by Jeff Clark, MD | Mar 1, 2021 | Do Less, Goals, Values
This week I listed all my priorities, and decided that this blog was number 9. (Really number 14 if I enumerate out the members of my immediate family and my “real” jobs.) What beat it out? Improving my spirituality, my relationships with family and friends, my work...
by Jeff Clark, MD | Feb 1, 2021 | Goals, Models, Psychotherapy
Good measurement may be the single-most underestimated intervention in mental health. I was reminded of this recently with a patient I was treating. This patient had experienced minimal response to medication changes, and I had suspected from the beginning that life...
by Jeff Clark, MD | Dec 28, 2020 | Do Less, Goals
New Year’s resolutions can be strange. They’re often unrealistic, and the assumption that they won’t last makes it that much easier to give up. If you want to set a unique, impactful, and ultimately keepable goal: try picking a few outcomes to ignore this...
by Jeff Clark, MD | Oct 19, 2020 | Goals, Uncertainty
You cannot remove uncertainty from your life. You can plan around it, mitigate against some of its biggest risks, and at times even enjoy it. But you can never escape it. Embrace uncertainty as a surprisingly stable foundation. If you don’t expect some change,...
by Jeff Clark, MD | Sep 21, 2020 | Baby Steps, Do Less, Goals, Vision
Time, energy, and attention are finite. Doing something is a decision not to do something else. You may be stretched too thin to reach all your goals. Try doing less. You can choose to be just “good enough” at most tasks so that you can be exceptional at...
by Jeff Clark, MD | Sep 14, 2020 | Ambivalence, Baby Steps, Goals
Last week, I wrote about two different types of goals: outcome goals (where the focus is on achieving a specific outcome), and process goals (which we use to create behavioral change). We fail at our process goals all the time. Need an example? It’s September. How’s...