February Blessing Rounds – Art, Medicine, & Life

There’s something intricate and mysterious about joy. Whenever I find my self most happy the most natural next action is praise and a passion to share it with those around me!

There is a similar feeling in medicine. Medicine has a culture of “rounding” and is iterated in several ways. Patient rounding in the hospital is when the medical team visits each patient in the morning and discusses the plan for the day. Chart rounds is a tradition after clinic where resident physicians and attendings teach each other what they learned that day. Grand rounds is a lecture series in the hospital about patient cases or medical topics to keep up each other up to date in important evolving areas.

Many blogs have a similar tradition. There is often a recurring article listing interesting reads and finds. One of my favorites include the “Read these blogs” by Angryasianman.com and “Best of the Web” in the White Coat Investor email newsletter. I’m tapping into these inspirations and sharing some of the most blessing things I’ve come across recently!

Medicine & Life

  • “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clayton M. Christensen
    • A mentor recommended this book to me. I commute about almost 2 hours to work each day and thankfully had this to make my time productive! The author goes through economic and financial theories and bridges their business application to your personal life. It was so life-changing!
    • As a doctor, we are pushed to prioritize and be extremely efficient. This means we triage the vital organs, the sickest patients, the most urgent medical issues, etc. Doctors are professionals at this in medicine. But what about our own lives? My relationships? My purpose? My spiritual life?
  • The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
    • This is the opposite style and tone of Christensen! In terms of philosophy, professionalism, aesthetic language it is a real foil, especially when one read these books back to back.
    • Why is it worth reading? I am a believer that reading even disparate world views to your own can give you wisdom. I find the efficiency techniques and networking examples the author goes through are pretty useful as an academic physician.
    • Delegation is the main theme that I got out of this. For example, the author doesn’t read newspapers, he asks reliable partners to tell him what’s important. He goes through the math and finds often that paying someone to do something saves you money in the end. Learning how he cold-called/cold-emailed important people was fascinating.
    • Although he didn’t name it, I think the author went through burnout and this was his technique to address the systems-level issues causing burnout.

Spirit & Media

Culture & Art

  • Marie Kondo and the Life-Changing Magic of Japanese Soft Power
    • Jisoo and I started watching the Netflix show “Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. It’s so blessing to see an Asian person show America what’s up!
    • One of my favorite scenes was when Marie Kondo went into the room, talked about the mess, then knelt down to close her eyes and meditated. The scene was edited in a way to create a pause, focus on the family who started to hold hands, and through the music and silence, create a holy ground!
  • Marc delaCruz and Broadway
    • Marc delaCruz, a Filipino and Japanese American, made his debut Saturday in the role of Alexander Hamilton in the Broadway production of the acclaimed, award-winning musical!
    • Represent! Plus the photo looks like they are praying for him!
  • “Singapore” by Mary Oliver
    • Mary Oliver passed away recently and it brought back some renewed passion to look at how many poems she wrote that have really shaped me.
    • “Singapore” draws such a careful line from the point of view of the “other” in the eyes of a white woman. I don’t see disrespect but a poem that keeps me going back to it due to its beauty and the way she observes people and the world. Blessing!

Other links

Written by

For Henry, there are three desires he wants to fulfill with his short life: to explore, to create, and to serve. [To ensure patient privacy and maintain the confidentiality of others, these works has been carefully vetted to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and throughout, names, dates, and personal identifying details have been changed.]

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