This question appeared on Twitter this week: Should I be a doctor or an investor?

If you want to do what doctors do day-to-day, you should go to medical school. If you don’t know what doctors do on a day-to-day basis, you should probably figure it out. I’d recommend shadowing working clinicians in a busy setting. See what we do in the morning and at night. See what we do when we’re not with patients. See how the fantasy clashes with reality.

Maybe the real dilemma here is ‘should I be a doctor or get a medical degree so that I can be a better investor?’

If you want a medical degree because you think it will help you in business, you might want to consider the money, time, bandwidth and stress that it will take to earn the degree. Remember that 4 years of medical school will leave you with no marketable skills and a very rudimentary understanding of medicine. The kind of experience that will move the way you build, invest, and change the world will take the time that comes with being in the health care world after training.

If you want to start companies it might make sense to learn how to start companies. Then you can hire a doctor with real insight in your subject domain.

Do your best to figure out how you want to spend your days before you spend the money and years that will leave you with little more than the window dressing of understanding.

In the end it’s important to remember that there’s a real difference being a doctor and having a medical degree. Maybe this is how the question should be framed.