People sometimes ask me “why are you doing other things along with medical school? Isn’t that your priority?”

I’m constantly asking this myself. And yes, I agree…medical school is always a priority.

But I always remind myself about a story Steve Jobs told Stanford graduates in 2005. The point was that if he never took a calligraphy class in college, computers would maybe never have fonts we know today.

📚 I read books beyond the scope of medicine because I want perspectives about the economy, sports, psychology, money and more.

📝 I have a blog and website because writing and communicating is an essential skill and one I want to improve.

👨‍💻 I’m learning to code because it offers a different way of thinking about and looking at technology and ideas.

📬 I send out a medical weekly newsletter that touches on topics as wide as possible within medicine. That's because having a wide range of knowledge within a “main” field is just as important (if not more) as having it across different fields.

I’m not Steve Jobs, but I can go wide. So can everybody else.

Some links to give you a perspective:

1. Steve Jobs’s speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

2. 10 lessons from coding: https://tim.blog/2019/03/21/learn-to-code/

3. Here’s a podcast that got me into this “generalism” thing: http://investorfieldguide.com/epstein/