Productivity
Urmimala Sarkar
The Long View

Dear friends,

Does it feel like spring yet? I’m writing this on yet another cold and rainy day, cheering myself up with a cup of tea and wildflower daydreams. I hope April brings sunshine to all of us!

The Long View
Productivity
Urmimala Sarkar
Sound the Retreat

Understanding that we as humans have seasonal rhythms, and taking these into account, has made me both happier and more productive. The pace of work slows down in summer to accommodate vacations, social gatherings, and weather that lures us away from our desks. Instead of setting goals that don’t match this reality, I suggest a work retreat.

Resilience, Productivity
Urmimala Sarkar
Taking Off Our Masks

How are you? It’s been a long, hard pandemic slog, but June- Pride month- is great time to find our optimism. As a Gen Xer, I’ve seen a revolution in my lifetime in how we think about our LGBTQIA friends, neighbors, and colleagues, and it gives me hope that we can make progress towards racial and gender justice. I’m starting to feel like I can see my way through the fog of the past 15 months, and it’s a good time to take stock.

Productivity
Urmimala Sarkar
Switching Costs

This month’s topic was inspired by a mentee question about managing simultaneous deadlines. What do you do when you have multiple papers and a grant to push out the door? How do you efficiently work on more than one writing project? The more senior you become, the more critical it is to master this way of working. I don’t have a perfect solution, but I can share a few strategies.

Resilience
Urmimala Sarkar
Out of the Office

March was a tough month, wasn’t it? This month I want to talk about time away from work. Whether it’s for parental leave or sudden family needs of a less joyful nature, time away can cause stress for the person who taking time off, their colleagues, staff, and mentors. My underlying assumptions: (1) People experience life events in very different ways; (2) It is not a job requirement to have exemplary coping skills/ resilience in the face of life challenges, let alone personal tragedy.

Spontaneity Summer

Dear friends,

Greetings! August is here, and I hope you have either taken time away or have rest and relaxation ahead. I have a confession to make: I have mixed feelings about summer. I love having my college kid home and appreciate the summer weather (outside of foggy San Francisco, anyway!) but summertime at the office can be challenging. The work demands press on, but since everyone is out of the office at different times, it’s harder to get things done. And even though I try to be very intentional about vacation, I can’t deny that I work hard to prepare before I leave and strain to catch up afterwards. I always look back fondly on summer and feel grateful for fall’s return to routine.

Work Like My Dad

Dear friends,

Happy July! How’s your summer going? I’m very happy to have a full, if chaotic, house, and less happy to have a looming grant deadline. My June was bittersweet, with my youngest’s high school graduation and Father’s Day making me miss my late father even more acutely. I get my penchant for giving (often unsolicited) career advice directly from him. He was a scientist who was both highly creative and deeply disciplined, a combination of traits that still inspires me. Today I am sharing some of his best work advice.

Be Kind To You

Dear friends,

We made it through May! I still feel like I am going full steam ahead, though I hope to get into a gentler summer rhythm in the next couple of weeks. I attended the Society for General Internal Medicine Annual Meeting a couple of weeks ago, and as always, I enjoyed catching up with old friends and meeting new people at my professional home.

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Yes To The Stress

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Dear friends,

I bet you’re reading the subject line of this email or the title of this blog and wondering whether I’ve been replaced this month by my evil twin! Why would I, a person who opposes overwork and believes in rest, be telling you to say yes to the stress?! I recently made a last-minute decision that has wrecked my careful planning, and I want to share why I think it is important to sometimes choose stress.

Winning at Work

Dear friends,

Can you believe that 2026 is here? Let us hope for a peaceful and fruitful year ahead. I’m writing this message on my last day of stay-cation, in between helping my youngest with college applications and my eldest with his search for summer jobs. In 2025 I started a new practice. I identified a “weekly win” in some area of my life, wrote it on a sticky note and put it up on a wall in my home office. I purposely wrote down whatever first came to my mind, and I never revised it. If there were two wins I was thinking about at the end of the week, I wrote down both, so I ended the year with 58 sticky notes on my wall.

Audit Your Life Part 2

Dear friends,

It’s a bonus mid-month blog! Happy Diwali and may the coming year bring love, light, peace, and joy! My last blog was about doing a life audit. We already talked about writing down 100 wishes on sticky notes in one hour, categorizing them, and asking ourselves what underlying values they represent. I did forget to mention in my prior post that I only got up to 87 wishes, and that seems fine to me. Don’t be too rule-bound!

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Holding Pattern

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Dear friends,

Goodbye, summer! Usually I am excited for the back-to-school return to routine that fall brings. This year I just feel like I am holding my breath. With all the harm we’ve witnessed and experienced over the last few months, there is dread about what is coming next. I’m still wrestling with the question of how to move our work forward at such a challenging moment.

Midpoint Slump

Dear friends,

I hope the upcoming 4th of July holiday holds some rest and community for you. We are halfway through 2025 already- can you believe it? To me, it feels a bit de-motivating to be 6 months into the year and still have so much to do to reach my yearly goals. I have heard this  drop in momentum called “the midpoint effect.” For any project, it is quite common to slow down when you’ve exhausted your initial enthusiasm but you still have a long way to go towards completion. I am experiencing this right now at work. I feel like I am going through the motions rather than feeling engaged and inspired. It hasn’t gotten to the point of “quiet quitting,” but I would like to get my spark back.

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Find Your Fun

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Dear friends,

Somehow, it’s May. It is hard to overstate how difficult these times are, and I’m glad you’re still with me! The only way we will get through this is together. Many of you know that I am having an exceptionally challenging grant-writing experience right now. Given that my non-work life is always eventful, I have been overworked and tired. My solution- schedule time for fun!

Always Hopeful

Dear friends,

It has been a tough month, hasn’t it? At this time of year, I am usually enjoying the longer days and coming out of my winter hibernation. Since I last wrote you, though, I have been caught up in the chaos of our federal government. Even though I know it is their strategy to throw us off balance, I have still been affected by all of their terrifying and disheartening actions.

Resistance Ikigai

Dear friends,

Sending strength and solidarity to you in this time of upheaval. In the face of such broad-scale dismantling of our values and institutions, I have been pondering how to effectively resist. I do think the most important form of resistance is to carry on our work in the face of these existential threats, but I want to do more. Like many of you, I have been signing petitions and calling my representatives and making donations and showing up at protests. Taking these actions has not brought me the same energy that it did in the past. The problems are so overwhelming that taking any action at all can feel futile. Is this the most effective way for me to stand up for my values?