Frederick Judd Waugh, Ebbing Waters

“This is the mark of perfection of character—to spend each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, laziness, or any pretending.” - Marcus Aurelius

One beautiful thing you learn about getting better at doing complex and delicate tasks like surgeries, is that the more you do them, the better you get at doing them. However, it’s not enough to just do them- you ought to rehearse the whole process in your mind; from scrubbing in- to draping the patient- to cutting - to fixing the problem- to dressing the wound. You watch one, you do one, you teach one- that’s how it goes. Once you’re done, you replay the procedure in your mind and see where you went wrong, what could improve, what you wasted your time on- then do better next time. There’s no shortcut. The process is all hands on. Day in, day out- you’ll inevitably notice improvement- in how fast you do the procedure, and in its quality- through this ritual. It’s very addictive. And it applies to everything.

It’s easy to understand this truth in retrospect. But it’s a bit blurry in the day to day. And that’s why I want to remind you that…

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