Library

Attention.

A couple of days ago, I was watching a video of a sniper patiently enjoying his target practice in the comfort of his own backyard (he had a large property). It occurred to me at that moment, strangely enough, that this man's attention was solely on his target. Nothing was distracting him, and he shot true. He was able to focus and hit his target well.

It occurred to me at that moment that this is much like a lot of things in life; our goals and ambitions are much like that target the sniper was so intensely focused on. Sure life isn't as straight of a path like the bullet coming out of a barrel, but it does perspective on how we should try to live life if one of the goals is a lofty one.

Medicine definitely is not easy; just getting into medical school is hard enough. Time and attention and two very big commodities while attending school; our target is landing that residency spot we so desire. What's the best way to hit our target? To have our whole un-abiding focus on that target.

This is not realistic in most cases for the average medical student in the U.S.; what I CAN do realistically is be aware that attention/focus/awareness is just as much of a commodity as time is.

I remember during the past week that a lot of my time was placed in playing video games, watching movies or browsing the internet. There's nothing wrong with that... especially if I am stressed, but everything in moderation. I found that after a couple of hours of doing just what I described that I felt my head was full of a jumble of images, thoughts, articles, funny pictures, etc from the past couple of hours of playtime.

Our brains must work like that, I think, in order to best learn our brains replay the information that we've been exposed to recently and again while we are asleep. During this time, I found that I couldn't focus on even lying still; I felt like my head was overwhelmed with "stuff" that wouldn't let me progress onto things that needed to get done - I simply felt too overwhelmed by stimulus overload. I was left with negative emotions like helplessness and guilt. I knew what I needed to do but I was so overwhelmed by guilt that I couldn't do anything expect lie on my bed with the lights off and door closed listening to relaxing melodies, hoping the find some kind of focus as the lack of stimulation took over my environment. The worst part of it is that after constant mental and visual stimulation over several hours, the sudden lack of any visual stimuli was jarring and was asphyxiating my distracted brain. It was like coming down from an attack of withdrawal; a painful withdrawal.

This is part of reflection, definitely. I needed to realize that this happens to me. Now that I know that that kind of distraction and stimulation has such a detrimental effect on me, I can combat it by avoiding it in the first place (the best option, I know).

I am a real big fan of the Pomodoro method in that I work for 20 minutes and relax for 5. In those 5 minutes I can play a game or do something relaxing.

Right now I'm at the medical library after a long day of working in the lab. I'm tired; I have food but I am tired. I slept only 3 hours last night due to stress and so my tiredness is so far un-abating (at least, without coffee seeing as I didn't bring any (so foolish)).

Maybe I'll just go to Best Buy and buy the game while it's cheap.Yeah.

I'll do that and go home. Try to focus at the kitchen table for a little bit and then progress to my work room.

Good, good.