How to create more time

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hi dogs. Welcome to the Untream D podcast, where it's all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, Dr. Umna. Well, hello, hello, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the EntreMD Podcast. And I'm excited about this episode because I am just going to be taking you behind the scenes of some things that I have done in my business over the years and how it has created a ripple effect today. Okay. And, you know, in the beginning of my business, like most businesses, it was a lot of hard work. It still is. It was a lot of hard work. And it's kind of like a plane taking off where there's a lot of work that goes into it and you're running the runway and you're burning fuel and all of that stuff, but you still aren't flying, right? But if you'll stay at it though, if you'll work the runway, you will fly. And see, that's part of the reason why I love what I get to do, because a lot of times I help, I am able to help people in that runway phase. I'm like, come on, you got this. This is what you need to do. This is how you make progress. This is how you measure progress. This is how you identify that you're doing the right things. So that when you start flying, you're gonna fly all the way to the highest altitude and then you're gonna cruise. So that's what I do in the entrepreneurial business school. That's a lot of what I do. And it's not unusual that someone's like, oh my goodness, I don't know, I'm not sure. And the next week, right? Because now they're off the wrong way. They're like, oh my goodness, this is the snowball you've been talking about. And I'm like, yeah, that's the snowball. It's so good. But you know, I've been an entrepreneur now for 12 years, going on 13 years, and it's been oh, so fun, so fun. And I'm at a stage now that I can look back and I'm I'm like, it was worth everything, everything. Because I'm at a stage now where I have financial freedom. I'm at a stage now where I have time freedom. And, you know, for instance, I, you know, I homeschool my older two. I have four children. I homeschool my older two. They're 14 and 12, and the babies still go to school, but I get to take them to school, and that is meaningful time for me because we have a whole little schedule. Like Monday, this is, you know, who we watch, and Tuesday, we discuss scriptures, and you know, Wednesday we do a memory verse, and then Thursday they could get to watch this little movie thing on the way to school, and on the way back, we have all these conversations, and it's been such a beautiful time for my family. And the reason, one of the reasons why this is so meaningful is because in the beginning, I was working the practice that it just started, I was working the urgent care so we wouldn't have to take these humongous loans. And I didn't see them a lot. I mean, I saw them, but I had a lot on my plate. And to be in this time where I'm always with them. And even when I would do trips and go and speak and stuff like that, you know, my oldest, I'd take her with her, with me. And it's it's just such it's such a beautiful time. Beautiful time. And I say that to say if you're in that space where it seems like a lot, it gets better. Like it's totally worth it. Totally. And so today was, you know, it was a fascinating day. And I remember just coming back, I'm like, wow, Lord, thank you. This is this is beautiful. Because I, you know, did my morning routine, did all of that stuff, you know. So did the prayer, did the meditation, took a 35-minute brisk walk, drove the kids to school, called my mom on the way back. My mom lives in Nigeria, so called her, we talked, and then came back and did a meeting. And it's so strange. At my kids' school, it was grandparents' day. And my daughter, my seven-year-old, who was having grandparents' day, was like, Well, I don't have a grandparent here, but they said I could bring a family member. Can my sister come? So who's the older one who's being homeschooled, my 14-year-old? And I'm like, sure. And it's at 11:30. So I dropped them in school, came back, and then at 11 o'clock, I drove my older daughter, you know, to go represent the grandparents. And she did that. And I stayed in the parking lot, found a nice cool place to park, and I was there. I had a meeting that was supposed to be happening. So my assistant came and met me in the parking lot, and we got in the car, did our meeting. By the time we're done with our meeting, you know, my daughter was done being the grandparent. We came back home and then I continued to do my work. Like I have the flexibility. And so this is business and bonding and everything happening at the same time. It was just such a beautiful day. Okay. And the reason why I tell you all of this is you can have your version of what that is, right? That's my version. You can have whatever. But I want to show you how to start that process even today, right? I want to show you how to take your time where you're able to do the things you need to do with your business, but your business doesn't overtake your life, right? Because as an entrepreneur, it can, right? Because you don't have a boss saying clock out or clock in or any of those things. And so, how do you get more time? How do you get more time? You can use it for personal development, you can use it to relax, you can use it to spend time with your family, you can use it to explore the world, whatever you want to do with it. But you want to start building that habit from the beginning. Okay. All right. So the first thing I want to do is I want to tell you about Parkinson's law as far as time goes. It says that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Okay. So if you have one hour for a task, one hour is what it will take for the most part. Like understand the analogy here. And if you have five hours for the same task, it will take that much time. This is why the day before vacation is research shows this that this is one of the most productive days ever. Because now you have a timeline, you have a deadline, and all of a sudden you're able to do all of that stuff that you've been procrastinating on for three or four months right before you go on vacation. Okay. So if that's the case, if time will fill it, then how do we manage? Because now time, if work would fill it, then that means that time is not the problem. It's the management, it's how we manage the time, right? Okay, so let's look at it this way. I want to show you how to create hard stops, okay? So that your time, your work doesn't overflow into time that is required for other