Michael's Musings #1 (24.June.2020)
Information Asymmetry, Surgical Time-Outs, Friends--Not Customers, The Importance of Redundancy
Source: Tenor
The year is 1925 and you reflect on your life thus far. Woman can now vote, Louis Armstrong starts experimenting with what would become known as Jazz music and the flappers have just invented the newest dance craze, the Charleston. The twenties are roaring and you want a travel companion that roars, too. You’re in the market for a brand new car.
You head to a car dealership with your parents and shop around. Everyone and their mothers own a Ford Model T; they’re affordable, reliable, and don’t get me started about all that you could explore with your own car.
You see the sticker price—$450. Isn’t that too much to pay? The salesman vehemently disagrees. After all, this is the newest model and he mutters something about the car being featured in Scott Fitzgerald’s newest book. You trust the salesman and hand over the $450 in exchange for the keys.
While you park your brand new Runabout (you’ve decided to name her Bessie) in the garage protected by a white picket fence, you wonder whether you paid a fair price for Bessie. What if the salesman said Bessie cost $500 or $550? After all, what would you know about how much cars cost, anyway?
Thankfully, these situations don’t occur as often anymore today. In 1926, the Les Kelley and his brother Buster (owner and operators of the Kelley Used Car Company) published The Blue Book, a list of cars he would buy and more critically, what he would be willing to pay for it. This appraisal company would shift the power dynamic permanently; consumers now had much more information to leverage in car purchasing transactions.
In economics, this concept is called information asymmetry—where one party has more information than the other. This imbalance of power causes transactions to not follow standard market behavior; you get people who purchase cars for $450, instead of $279, and people paying $99 at Jiffy Lube for an Oil Change you can do on your own for $25 (speaking from unfortunate personal experience).
Without full information, your wallet may take a hit—$450 instead of $279 or $99 instead of $25.
This lack of transparency is harmful in higher education as well. Your average college student may scroll through Facebook and see that Jackie just got accepted to the UCSF school of medicine. That student may then browse Twitter only to see that Brandon is connecting with decision-makers at Goldman Sachs. Work through Instagram to see that Stephen won another powerlifting competition.
Without full information, your self-worth may take a hit—"I’m not a hard worker” instead of “Jackie deserves it. She’s been struggling for years now” or "I’m so far behind. I will never be good enough” instead of “Brandon leads with value. I can do that, too.”
Students are unfortunately highly susceptible to these “Comparison Olympics” and a lack of transparency often means they contrast others’ highlights with their lowlights. I’m confident that this drives student burnout. It’s hard to be happy for your colleagues’ success if all you remember about your week is that the laces on your basketball shoe broke, your jump rope snapped or you haven’t studied for 3 straight.
Transparency is a solution to this information asymmetry-driven “Comparison Olympics.” Provide more information and students now have a ticket out of these Olympic Games. Show just as many lowlights as you do highlights and average college students have a chance of escaping the negative feedback loops in their heads. They won’t overpay in self-esteem. I want to be the Kelley Blue Book of higher education.
To this end, I plan on writing a series where I describe my undergraduate experience with near-complete access and transparency (I’ll spare you the details of my obsession with late-night Carne Asada fries). I’ll contrast my successes with my all-important failures and describe what I wish I did differently during my undergraduate experience.
Next week, I’ll publish a newsletter detailing my largest failures, what I learned from them, and how you can adjust your journey correspondingly to ensure you don’t make the same mistakes.
🎙️ This Week on Pass the Mike
Pass the Mike is my solution to information asymmetry in the premed space. This podcast demonstrates to aspiring doctors that medical professionals are just like them. Not only have they failed exams and tore their hair out writing late-night essays, they also enjoy lives outside of medicine—some referee basketball games and others are on quests to engineer the best chocolate chip cookie.
Inspired by Jack Butcher’s “Transparency Time” series and by an unhealthy amount of Tim Ferriss podcasts, I decided to start my own “Tribe Of Mentors” type podcast to interview and explore the stories of other eminent and current medical professionals. Every Tuesday at 5 AM PST, a new episode will drop!
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Brent Shaw (06/23)
In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brent Shaw or @therealstudentmentor on IG. We talk about:
Kobe Bryant
Setting goals that don't suck
Why different words for empathy are all the same
The exact visualization exercises Brent does to feel comfortable reaching out to world-class physicians and just where that's got him.
And that's only in the first 25 minutes of the podcast.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Nicolas Cevallos (06/30)
In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Nicolas Cevallos, an incoming UCSF Medical Student. We talk about:
The superpower of connecting to other humans
How to create positive environments
The underrated skill of listening
We take a deep-dive on Nicolas' Op-Ed for the Daily Bruin titled: "For students of color, impostor syndrome can add to the challenge of college."
God, I'm still buzzing after this episode; I personally learned a lot from it and I hope you do too.
🤔 3 Thoughts
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The surgical “time out”
My partner and I are nearly done with a documentary series on Netflix called Lenox Hill. It follows four physicians serving the Greater New York Area and provides an intimate perspective on life as a physician—the beauty of childbirth, the pain when patients die on novel clinical trials, and the precision required for open-brain surgery are all on full display.
