Career and wellness advice from professional gamblers
I’ve never been a gambler. I did however go through a period where I was traveling to Las Vegas pretty regularly for veterinary stuff, and I would play blackjack when I arrived. I think I felt like gambling was required when staying in a casino, and I wouldn’t be doing the “las vegas thing” if I didn’t drop $50 in the first hour of my visit.
Given how quickly I seemed to lose any chips that came into my possession (seriously, I should have just handed them to the waitress), I came to wonder how anyone could ever make a living gambling. I know there are people who do it… but it all seems pretty impossible to me. What I found from reading a slew of highly embellished stories about real-world gamblers is that the only way to make it is to focus less on getting spectacular wins and more on setting yourself up for success over and over again.
Let’s take professional sports bettors as an example. Most professional bettors don’t have a win percentage over 55%, and it’s not uncommon for the pros to hang somewhere around 53-54%. This is far from the glitzy “always winning” lifestyle we might have expected. The key to success in professional gambling, it seems, isn’t about winning everyday. It’s about consistently making profitable bets over the long term.
I think the same is true for successful veterinarians.
All day long, vet professionals are making bets. We are deciding to go to surgery instead of waiting. We are deciding to emphasize the worst possible outcome to the client instead of downplaying it. We are betting that using our break to do callbacks will pay off and get us out of the clinic earlier. Some of the choices we make will pay off, and others will not. At our core, we are all gamblers whether we like it or not.
The important point to take away from all of this is that, to be successful, we must approach our days the way professional gamblers do. We need to remember that our success is rarely based on a big win or a single dramatic choice. It’s based on putting ourselves in the most advantageous position over and over again. This means doing the mundane things that slightly increase our chances of having good outcomes time after time.
We all know veterinarians who have stressful mornings and then spend their lunch breaks drinking jumbo-sized coffees, reading anxiety-inducing news feeds, and then doom scrolling through the comment sections. This is the opposite of putting ourselves in a place to be consistently successful. Surely we have all done it. At the same time, it’s not hard to see how “playing this hand” is hardly maximizing our chances of success in each afternoon appointment. We are just using our personal time to milk our adrenals instead of calm them down, and that’s not putting us in the best position to navigate a hectic afternoon with grace and poise.
Just like gambling to win 53% of the time isn’t particularly glamorous, going to bed early, ditching our cell phone for a while, and making time to do a hobby that recharges us isn’t going to win us a lot of cool points. It is, however, going to make what we do sustainable. That type of boring math is what makes a healthy and more enjoyable career.
When we talk about well-being in the profession, this is what we are really discussing. Wellness isn’t winning the jackpot. It’s laying down smart bets over and over again, knowing that even smart bets won’t pay off every time.
So, while the occasional “jackpot” case or client might feel great, remember that the real wins come from those consistent, mindful choices. Invest in your well-being, make those small but impactful bets each day, and you can bet on a fulfilling and sustainable career in veterinary medicine.