areas of your life. Okay. I first learned this with charting because I used to take charts home. And one day my kids came up to me, they're trying to talk to me. I'm like, go away, I'm charting, right? And I'm like, but you were away all day anyway. And now you come home and you're, they can't even talk to you because you're charting. And then I learned from Brian Tracy that if you do not use your hard time well, so you're chit-chatting at work, you're hanging out, you're not doing chart with charts with the time that you have and all of that, then you're gonna have to give up your soft time to do more work. Okay. All right, so how to create hard stops? And I'm gonna give you five hard stops you can create. And then if you do these, you discipline your work to fit in the time allocated for it. And then you have this other time to do whatever you want with it. So the first thing is is creating a hard stop on your research phase. Okay, so this is for for you know, for full-on entrepreneurs, right? You have you want to start a podcast, but you've been researching for four months. Okay. You want to do an LLC, but you've been researching which lawyer you're gonna use, or if you're gonna use LegalZoom for the last two months. You've decided that you're gonna introduce a new offer in your already very profitable business and you have been researching it for four months, right? You have decided that, okay, I am going to do a podcast tour and I'm gonna go on different podcasts so I can grow my audience. And you've been thinking of the best template that you're going to use to reach out to them. You've been wanting to hire somebody to be the practice administrator for your practice, or you know, somebody who'll be the director of operations for your company. And you've been researching the best job description for the person and what their KRAs will be or their KPIs will be. And you've been doing this for months. What this does is it drains you of all your time, it drains you of all your energy, it creates such a big mental clutter and you're stressed out, but there's no traction being made. There's no progress being made. Okay. And so you do hard stops for research. I am going to research this for X number of hours or X number of days. I'm going to talk to X number of people, three people, four people, whatever. I'm going to make a decision and I'm going to keep it moving. Think about the amount of time you would get back. I cannot tell you how many people I've worked with who are like, man, I'm so happy I finally launched this podcast. I've been meaning to do it for two years. Two years, two years, right? And so we're not, we're just going to set a time for your research. Boom, done. So hard stop. Okay. I'm going to research until this date, and that's it. Okay. I'm going to get enough information I need to make a good decision, the end. Okay. So that's number one. Number two, number two, second hard stop is the end of your workday. Okay. Now, if you are a full-time entrepreneur, you know that the end of your workday could be midnight. You could wake up in the middle of the night and you're still working. You can do all kinds of things. Okay. But remember Parkinson's law. It says that the work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. And so if you decide I work an eight-hour work week, workday, okay, so I work nine to five and I'm done with an hour of lunch. Then you decide that that's the end of my workday is 5 p.m. And then once it's 5 p.m. done, what that does is it will make your nine to five so much more valuable because you get so much more done in it because you have to end at five. Okay. And if you have kids and you're like, I don't know how I'll do that, you tell your kids, mommy's gonna go outside and play with you at five o'clock. If they're anything like mine, you're not gonna be able to work past five o'clock. Okay. But the bottom line is make a hard stop. And so if there's anything that's uncompleted, it means you have to do it the next day, right? And start that discipline because that means that you can build a business and you can have a life. You want to have both. Okay. Okay, so that's number two. Number three, your hard stop is weekends, okay, which could look like I do not work weekends, right? And for some of you, that may not be feasible. Okay, so maybe you're working a job and you're working the business or you're at a stage in the business where it's it's sweat equity time, right? If that's the case, then you have a hard stop for when you when you stop working during the weekends, right? And so that could look like, you know, before the kids get up, eight to 10, 8 to 11, I do all my business stuff, boom, I'm done. That is the window over the weekend. Okay. But if you do that, you can get so much done in three hours, right? And that means over the weekend you have six hours. Six hours of high quality work will move the needle forward in your business. Okay. So you have that hard stop. So it's either I you're at a stage where you're like, I do not work weekends, or you have you're in this stage where you're like, I'm good, I have to work weekends. I need to work weekends with where I am, but this is a time block. You don't just work Saturdays because again, the work will expand so as to fill the time available for its completion. Okay. So that's number three. Number four, vacation. All right. So let me tell you what I'm gonna do the next time I made a calendar, make a year, an annual calendar, and this is what I do this year. The first thing I do is I block off the times that I'm gonna be on vacation. And depending on what stage you're in, this could be two weeks, this could be four weeks, this could be six weeks, it could be whatever you want. But you block off those times and you're like, I don't work here. I'm not scheduling anything here. There's not gonna be calls here, there's not gonna be meetings here, there's not gonna be, there's gonna be nothing. This is my time. Okay, so you make that hard stop. Now I will say this, okay? I will say this. This is a full confession. This is me. When I'm on vacation, I really find it difficult to turn it off completely. If I may be honest, I am not at a place where I'm like, yeah, I didn't take my laptop. I didn't even think of it. Entre MD, who is that? I didn't even remember that I had a business like that. I'm not there. I'm working on it, but I frankly not there. And I think part of the issue is, you know, I'm an introvert, which means I, you know, I really do my best work when I'm thinking. And I think best when I'm at the beach, I have white space, right? I