The Better Daily Podcast

Prashant Nagpal, MD
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Self-Improvement

Small shifts, big life.  Insights on personal development, wellness, and leadership - from the lens of a cardiovascular Radiologist,  parent, and a life-long learner. Newsletter: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com/ The views expressed in the podcast and the accompanying newsletter are his own and do not represent his employer in any way or form.

  1. Sep 9

    13. How to Start When You Do Not Feel Like It: The Five-Minute Threshold

    Send us Fan Mail You are listening to a project I almost did not start. For years I kept notes for my children — observations, lessons, the things I wished someone had told me at seventeen when I walked into medical school — and turning them into something public sat on my list through every one of those years. What finally broke the deadlock was not a surge of motivation. It was a deliberately tiny contract: five minutes, and then full permission to stop. I did not stop. Almost nobody does. Motivation is not a precondition for action — it is a byproduct of it, and most people have the sequence backwards. In this episode: The project that almost did not start — this one — and the five-minute contract that became the most consequential creative year of my lifeThe neurology of drive: why the dopaminergic system activates during engagement, as progress signals arrive, and not in anticipation of effortBJ Fogg at Stanford: behavior needs motivation, ability, and a prompt — and motivation is the least reliable of the threeThe systematic search in radiology, the first structure that is ignition rather than engine, and the test that separates starting resistance from avoidance you should actually listen toYour three moves this week: The Five-Minute Contract — the thing you have avoided longest, a timer, and genuine permission to stop when it soundsThe Pre-Set — before bed, place tomorrow’s starting cue physically in your pathThe First Sentence — produce only the first sentence today; ship nothing, judge nothingYou will almost never feel ready. Begin anyway — the feeling catches up, about five minutes in. Part of the Energy, Not Time series. 🎧 Listen everywhere:  📺 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thebetterdailyshow Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1895894753  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iyYq5mSCrJS1Q95zlilOi  Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ae07c185-e579-43d0-aae6-bd136d6a2bfd  📩 Newsletter: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashant-nagpal-33934259/ The Better Daily — small shifts, big life.

  2. Sep 2

    12. The Hardest Season of Your Life Might Be Building You

    Send us Fan Mail There was a year in my career I was not sure I would survive professionally. A workload that kept expanding past every boundary I set for it. A project I had invested years in that stalled through no fault of my effort. And the quiet, corrosive feeling that the version of me my family received at the end of each day was the leftover, not the person. I described that year to a mentor expecting sympathy. He sat with it, then asked: “I hear what this year is doing to you. What is it making of you?” Doing to you. Making of you. Same year, two completely different questions — the first casts you as the material, the second casts you as the result. You are not being broken. You are being forged. In this episode: Stunned myocardium: muscle that does not contract, looks lost on the scan, and is viable rather than dead — and why an entire discipline exists to tell stunned from scarred, because they look identical in the worst moment and have opposite futuresFragile glass and tempered glass as the same material with different histories: the strength is not in spite of the heat, the strength is the heat, organizedViktor Frankl’s tragic optimism — optimism not about the situation but about the self being built inside it — and Marcus Aurelius in six words: the impediment to action advances actionThe two cautions: some fires only burn, and tempering is a controlled process, which means recovery, reflection and support are not optional extrasYour three moves this week: The Letter Forward — one page to yourself five years out, naming what you intend this season to have given you; seal it and date itThe Daily Asset — each evening, one written line naming one capacity today’s difficulty exercised in youThe Viability Check — one piece of evidence for tempering, one for burning; if the burn column keeps winning, the courageous move is change, not enduranceLooking non-functional is not the same as being non-viable. A season of stunning is not a diagnosis of scar. The heat is real. So is the tempering. Hold on. 🎧 Listen everywhere:  📺 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thebetterdailyshow Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1895894753  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iyYq5mSCrJS1Q95zlilOi  Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ae07c185-e579-43d0-aae6-bd136d6a2bfd  📩 Newsletter: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashant-nagpal-33934259/ The Better Daily — small shifts, big life.

