How a plastic surgeon showed me what it means to be a leader 🧵.

As a neurosurgeon I've taught about the Dunning-Kruger effect. But it isn't real. If you think it is, this will be an eye-opener. If you haven't heard about it before, you will still learn how false ideas can be useful and true ideas can be harmful. 🧵

If you're thinking about becoming a surgeon, these 8 minutes are worth listening to.

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” If you’re struggling during surgery it can be a sign of under-preparing. Imagine every complication and its solution. Find victory first, then the scalpel.

“An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any

I love my secretaries. They gave me a simple filing system to keep us organised. In. Pending. Out. Add a 10 minute catchup each week and we keep things on course. How does your team stay on top of things?

If you can’t beat them talent you can beat them with time. Happy Monday.

The person closest to the problem is usually the best person to solve it. Encourage trainees to be autonomous. Sign off on their decisions, but give them the space to formulate and think.

Compounding will make your career. 30 minutes a day of reading and practice will add up to: - 182.5 hrs year 1 - 912.5 hrs year 5 - 1825 hrs year 10 For someone to catch-up, they would need to spend 76 days straight honing their craft. A little today means a lot tomorrow.

Mistakes are the privilege of the active. Only those who are asleep have a perfect score sheet.

Barbells and brain surgery. Yesterday I taught our trainees about surgical strategy. How to plan an operation and execute that plan. There was a long silence after my main message. We plan operations in the perfectly wrong way. Skin incision - craniotomy - corridor -