20 minutes a day while ignoring the Jamaican weeds and mowing like a normal person, and those minutes are adding up into hours I use writing and moonlighting–where a half a day of work will pay for someone with experience to fix my whole lawn for me, which would take me weeks. Allocating resources, calculating the value of my time for arbitrage, and selective ignorance work wonders. But how to solve my lawn problem is not nearly as important as how I’ve attained a $400,000 education with less than $180,000 in debt while still in residency, or how to keep an effective exercise routine regardless of what rotation you’re in, or how to leverage your position into significant side income with minimal activation energy, or how other practitioners are making a living while globetrotting.

If you’re new here, I recommend subscribing with the cool button on the right, or perusing the recent posts about how a healthcare trainee could attain a positive net worth in five years. If you’ve stuck with me this far but don’t want to make too many changes, check out If You Do Nothing Else; it could make you $42,000-$1.3 million down the road.

Thank you for stopping by! Please share how ideas you’ve found here worked out, or other ways you’ve found to create life outside your white coat. I’m always thrilled to hear new stories or ways people are furthering their missions-I hope to learn something from each of you.