I spent the early part of residency getting worse at something I could already do.
Third floor of the hospital. Fluorescent lights. Quiet enough to hear my own breathing. A simulation station with foam pads under rubbery synthetic skin and a few suture kits. I went up there alone. Before cases. After cases. Whenever I had twenty minutes and nobody was watching.
Practicing suturing with my right hand.
I am left-handed.
Intern year. First orthopedic rotation. My senior resident, Mo, told me every instrument in orthopedic surgery is designed for a right-handed surgeon. The angle. The way you pop open a needle driver with your palm. Surgery is two-handed. You need both.
I was already decent at suturing left-handed. Good enough to get through cases. Mo told me to start over. Right hand only. Handed me a needle driver and some suture and told me to practice.
The fake skin felt nothing like real tissue. The needle driver felt foreign in my right hand. I fumbled. Dropped things. My stitches were inconsistent. In the OR, when the pressure was on, my left hand kept taking over.
Then Mo and I double scrubbed an open irrigation and debridement on a knee. Attending in the room. Mo told me to close it right-handed.
My first thought was that I was going to look like an idiot. That this attending would never let me operate again.
Mo told him I was learning to suture right-handed. That was it.
The attending watched me fumble through the closure. Slow. Awkward. At some point he told me to just close it left-handed.
I stayed right-handed.
He said it a handful of times over that rotation. Just close left-handed. I kept going right. No breakthrough case. No moment where it clicked. Plenty of closures where I couldn't quite see my slow improvement and had to trust my hands.
By the end of residency I could close with either hand.
I could have gone back to my left hand at any point. I was already decent with it. Instead I chose to get much worse so I could get better than I ever would have any other way.
This week, be willing to get worse at something you can already do.
The good thing is, worse is temporary and can raise the ceiling of good enough.
Good Thing Monday.
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Good Thing Monday goes out every Monday. One story, one good thing.
Tell me your good thing this week. I read every one.