  3. Sep 1

    11. The Gratitude Protocol: Two Minutes a Day That Change What Your Mind Sees

    Send us Fan Mail A senior physician I deeply respected — meticulous, unsentimental, the kind of person who asks for the confidence interval before he asks for the conclusion — kept a small worn notebook next to his coffee. Every morning for thirty years he had written down three things from the previous day he was grateful for. I asked why. He did not give me a philosophy. He said the years before and the years after were two different careers lived by two different men. Same job. Same hospital. Different man. For most of my career I filed this practice with inspirational coffee mugs. The data says I was wrong — but only about one version of it. The specificity is the entire dose. In this episode: The thirty-year notebook that sent me to the literature I should have started withRobert Emmons and Michael McCullough’s foundational studies: measurable gains in mood, sleep quality and some physical markers, with effect sizes that stand comparison with commonly used interventions for mild to moderate low moodWhy “I am grateful for my family” accomplishes almost nothing, and what the neuroimaging work on specific, personal gratitude shows about the medial prefrontal cortexWindowing, the cardiac imaging tool behind the whole practice: lung windows, bone windows, and why the good was always in the data but not in the displayYour three moves this week: The Three Specifics — three written entries from yesterday, with sensory detail, names and times of day; if anyone could have written it about any day, rewrite itThe Person Layer — at least one entry must name a specific person, and once a month you tell themThe Friday Re-Read — read back the past five days and see what a good week in your actual life is made ofThis is not positive thinking. It is re-windowing the same data. Two minutes. Three specifics. One named person. That is the whole prescription. 🎧 Listen everywhere:  📺 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thebetterdailyshow Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1895894753  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iyYq5mSCrJS1Q95zlilOi  Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ae07c185-e579-43d0-aae6-bd136d6a2bfd  📩 Newsletter: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashant-nagpal-33934259/ The Better Daily — small shifts, big life.

  4. Aug 26

    10. Stop Waiting to Be Promoted: How to Lead Before You Get the Title

    Send us Fan Mail Early in my career I watched a resident run the imaging reading room with more authority than most department chairs I have met. No appointment, no corner office, no seat at the leadership table. When she spoke, everyone listened. When a protocol was needed, she designed it and saw it through. Not because it was her job. Because she decided it mattered. The most influential people I have worked with did not become leaders when they received a title. They received the title because everyone around them already recognized what was true. The title was the institution catching up. In this episode: Starting from zero as an international medical graduate, and what a position of no authority taught me about how authority is actually earnedAdam Grant on givers, takers, and matchers, and why the sustainable giver comes out ahead over the long runSeva in Indian philosophy: service as the highest expression of capability, not a sign of subordinationThe three behaviors that create gravity without a title: initiative, ownership, and elevationYour three moves this week: Find One Gap: one problem in nobody's job description; fill it, no permission requiredPractice Ownership: stop asking what you were told to do; ask what needs to happen for this to actually succeedElevate One Person: twenty minutes of real attention for someone who is not your responsibilityThe title follows the behavior, not the other way around. Start leading today. The institution will catch up. 🎧 Listen everywhere:  📺 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thebetterdailyshow Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1895894753  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iyYq5mSCrJS1Q95zlilOi  Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ae07c185-e579-43d0-aae6-bd136d6a2bfd  📩 Newsletter: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashant-nagpal-33934259/ The Better Daily — small shifts, big life.

  5. Aug 4

    9. Why Time Management Is a Lie (And What Actually Works)

    Send us Fan Mail You can have twenty-four perfectly managed hours and still feel like the day did not count. I had plenty of those days. Immaculate calendar, every block filled, every task closed, and at 10 PM no sense that anything meaningful had happened. The calendar was not the problem. I was managing the wrong resource. This episode is about energy rather than time, and what happened when I audited my own fourteen-hour days honestly and found three or four hours of noise in every one of them. In this episode: - Signal-to-noise ratio, borrowed from imaging, as a way to grade a day - The four dimensions of energy from Schwartz and Loehr, and why they are not interchangeable - Why most coronary blood flow happens during diastole, and what that means for recovery - Three things to try this week: a three-day energy audit, protecting your two best hours, and one non-negotiable recovery ritual Newsletter version: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thebetterdailyshow 🎧 Listen everywhere:  📺 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thebetterdailyshow Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1895894753  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iyYq5mSCrJS1Q95zlilOi  Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ae07c185-e579-43d0-aae6-bd136d6a2bfd  📩 Newsletter: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashant-nagpal-33934259/ The Better Daily — small shifts, big life.

