fitting it all in

July 15, 2010

reality check
i arrived home from work last night at just after 6 pm — my earliest exit yet! determined to keep my promise in yesterday’s post, i set out to create a game plan for my goal of managing big projects. thinking that perhaps a visual would help, i laid out the 4 major things i need to be working on out on the dining room table:


clockwise from top left, we have:

✔ review for the pediatric boards (in october)

✔ a peds endo review journal — to symbolize my need to read up on the literature pertaining to specific patients, as well as the presentations i have to create (at least 1/month) for our departmental meetings

✔ binder containing articles pertaining to my research project

magic binder, representing study of general peds endo knowledge and prep for teaching

during the photo sesh, my pager (of course) went off, so i threw that in there too. while it looks like a lot — and it is! — each of these components is truly important to my job right now. this wouldn’t be a big deal if i could get them done at work, but right now i am still in the learning phase and clinical duties (plus required conferences) have been pretty much been filling up my days at least 8 am – 6 pm.

i really do not want to change my morning routine much — i LOVE my hour (and i’m trying to strictly keep it under this limit) spent prepping/eating breakfast/writing, and i consider working out before the work day is pretty much a necessity to my health and sanity, as well as a needed energy boost that seems to last for most of the day.

so what to do?

a plan for now
★ when NOT on overnight pager call, 30-60 minutes after work every day needs to be spent on one of the above activities.

★ some streamlining of evening cooking may have to be in order (smart denise commented earlier that i would benefit from greater use of the freezer — i need to get on this!)

★ on weekends that i am off, i need to devote a block of time each day (2-3 hours) to working on these things.

one nice thing is that josh is currently trying to increase the time he is spending on reading/studying as well, so i am hoping it is something that we can do together (even if we are at separate desks!). perhaps it will bring back memories from medical school when we used to study together every single day!

SO: there you have it. it isn’t fancy, but it’s a plan, and one i hope to stick to for now, at least as i get my bearings as a new fellow.

time’s up
and i’m headed to the gym! luckily, 5-7 AM seem to be the least popular hours to page the on-call endocrinology pager; yet another reason it is an extremely precious time of the day.

but before i go — a quick thanks to the RDs that commented on yesterday’s post! we do actually have an RD working with us in clinic and they go in to see the patients separately. i agree it’s a hugely important part of their care equation!

sadly, we do not send most of them for counseling, but i agree it would be beneficial. apparently, the availability/affordability of mental health providers in NC is not where it needs to be at this point, so patients often have trouble connecting even when we do refer. yet there is no question in my mind that becoming upwards of 500 lbs really MUST be related to an eating or other mental health disorder, one way or another . . .

————————————————————————–

7.14.10

workout: 5 miles with 2 @ tempo on the ‘hard’ treadmill (i say this because for some reason, running on this particular treadmill at my apartment complex is harder than running outside or on my gym’s treadmill at the same speed!).

miles 0-1.5: 9:13/mi (0.5% incline)
miles 1.5-3.5: 8:34/mi (0.5% incline)
miles 3.5-5: 9:13/mi (0.5% incline)

yet another burger: from the jul/aug clean eating! sadly, it is the last one — burgers are fun, i have to admit.


salsa burger with avocado + greek yogurt, with grilled zucchini and squash (local!). i used lean ground bison in lieu of beef.

3 Comments

  • Reply Morgan @ Life After Bagels March 10, 2019 at 7:25 pm

    good plan! maybe you should teach a workshop about this or something 😉 hehehe

  • Reply Anonymous March 10, 2019 at 7:25 pm

    Great plan! I think I need to make a similar plan for my last 3rd year rotation as I am lacking in motivation.

  • Reply Jess March 10, 2019 at 7:25 pm

    Whoa, did you mash the avocado with Greek yogurt!? Awesome! Sooo going to do that.

  • Leave a Reply

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.