Category: Lifestyle

My Morning Routine as a Young Professional

Posted on by Analise

In order to deal with the whirlwind that is the day of a physician, the morning routine is crucial to make sure that I’m doing everything I can to prepare. Without the routine, I was feeling so haphazard and forgetting things, feeling exhausted, and then would go into my day already stressed. With the routine in place, it helped me a lot with my stress before getting to work.

Now that I’m done with training, in order for me to keep my mornings on the right track, I have a new routine that I follow.

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Nighttime Routines for Doctors

Posted on by Analise

As physicians, we have many incredibly hard days at work. Some of those days look like having multiple family meetings, delivering difficult news, worrying about whether your patient will do well, or just general busyness and sacrificing in order to make sure your patients are ok.

We all have days like this, and as a podcast that I recently heard said- these days wear on you after weeks, months, and years of doing this. These are some of the things I have been using to get rest after those hard days.

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How I Stay Productive with a Paper and Virtual Calendar

Posted on by Analise

2024 is the year of working with my brain instead of against my brain.

Specifically, I’m talking about with organization and planning.

I am a pen and paper person, I find that if I write things down I am 95% more likely to remember it and do it (this statistic is made up by myself).

The problem is that I can walk around and people make plans and schedule meetings with me all the time and I don’t have my planner handy.

This is how I am using both my paper planner and my digital planner together this year.

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How to Choose A Word of the Year

Posted on by Analise

Hey guys! We made it through and I cannot believe that 2023 would do us like this and be over in the blink of an eyelash. 

I know that I am not the only one who felt like it was literally JUST February 2023? 

It’s that time of year, so I have been thinking a lot about next year and planning and praying. This year, I am doing a much smaller version of the vision board that I won’t feel like I have to throw away when we move (see updates here)! This small version of the vision board is in my START planner. I love it because when I am trying to make plans, I can just refer back to my vision board in my planner to inspire me.

I’ll have to pull the planner things into another post in the future.

“Yes, yes, Lise, but what is the word???”

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2024 Updates

Posted on by Analise

Hey y’all!

It has been so long since I have posted here, but I am really excited about making this a more active part of my life in 2024. 

So, I just wanted to post a couple of updates:

  1. I am halfway done with my interventional year! *Crowd goes wild*
  2. I have a job next year! More about this later 🙂 

That’s it for now – literally a couple of updates. 

I will have another post for my word of the year and my goal setting for 2024, but I thought it would be good to start by just starting and posting this on my blog today. 

Anyway, I hope you guys are doing great! 

I am thrilled about this next chapter and I will be sharing the things that I am learning along the way.  I am going to keep posting about the things I have always cared about – Family, Faith, Lifestyle, and Medicine but I am hoping to add a couple more topics in there intermittently. 

That’s all for now! Talk soon. 

Love, 

Lise

Why We Should Be Productive

Posted on by Analise

I’ve been seeing a lot of books lately that are about getting things done. They have catchy titles and excellent intentions and real results. I know, because I have implemented a lot of the changes suggested in the books and honestly, these are the only nonfiction books I am even interested in. As the planner that I am, I really like putting systems in place to help me adjust to the crazy schedule that I am dealing with at any point in time.

Though I am excited about this productivity scene, but I wonder… to what end?

We are told by the world to

  1. Get the promotion
  2. Get the body
  3. Do the travel
  4. Save the money
  5. Build the brand

All for what?

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The 4 AM Club

Posted on by Analise

Good morning everyone!

It’s Lise here, live from my house for the early, early morning show.

I have loved mornings for a long time, I’d say almost 7 years now. It all started when I was studying for STEP 2. I would wake up at a regular time in the morning and get started with studying – no distractions. But then by the time that afternoon hit, my energy would wane and it would always would be near impossible to get back to my studying groove. *Cue the chopped and screwed version of Lets Groove Tonight*

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30’s the new 30

Posted on by Analise

During this fine black history month, your girl turned 30.

