This week's newsletter won't focus on education unless you count book and media recommendations as valuable learning. If so, get ready to earn your unofficial PhD.Here are some of my favorite reads and watches from 2023. They weren't all released thi...

The oddsThe title of our newsletter delves into a nuanced question: Why do some patients sue while others refrain? Remarkably, only a small fraction—between 1-3%—of patients with adverse outcomes opt to pursue legal action against their physicians. W...

What's So Alluring About Blame?We are seemingly hardwired for blame.(1,2) If it’s such a deeply ingrained aspect of our nature, why not embrace it?In our latest podcast about the qualities of healthy versus unhealthy relationships, our guest, psychot...

4 min readWhose measure of success are we talking about?What is it about performance metrics, patient satisfaction scores, and quality measures that induces a collective groan amongst clinicians?When you’re asked to perform to metrics, you’re being j...

Do you do this too?When I receive an email and more than a few people are cc'd, I am far less likely to respond than if I am the only recipient. In the same vein, when I send an email to a bunch of people asking for something, few answer. When I emai...

Hold LightlyOur most recent pod featured investigative journalist Scott Carney speaking about The Power of Lightly Held Beliefs. The premise is that holding onto an idea lightly and being open to change is a potent force.This got me thinking about an...

My least favorite habitOne habit I’ve found incredibly hard to break is sleep procrastination (going to bed later than intended without a legitimate reason for the delay). I’ve done this since I was a teenager and it’s gotten more pronounced in the p...

I was recently coaching a college student, let’s call him Cody, who lamented that he was feeling lonely and isolated.Me: “What does that look like?”Cody: “I’m a science major. None of my friends are science majors. When I go to the library, I see all...

The Stimulus podcast just had its 100th episodeAnd I can't believe I have yet to do a listener survey.Knowing who you are and how you interact with the pod will help me make it even better. Please take a few minutes and let me know what's what.Thanks...

I used to dread looking at my email inbox.After all, it's someone else’s to-do list for me! The problem wasn’t that I had thousands of emails to look at (email bankruptcy easily takes care of that as discussed at the very end of this episode). The pr...