One interesting takeaway that can be applied to all parts of our lives is the practice of a mindful “time out.” Before every surgery, a member of the surgical team will gather everyone around, and together, all activities are suspended to mindfully pause and focus on the task at hand. During a “time out,” the Lenox Hill team verifies:
The patient name and the nature of the operation (e.g. "Ben Davidson is here today for a left-sided occipital lobectomy for recurring glioblastoma)
The personhood of the patient (e.g. “Ben Davidson is a 25 y/o bartender who works in the Lower East Side)
The goal for the patient’s health (e.g. “Let’s get Ben back to being Ben. He and his family have dealt with this for far too long.)
In a mere 15 seconds, the surgical “time out” brings the entire team on the same page and fully conscientious of the present. I’m confident that a similar pause in our lives will pay similar dividends.
I’ve done these “time outs” before every exam in my undergraduate career. There’s something soothing about being calm and conscientious while surrounded by the frantic page-flipping of your classmates.
Before you study for an exam, pump some heavy iron, or even have a simple meal, take some time to pause and recollect. The realignment and focus you’ll enjoy will earn you back your 15 seconds and much more.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Replacing “Customer” with “Friend” ft. Curology
Curology is a customized skin-care company that I’ve used for the past 6 months—more so, they’re a company that prides itself on building community. Even after I paused my subscription (I had a couple of bottles too many), they have continued to reach out to support me. Yes, it’s in their best interest if I return, but too often, we see companies who act explicitly on the Profit/Loss bottom line. Ironically, that can drive their profit down as customers see through the shallowness of your relationship with them.
Treat your “customers” as you do your “friends,” your “friends” as you do your “family,” and your “family” as you do your “religion” (however, you define that) and you’ll find value—both monetary and in good-will—in your relationships.
In short, differentiate yourself by elevating each of your relationships. Whether it’s with your lab manager, your IM basketball teammate or your professor, they’ll appreciate the extra effort.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Redundancy Gets a Bad Rap
I had a data scare this last week (my water bottle nearly seeped into my hard drive) and it redefined how I understand redundancy. I suppose the cliché rings true; you never know what you have until a water bottle nearly soaks it through. Redundancy is a concept based in Engineering whereby integral parts of a system are duplicated to increase reliability. In short, redundancies are back-ups or fail-safes and they’re best practices everywhere including:
Having a copy of your data locally and in the Cloud in case the data on your computer is lost
Having two bottles of skincare to ensure you don’t miss a day because you run out and have to wait for the next delivery
Having a physiological anastomosis (i.e. a circular connection between blood vessels) such as the intestinal marginal artery or the Circle of Willis in case one blood vessel gets damaged
Source: Circle of Willis
In the lyrical words of YouTube Thomas Frank:
Two is one and one is none.
💬 2 Quotes
On Defining Balance:
“I want to caution you against the idea that balance has to be a routine that looks the same week in and week out.”
- Kevin Thoman
What does “balance” look like for you? How can you minimize what disrupts your balance and maximize what promotes your balance?
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
On the Right to Effort:
"You always hold the rights to your effort, but never to your results. Results are entitled to no one. At best, they are on loan and must be renewed each day.
All you own is the right to try."
- James Clear
Optimize for effort, not results. Dissociate your success and self-worth from results and in its stead, build a relationship between success and effort. Ironically, by ignoring results, you’ll attain them.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
❓ 1 Question For You
When was the last time you chose to do nothing—for the sake of pausing?
🙏 Infinite Gratitude
“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” – Anonymous
Shoutout to my new pals Alex, Cullin, KP, Brandon, and Mark from my newsletter mastermind group. This Sunday marked my first session with the group and I’m grateful for their being open to my joining.
Big props to Brandon Zhang, an incoming student at Columbia. He’s been putting in the hours over the last couple of months and is beginning to develop his personal monopoly on what he calls the Student Mindset. He focuses on the intersection of productivity, marketing, and education. You can join his newsletter here.
Noah and Leena are two foster kittens that my dear friends Ed and Han have taken care of for the better part of this Quarantine. While I hope they become foster failures, I nonetheless want to pay my respects to the kitten duo. They’ve brought endless amounts of joy to my life.
The 3-2-1 structure for this newsletter is inspired by the author, James Clear. You can find “the most wisdom per word of any newsletter on the web” here.
I have had the fortune of working with some of the most brilliant minds in today's world. Easily, Dr. William Zeiger is one of them.
He completed his MD-PhD at Pritzker and served as a Post-Doc under Dr. Portera-Cailliau for the last couple of years, studying both Stroke and Parkinson's Disease. You can find his preliminary website at:
https://labs.dgsom.ucla.edu/zeiger/pages/I'm excited to announce that he's been hired at UCLA with the opportunity to start his own lab and is looking to hire a lab technician/lab manager.
For those interested in applying, first do let me know (I'd love to hear how you're doing!). Second, please visit this link for the instructions. I expect this to be a very hands-on, heavy growth activity given how important mentorship is to Dr. Zeiger and how nascent he is in building out his own lab.
Thanks for reading!
P.S. Be sure to follow me on Twitter and Instagram for even more of my thoughts. I encourage you to reach out and ask me anything!