think I download a lot of amazing ideas. And so what happens on vacation? A lot of times I'm at a beach somewhere, I'm taking these long walks and all of that. So invariably all these things come up. And so what I have done, my hard stop, is I do what I told you about the weekend for the person who's working. So I'm like, okay, I don't want to not honor my family time, but at the same time, this is who I am at this point. This is my reality at this point. I am, I just am not going to turn it off for two weeks. And so what I do is I may decide eight to 10 is my time. Okay. So I typically would wake up about six and start my morning routine and all of that. And then eight to ten with no guilt, right? Because I used to have a lot of guilt about it. Like you're working when you should be on vacation, dah dah, dah, dah, dah. And so without any guilt, I would sit and enjoy working for two hours. And it's usually not very tactical things, it's more strategic type of things, you know, which is great. And so I just stay in the zone. I love it. I enjoy it. At 10 o'clock, I shut it down and then I go beytion. Right. So that way I'm not, I don't feel the guilt. That way I still took the time off. And that way I'm just being me. Okay. All right. So so that's what you can do. Number five. Number five, hard stop, okay, is delegation in the sense of not allowing people who are supposed to do things in your business dump their stuff on you. Okay. And this is even with the thinking. I'll give you an example. So in my private practice, a lot of times an MA or a front desk person will come up to me and say, Oh, this mom said she's upset because of XYZ. And I'm like, okay. And they're looking at me and I'm looking at them. And they're like, so what should I do about it? I was like, I don't know. What do you want to do about it? And they're like, I don't know. That's why I'm asking you. I said, okay, so you think about it. You come up with three ways you think we can handle it, and I'll give you direction on which one to pick. What am I doing? I delegated this task to them. And I need to, I need them not to just do tasks, but I need them to keep their thinking. I need them to think it through. So they gave me their monkey because that's their job to think about that, right? They can consult with me and say, this is what happened and this is what I want to do. What do you think? Right. Which is very different from you think for me. I'm like, that's my time to do my work. I'm not thinking for you. Right. And so in the same way, you want that hard stop there. If you have team members and those team members have roles, when they come, uh Brian Tracy describes it this way: like they come in, like they have their monkeys and they want to leave their monkeys on your desk and walk away. I'm like, nope, D nope. I do not want your monkey. Okay. So you do the thinking, you tell me what you think, and I will. So if I answer it and say no, do it this way, and then tell them why. So what have I done? I've exported my way of thinking. And so the next time that presents itself, they'll know, oh, this is the way Dr. Uno would handle this, right? You see what I'm saying? And so that hard stop, if you don't have it in place, then it puts you in a position where people keep dumping their stuff on you and you're doing the work of five people in a 24-hour period or in an eight-hour work we work day, which is just not gonna work. So that hard stop is if somebody has a job and they want to dump it on you, you give it back to them. Like I don't even touch them. I'm like, here's your monkey, you can have it back. I don't want it. I'm not touching with the 10 football. Okay. And so the way you do that is you have that if someone comes back and is like, well, how do I do this? You're like, how do you think you should do it? Right. If it's something that you ask me that I'm gonna have to Google, I have you Google. I'm not doing your Google search for you. Like, come on. And so you put that hard stop there so you can save your time. Because imagine if not only do you have your team doing tasks, but you have your team doing thinking for you. That is like beautiful. Okay. So I want you to think about it. You have hard stops on the research phase, you have hard stop on the end of the workday, you have hard stop for the weekends, you have hard stop for vacation, and you have a hard stop for delegation, right? Where everybody holds on to their own monkeys. Think about how many hours, days, weeks, months this will save you over time. Time that you can then spend maybe improving yourself, learning a new skill, right? Maybe a critical skill for your business, or time that you just spend sleeping better. So maybe now you sleep eight hours a day. It will make Dr. Funke Afalla B. Brown very happy. Uh, she's a sleep expert. She's a student at the Ontram D business school. Phenomenal, phenomenal. Okay, thought leader in the space. Okay. Maybe you use the time to spend it with your spouse, or you spend it with your children, or you'd go on an extra vacation, or whatever you want to do. Spa appointments once a month, right? Whatever you want to do. But these are five things you can do to get time back. So no matter the phase of business you're in, you can have the business and you can have the life. Okay. And that is what that is, that's what I hope you get that you do this and you enjoy the journey. All right. So go do this. Go do this. And you know, burnout is at an all-time high in the physician community. So for this episode, I ask you, share it with another doctor in your life. Okay. Share it with another doctor. It'll make such a profound, even if they only applied one. I hope you're listening and you apply all five, but even if you only applied one, it'll make such a significant difference in your life. I applied this when I learned about it first when it came to charting. And from that day, I never brought charts home. Never. Never. Right? And it was such a game changer. Like I closed my laptop, boom, done. And when I'm home, I'm home and available for my family, even though I'm building a business. Okay. All right. So go share it away. And I will see you, my friend, on the next episode of the Ontree MD Podcast. Hey, if you love listening to the EntreMD podcast, I want to invite you to join OntreeMD on Demand. It is my signature subscription program that gives you access to a library of business courses designed to help you do one thing as a physician entrepreneur, and that is to thrive. Just head out to ontremd.com forward slash on demand, and I love to have you join us. See you on the inside.