  6. Jul 20

    8. The 5 People Who Decide Who You Become

    Send us Fan Mail You already have a board of directors deciding the shape of your life. You just never elected them. When I moved from India for medical training, I lost my entire social circle overnight. What replaced it, almost by accident, changed how I think about relationships ever since. One attending taught me to trust my own clinical judgment with four words: "What do you think?" That relationship, more than any single opportunity he gave me, raised what I believed I was capable of. There is research behind why this matters beyond one story. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler's work in the New England Journal of Medicine shows behavior, mood, even weight gain spread through social networks up to three degrees of separation. The people around the people around you are shaping your choices without your knowledge. In this episode: — The five seats on your Personal Board of Directors: Mentor, Peer, Challenger, Sage, and Protégé — Why "signal-to-noise ratio," a concept from imaging, applies directly to your relationships — The Indian concept of satsang, and what it means to be intentional about the company you keep — Three moves to audit and strengthen your own board this week This is The Better Daily Podcast. Small shifts, big life. Host: Prashant Nagpal, MD a Cardiovascular Radiologist, on a journey of self-improvement New episodes every week. Subscribe wherever you listen. 🎧 Listen everywhere:  📺 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thebetterdailyshow Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1895894753  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iyYq5mSCrJS1Q95zlilOi  Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ae07c185-e579-43d0-aae6-bd136d6a2bfd  📩 Newsletter: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashant-nagpal-33934259/ The Better Daily — small shifts, big life.

  7. Jul 5

    7. Why You Make Your Worst Decisions After Your Best Ones

    Send us Fan Mail You just made an excellent decision at work. Strategic, well-reasoned, consequential. Then you went home, ate garbage for dinner, skipped the workout, scrolled for ninety minutes, and snapped at someone you love. That is not a discipline failure. That is decision residue — the cognitive fatigue that lingers after significant decision-making — and it is one of the most underappreciated threats to the quality of your life. In this episode: •          The years when my most demanding reading days reliably produced my worst personal evenings — and what was actually being depleted •          Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2: why your deliberate mind runs out of fuel, and what takes over when it does •          The judicial parole studies: same judges, same cases, different time of day, different outcomes •          Why radiology runs on protocols and templates — and why your life needs the same architecture: protocol the trivial, protect the diagnostic •          The Stoic concept of prohairesis: freedom as the right ordering of constraint •          Why the best clinicians I know are deliberately boring off the job — and why the more consequential your work, the more boring the rest of your life needs to be Your three moves this week: 1.        The Decision Audit — list the ten recurring decisions quietly draining you 2.        Automate One — build a default for the single highest-frequency one. One this week, not five 3.        Protect the Last Hour — put nothing consequential where your judgment is most depleted Boring by design is how excellence is funded. Read the companion newsletter: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebetterdailyshow Small shifts. Big life. 🎧 Listen everywhere:  📺 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thebetterdailyshow Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1895894753  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iyYq5mSCrJS1Q95zlilOi  Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ae07c185-e579-43d0-aae6-bd136d6a2bfd  📩 Newsletter: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashant-nagpal-33934259/ The Better Daily — small shifts, big life.

  8. Jun 25

    6. The 70% Rule: Why the Best Leaders Delegate Before They Are Ready

    Send us Fan Mail If your default thought when someone asks for help is "it is faster if I just do it myself," you do not have a time problem. You have a control problem. And it is the most expensive problem in leadership. In Episode 6 of The Better Daily, Prashant Nagpal, MD shares the moment a mentor told him he was excellent at his job but terrible at letting other people be excellent at theirs, the arithmetic of the 70% rule, and the Jain philosophical concept of anekantavada that finally broke his grip on the work he should have let go of years earlier. WHAT YOU WILL TAKE AWAY - Why every task you hold at 90% is preventing the work only you can do - The three forms of delegation failure: the identity trap, quality anxiety, and the time illusion - Why "someone else could do it at 70%" is the right threshold, not 90% - A three-move application for this week:    1. The Task Audit — sort by who can actually do it    2. The 70% Handoff — one task, delegated properly    3. The Identity Question — paid to do the work, or to ensure the work gets done? EPISODE QUOTE "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." Peter Drucker ABOUT THE HOST Prashant Nagpal, MD is Section Chief of Cardiovascular Imaging and Professor of Radiology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He trained at Brigham and Women's Hospital (Harvard Medical School) and the University of Iowa. Opinions are his own.  CONNECT 🌐 https://thebetterdailylife.com 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashant-nagpal-33934259/ Small shifts. Big life. 🎧 Listen everywhere:  📺 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thebetterdailyshow Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1895894753  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6iyYq5mSCrJS1Q95zlilOi  Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ae07c185-e579-43d0-aae6-bd136d6a2bfd  📩 Newsletter: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashant-nagpal-33934259/ The Better Daily — small shifts, big life.

See All (14)

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Small shifts, big life.  Insights on personal development, wellness, and leadership - from the lens of a cardiovascular Radiologist,  parent, and a life-long learner. Newsletter: https://thebetterdaily.beehiiv.com/ The views expressed in the podcast and the accompanying newsletter are his own and do not represent his employer in any way or form.

Information

  • Creator
    Prashant Nagpal, MD
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Better Daily Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Better Daily Podcast