“Ring out the false, ring in the true.” -Alfred Lord Tennyson



TASK AT HAND: This week I’m looking back on 2016 and trying to learn from error and success alike. It has been an incredible year: davidalmeidamd.com was launched and the Sunday Surgical Scrub, an idea that has existed for quite some time, was officially started. Above all else, thank you for your support and interest in everything that we do on the medical, research, speaking and consulting fronts.

Today I will look back on the Sunday Surgical Scrub and review some highlights of 2016 as we transition to 2017. Here are 7 highlights from 2016.

1. Strategy: It Has To Work! (From the 22 May 2016 Scrub, you can find the original post here.) What makes a strategy successful? If it works, it’s successful! Ultimately, your strategy must work and you must achieve your goals; otherwise, seriously consider switching strategies. The core of any successful strategy is the ability to plan and execute. I plan like an economist, but execute like a surgeon. In planning, you should employ some sort of analysis but then bring your decision out of your personal vacuum and into context and consequence. Then, when all planning is done, go out and execute it.

2. Minimize Cognitive Burden (From the 12 June 2016 blog, you can find the original post here.) Minimize your cognitive burden – both the extrinsic inconsequential happenings and the intrinsic personal trappings – so that in clarity you can fulfill your potential. Cognitive load refers to the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory. Cognitive burden can be thought of as an excess load on our mental effort. Minimize undue burden due to meaningless or inconsequential items.

3. Passion Is Essential (From the 24 July 2016 post, you can find the original post here.) Living with passion is to live days immersed in the strength of barely controllable emotion. Passion, as a source of energy, can be oppressed by the many tasks and distractions endlessly intruding into our lives. However, being reacquainted with your passion is a revitalizing elixir of energy, focus and determination that cannot be neglected. When you look back – which we are doing here in this year in review – you must recall a life lived with passion! Days filled with this barely controllable emotion that allows you to create and touch the lives of others in fantastical and wonderful ways. Find passion and “Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry” (Mark Twain).

4. Be Careful of The Company You Keep (From 28 Aug 2016, you can find the original post here.) “If you’re the smartest one in the room, you’re in the wrong room” (Richard Tirendi). Since you are a running average of the people you most interact with, you need to be cognizant of who these people and groups are. Seek to be influenced by the best, and you will find yourself in good company.

5. Eliminated Fear of Failure (From 18 Sept 2016, original post here.) If you’re not failing often, you’re not trying hard enough. 2016 was the year we let go of the fear of failure. Failure – and how we cope with its force – is of crucial importance to our character development.

6. Choose Fulfillment Over Achievement (From 23 Oct 2016, original post here.) Achievement is commonly confused for fulfillment. In the culture of 80-plus hour work weeks, dog-eat-dog cynicism, and the perpetual climb of the job ladder, one can easily place achievement as the ultimate external benchmark of success. This strategy will eventual burn out. Instead, the focus should be on the internal barometer of fulfillment, to guide our plans.

7. Beat Your Own Drum (Originally posted 27 Nov 2016, you can find the original blog here.) Live dangerously. Embrace pain and take risk. Desire to beat your own drum. Embrace pain and risk for it is in these moments that we carve out character and define development.

GRATIS: “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better person.” -Benjamin Franklin



Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and my best to you always,

David Almeida

http://davidalmeidamd.com

david@davidalmeidamd.com