Hello everyone,
I would like to begin this newsletter by thanking you all for sticking with me to 100 Time Capsules! I had wanted to start a newsletter for a long time, and over the last one hundred weeks, this newsletter has been an outlet & a source of creative inspiration (and in many cases an obligatory burden). I am happy to have made it thus far and hope that the next 100 weeks will prove doubly as good.
I am quite busy with life right now, for a host of reasons, and have resorted to falling into a sort of routine with the newsletter. I like this format, and I hope you do too. But it’s time to innovate: for the next 100 weeks, I hope to slowly evolve the style and improve the quality of the newsletter. I am open to suggestions if you have any — I definitely would like to get into more philosophical topics, book reviews, and perhaps integrate video content too (I would like to start a YouTube when the moment is right). For now, this will do, but I very much am committed to this project and would like to see it grow this year (I’ve already got 100 weeks’ worth of sunk cost into it anyways).
Anywho, many thanks again. Let’s get into #100!
💭 Quote(s) of the Week
I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, and could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.
—Neil Gaiman, in The Ocean at the End of the Lane
✏️ Creativity in Medicine, Ph.D.
Technological advancements in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and minimally invasive technologies have revolutionized the way we treat patients in the operating room. Innovation is critical to the advancement of surgery and will be essential if we are to tackle the unique and complex challenges in modern healthcare
The ideation of novel solutions precedes any implementation of innovative products. Thus, creativity, the process which leads to novel and useful outcomes (such as ideas, products, methods, or expressions), is the currency by which we will acquire the novel solutions required in surgery. Surgery, and clinical practice at large, are deliberately constrained by guidelines and structure to ensure that patients receive a consistent level of care; however, new techniques, interventions and approaches are required to adapt to the ever-changing landscape and patients in the operating room. The surgery departments of today and the future will need open-minded surgeons with high levels of creative thinking ability, capable and daring enough to think outside of the box, even pushing against the guide rails of conventional wisdom when required; what they need is an evidence-based blend of creativity, clinical experience, and sound research.
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Here are some avenues I am hoping to explore in the coming years. If you have comments, suggestions, or new angles I would greatly appreciate feedback!
Measuring the level and nature of creative thinking ability in surgeons/researchers
Qualitative (interview) study of highly creative surgeons and researchers to understand the role of creativity in medicine
Differences in expression of creativity by cultural background and tradition
Innovative vs. traditional teaching models (SPICES)
Where else can we study creativity in medicine?
📸 Photo(s) of the Week
📖 Book of the Week — Mémoires du Général Cte de Ségur, Aide De Camp de L’Empereur Napoléon 1er
The French general and historian Philippe Paul published his writings on the 1814 French campaign in the Rhine and Fontainebleau region.
I found this book at a street stall of used books in Toulouse and promptly acquired it.
💡 Food for Thought
Haste and anger are the two greatest obstacles to wise counsel — haste, which usually goes with folly, and anger, which is the mark of primitive and narrow minds.
—Thucydides
🔭 Sunday Best
The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1: Preludes and Fugues — by JS Bach, performed by Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter.
The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846–893, is two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys for the keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach. In the composer's time clavier, meaning keyboard, referred to a variety of instruments, most typically the harpsichord or clavichord but not excluding the organ.
In Defence of Napping — How Napping Can Accelerate Your Learning Capacity, with Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman.
Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule — by Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator
There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour.
When you use time that way, it's merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you're done.
Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. It's the schedule of command. But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.
When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster […]
To 100 more!
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