Dr. Halamka, the CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, recently blogged about the what-if’s in life that I found very insightful. An exerpt follows,
Asking “What if” questions is not useful. In my past I’ve made many choices – call them forks in the road. I was admitted to Yale, Brown, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and UC Berkeley. I was rejected from Harvard. I chose to go to Stanford. I met my wife there. My daughter was born as a result. My early exposure to the computer industry, to entrepreneurship and leadership were a direct result of being in Silicon Valley from 1980-1984. In 1983, I turned down a leadership job at Microsoft (present value of stock options could be $100+ million). In 1983, I patented e-greeting cards and early multimedia technologies but the patents have not been enforced. I was admitted to several medical schools (but rejected from Harvard) and went to UCSF. I made a decision to pursue bioengineering and information technology even though I was advised in 1985 that these fields would not go anywhere. I could have chosen many other paths – I might be richer, I might be poorer, I might be famous, I might be unknown. It does not matter and there is no value in looking back.
The entire blog is here. I agree: there is no value looking back. (But I have to admit that my alma mater made grave mistakes in rejecting Dr. Halamka twice!)
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