It was the summer of 2022. I was working a shift in urgent care and as I was going to pick up my
next patient's chart I realized that my heart is beating fast and I feel a little bit dizzy and a
little bit lightheaded. I checked my pulse quickly and it seems to be racing. I asked the nurse for
a pulse oximeter and when I put it on my finger it reads 135 beats per minute. That was the day I
realized that I was burnt out. To understand how I got there I think we need a little bit of background
on myself and my childhood. I grew up in India in a middle-class family and we lived in an apartment
right across from the slums where there were kids going to the bathroom on the streets.
We did okay according to standards in India at that time but compared to the standard living
in Canada and the rest of the world we would be categorized as a low socioeconomic status.
Growing up there a success for me looked like somewhat status, power and money. I never thought
I would be able to afford a house or drive cars such as BMWs and Mercedes and I've always chased that
growing up to an extent even though I'm not sure if I ever recognized it or even if I fully accepted
as I talk to you guys today. My path to graduating from residency was at times uncertain. I failed
my one of my screening exams called the USMLE Step 2CS after I graduated from med school in the
Caribbean and it took me three years to finally get a spot in family medicine at the University of
British Columbia and even then I was rejected the first time and I emailed them asking them to
reconsider me for an interview and thankfully they did and now I am a practicing family physician
and I do a few other things I'll get into towards the end of this video. Even after I got into
residency at one of the best schools in Canada I was in remediation during residency and then I
also failed my board exam for family medicine after I graduated. Once I graduated residency I
finally had the opportunity to make an amount of money I never thought I would be able to make in my
lifetime so anywhere from a few hundred thousand dollars up to a million dollars a year if I worked
in the right settings and if I worked hard enough. So I started working as much as I could not realizing
that this was my way of validating myself and dealing with my insecurity of not being enough.
I worked and I worked and I worked to fulfill this desire I had to feel like I was contributing
to the world and to myself and I was worthy of the success I had achieved up to at that point.
I remember I got a job offer at one of the Harvard hospitals in Boston as a hospital medicine physician
and I finally felt that I had made it. Growing up in India Harvard has this almost spiritual
religious connotation where you have achieved success if you've made it to Harvard to an extent.
That didn't end up working out because of licensing issues between the US and Canada
and I moved to Vancouver to work as a full-time hospitalist at that point. I kept chasing status
to an extent. I joined some committees. I was on the COVID advisory committee and I was the hospital
health officer and I was taking care of one of the very first COVID patients at that point.
I was getting paid fairly well as well about $1,600 a day and again I never thought I'd
been in a position to make that much money. As I kept working I started realizing that I'm still
not feeling fulfilled and I'm not sure if this was still insecurity or just the need to do something
different every day or something more. Again, money was still a factor here for me. I thought
about improving inefficiencies in medicine and also making money at the same time and
I landed at doing a startup. As I launched my startup I continued working full-time.
My wife became pregnant and we had a baby to move provinces to be closer to family.
This all ended up with the summer of 2022 where I was working full-time on my startup
in addition to a full-time hospitalist gig and urgent care and rehab hospital at times.
I was working about $100 a week I'd say with a newborn home although I was not helping much
at home. I was missing events and birthdays for my family which made me feel worse and drove me
to work more so I can make more money and provide them more things to fulfill this desire or this
guilt I had almost that I wasn't doing enough. This insecurity still drives me to an extent
although I worked on it quite a bit and as I said here today I'm working about 22 hours in clinical
medicine a week and I'm working on my entrepreneurial and creative endeavors and I have a lot more
balance but I still feel this need to work a lot and get instant validation. I do this with my
startup where I was putting out a blog a day and the part of the reason I was doing that is because
I wanted instant feedback. I wanted the world to tell me what I was doing is valuable and for
people to tell me that what I'm doing is important is helping them constantly and my wife has been
telling me this for I'd say the past 10 years that that's arguably the wrong way to do things
which is interesting because in the starter world you're told to just work a lot interoperately fast
and just constantly be working but you know I do think there's something to say about taking your
time and taking it slow or how Adam Grant calls it moderate procrastination in his book.
So you know after my burnout what I did in the summer of 2022 is I went home and I laid in bed
for a week and I thought about you know how did I get to where I am. I got up after a week and then
kept doing the same thing for another I would say another year or two years and I still fall
victim to this mentality that I have to keep producing. I have to keep doing something different,
something new, I have to keep seeking validation to be worthy and I'm not really sure to be worthy
of what but it's just as drive to constantly improve on myself and I think the world in a
lot of ways rewards this mindset that you have to keep growing you have to keep improving
and whether it be at work and relationships with money with your physical health and I do wonder
if it's responsible for the burnout epidemic and if there's a way to live life and build things
and grow startups even in a more mindful in a more balanced way.
This is what I'm trying to do with my balance and with my work so as I said I'm 22 hours clinical.
I am playing around with launching a venture fund. I have an angel group of about 600 physicians
that I manage although it doesn't take too much of my time at this point. I have a podcast
which I have not been consistent with and a newsletter that I have not been consistent with
although the podcast is what gives me quite a most of my joy if I were to categorize into what
brings to the most joy at work. I would say it would be this podcast because I like talking
to people and I like sharing my ideas as well. I have not painted in about a year and I used to
paint quite a bit and it's one of my creative outlets in which I feel like I can get lost
into the art of what I'm doing and not worry about anything if I'm being frank with you guys.
When I'm painting I feel like the only thing that exists is me in the canvas and the paint
and I'm not thinking about the world and to be completely honest my family or my kids or my
wife or anyone and I think having something that gives me that sense and maybe some will call it
escape is important and I am trying to incorporate more of that in my life as well.
So the reason for this video was to share my burnout story, what I learned from it,
although I'm not sure if I've done that successfully. But the big takeaway I would say is that
it's okay to not constantly chase things and not constantly grow. It's okay to just slow down
sometimes and just be present and be mindful. And it's funny I say this because I did take a
vipassana which is a silent meditation in which you meditate for about 10 to 12 hours a day and
you don't talk to anyone and you're not allowed to exercise and you're essentially in the state of
complete silence. And I wish that as I was doing my startup and ramping up my work and taking a lot
of overnight shifts and call shifts and having these hundred hour weeks I took time to plan my life
a little bit more and plan for a little bit longer than say the next month and thought about my
longevity and my health while I did that. The past two months I've worked out almost every day
and I'm on a much better path now although I'm still susceptible to falling victim to my
insecurities and my mentality of constantly doing something and constantly improving and progress
and and and requiring these short feedback loops for the work I'm doing. And this isn't
necessarily external validation I'm seeking. This is internal validation largely where I don't
feel like I'm doing enough if I'm not constantly producing. So to end this short podcast I will
say it's okay to just rest and this is mostly what resonates with people who are high achievers
who constantly overwork themselves for money or for power or for status or because they're running
away from something or running towards something. I think sometimes you should rest and you need
and you need to take care of your physical and your mental body before you can do the work you need to do.