An old Seth Thomas clock bought at a flea market. It doesn’t work, doesn’t tell time; but it looks stately on the hallway table. I own the clock but I don’t own what it measures. Time is not owned. Rather it is a gift, sometimes a burden, always in short supply.
In this December 2024 episode of the Family Doctor, Dr. White shares his personal struggles with time and time management. As I listened to his story, I found myself muttering, “Yes! Amen! Me too!”. Looking back on my career, I see so clearly now how I could have applied some of his “lessons learned” to my own Family Medicine journey. I hope our listeners will take an honest inventory of your career goals, but more importantly, your life values, so that you can stop or slow the treadmill long enough to compose and enact a plan – a plan to take better care of yourself.
I don’t really believe that there is such a thing as “work/life balance” in a doctor’s career. Our work is demanding, emotionally hard, and time-consuming, especially if we are to do a good job. It’s seldom balanced. But what I learned (but not always practiced) is that when you are not working as a doctor, immerse yourself completely as a mother, father, spouse, servant, neighbor. Yes it requires discipline, and a little courage. And it requires sleep, exercise, sunshine, strategic time off, good friends, and if necessary, counseling and mentoring.
Your self-care is where the balance comes in. Good sleep, not too much sleep. Exercise, not exhaustive exercise. Once in my career, teetering on the edge of burnout, I decided it was a good idea to train for my fifth marathon. Maybe good intentions, but the exhaustion after I completed it sapped all my energy for the next two years. It wasn’t pretty. I thought I was helping my goal-oriented self, but I was stoking the fire, not tamping it down to a warm soft sustainable glow.
These valuable lessons have always been around. For more than two milennia the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Greece had these works inscribed on its entrance: “Know Thyself”. Self awareness and understanding one’s limits, knowing yourself, are, as Socrates said “…the beginning of wisdom.” This is the Wisdom that Dr. White shares with us.
Lee Beatty