I, too, can’t believe it. It’s as if the perpetually “young” one can’t be called young anymore, technically.

I suddenly get to giggle when people card me.

I have a husband, a child, a mortgage, taxes, a couple gray hairs, extra letters behind my name, etc, etc.

I can now say to my child a variety of black mom phrases, including, but not limited to, “Don’t you see grown folks talking?”

 

In some seriousness, I do want to take some time and reflect on how I have had to let go of what the 16 year old me imagined 30 year old me to be like. I have been having a lot of convos with my friends about this transition, so thank you guys for processing this with me. That 16 year old Lise had a lot of expectations and she was pretty hard to please.

If I could talk to that young lady, I would probably tell her a couple of things about her future life.

 

  1. Marriage is different than I thought it would be. I mean this in the best way. I didn’t realize that relationships require this amount of love, vulnerability, and  selflessness. I don’t think that 16 year old me could have fathomed that marriage meant that I would need to love in the same way I want to be loved. I definitely could not have imagined the wonderful person that I married. I could not have dreamt him up EVER.
  2. Motherhood is not just having a cute baby perched on my lap at all times. I never really thought it was that, but I could not have understood all of the things that my little girl needs from me. Kudos to those of you who had babies in their teen years! You get flowers, so many flowers.  Also, “Snapping back” is actually a societal expectation that will grab you by your neck and have you asking your body, “What’s wrong with you and why have you forsaken me?” After it grew a whole human for 9 months. Side note – thank you, body. You have done a wonderful thing.
  3. In my career, I didn’t expect to still be in training (seriously, it has been a LONG journey). I will admit, though,  I was just getting the inkling that I would want to pursue medicine as a career at 16. I was definitely not one of those people that knew they wanted to be a doctor from the age of 4.
  4. Friendships are a lot more complex than my poor 16 year old brain could handle. When you’re not in high school anymore and proximity friendships are ever changing (especially when you are moving all over the country constantly like I am), you realize that though you have love for all those people, people will weave in and out of your life during different times and that’s ok. You’ll learn from people you’ve met, make memories with them, and sometimes move on. Thank God for both types of friends- the long haul friendships as well as the transient ones.
  5. Faith is what ties it all together and makes me see beauty in all of the change that has happened since I was 16. I love what God is doing here with me and I’m encouraged that there is purpose and a plan here.

 

So, thank you everyone for the birthday wishes! I had so much chocolate cake and got lovely flowers and spent time with people I love.

 

Love,

30 year old Lise

#ScrollLessReadMore

Posted on by Analise

2019 was a great year. I realize that I am saying that in the midst of Corona2020, when the world fell apart.

It was also the year that I adopted the phrase that is the title of this post. #ScrollLessReadMore

Back in 2018, I noticed how much time I was spending in my phone and not really getting any enjoyment from it. I know that I don’t look in my phone for anything but entertainment, but it really didn’t even do that for me. I was doing the zombie scroll and the time would just drift away from me. At some point, I asked myself, “If I was reading a book all the times I was scrolling through my phone, how many books would I be reading?” This led to me doing some strange things, like sitting in the ICU when I had a spare 5 minutes and reading, reading all day on my days off, and reading a book while walking. Hey, we do it all the time with our phones, right?

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Exercising Regularly When You’re Busy

Posted on by Analise

Remember when I told you guys that I am a runner? Yeah… about that.

People who know what 4th year of medical school is like are laughing right now. It’s notorious for being the year where the world opens up to you and you think you have ample time to do everything you’ve ever dreamed of- brunching, traveling, marathoning, acting, spelunking, etc. Then, RIGHT AFTER 4th year, you are thrown into internship, where you are working ALL THE TIME and you marvel at people who have time to eat.

Lise, the intern, found it difficult to find time to exercise in these circumstances, in fact it fell to the bottom of my list when it came to thinking about my busy schedule.

I had to do something, though, because I could tell that my mental health was suffering and I was becoming tired just walking up stairs with my attendings.

These are some of the things that have been working for me.

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