The EntreMD Podcast

2 Life-Changing Habits Every Entrepreneur Needs for Time Mastery

• Dr. Una • Episode 446

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Is your business stressing you out despite your success?

You’re in for a treat! Today’s episode is all about transforming chaos into peace of mind through time mastery. I’ll be sharing 2 simple yet game-changing habits that will empower you to take back control—not just of your schedule, but of your life.

If you’re a fan of the show, you know I say it all the time: if you have freedom of time, you have freedom! When you master your time, everything else in your life falls into place. You’re more productive, more focused, and you create space for what truly matters.

So, without further ado, let’s jump right in! 


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Key Takeaways: 

  • 00:00 Intro 
  • 00:37 What started all this 
  • 02:39 Allowing your phone to run your life
  • 06:16 Doing theme days 
  • 11:44 Conclusion and outro  

Additional Resources:


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  • EntreMD Business School Grow - This is our year-long program with a track record of producing physician entrepreneurs who are building 6, 7 and 7+ figure businesses. They do this while building their dream lives!
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To get on a call with my team to determine your next best step, go here ...

Speaker 1:

If you find yourself in a position where you are super grateful for the wins you've created in your business, but you are unbelievably stressed out by the chaos that those wins have celebrated, you're in for a treat, because today I'm going to show you how to go from chaos to peace in your business. Okay, hi dogs, welcome to the EntreMD 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 Una. So this all started because I was talking with a client of mine. A client of mine sent me a text message that said I have only done this for a week, but this is a total of mine. A client of mine sent me a text message that said I have only done this for a week, but this is a total game changer. I have my life back. In fact, I'm going to look for the exact words that he used. He said done with my first week. What a success. Three exclamation marks, thank you so much for sharing.

Speaker 1:

Now, before this, this person is a genius entrepreneur, like really savvy entrepreneur, started with one company, is now running three companies, has a wife, has three kids. But with running three companies now, life has become a little more chaotic, right? So endless emails, endless texts, endless projects to work on. Working at night, because he's like this is the only time it's really quiet, I can work without any interruptions. And he's in his forties, so you know like sleeping at night is something that you know he really should be doing. And at the same time, he was dropping balls because you know, like administrative tasks, if I'm doing that, I'm not really working. So he never really had an allocated time for it. So he's like I feel like I'm letting people down. I feel so much pressure. And you know, I told him two things to do and I said you do these two things, it's going to change everything for you. And he did those two things. He had only practiced it for a week when he sent me that text and he's like what a success. I have my life back, okay. And guess what? Now he's like and I'm no longer working at night. You know I can sleep at night and work during the day. It's just fantastic, it's a total turnaround.

Speaker 1:

You may be tempted to say well, this doesn't apply to me, I'm not running zero businesses and all that. The principle is the same, no matter what kind of business you're running. So I really want you to lean in and I want you to think about how to use this in your business. I want you to give it a shot, because this is all around mastering the use of time. Time mastery is all around mastering the use of time, time mastery, which is really life mastery. And you know like this is the currency of freedom. Like when you have freedom of time, you have freedom right, and so the more you learn how to do it, the better you get at it, the better life you have. You can truly have a dream business and a dream life. So let's talk about those two things.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing that I told him to do, I said you are allowing your phone run your life. Your phone is your boss and you want to flip that and become the boss of your phone. This is going to be so simple, so simple. You'd be like, really, dr Una, but really, but if you do it, it will change everything. So I said become the boss of your phone. And so I told him I said for my phone. My phone does not direct me. I go to my phone when I want. There are no email notifications. There are no. You know the red alert to say you have three unread emails. There are no Facebook notifications. There are no Twitter notifications. There are no Instagram notifications. There's no notifications like none. No WhatsApp notifications. Whenever I want to go into those apps, I go into those apps. I am in control, okay, and I told him I put my phone on a work mode like things just don't show up.

Speaker 1:

But he was in a situation where the email will pop up and then he'll have to go look and the text will pop up and he'll have to go look and a calendar alert will come and he'll have to go look. And so, because of that, he was constantly being distracted all through the day and he was forced to multitask. He was forced to do multiple things at the same time, which you know just never works. And he said you know, like just changing that one thing, like putting that on, he's like the amount of mental clutter that I got rid of because things were just not coming in my way. He even put in like a do not disturb and he just had a few phone numbers that could reach him when it was his work time and so, because of that, anybody who had something to do which is never urgent enough to break anything right Like he's rarely ever urgent enough to break anything Like he would get to it when the time for him to get to it came. But then he had these times when he could do focused work. And if you've ever done focused work, if you've ever taken three or four hours to work on one task, you'll be so blown away by the amount of work and the quality of work you can do when you're focused, when you're able to do deep work. And so he put himself in that position and he said, oh, my goodness, like this has totally changed my life. My output is so much higher. My mental clutter is like almost gone. I have my life back.

Speaker 1:

And you might say, okay, that's simple, okay, good, good, dr Uno, what's the next one? But I want to stop you right here and say this is a time to make a commitment, a commitment that, okay, I'm going to do that. I am going to go into all these apps. I'm not going to let them ding and dong and put alerts on my phone and all of that stuff and constantly distract me. This is your one precious life. You have the opportunity to build a really great business. You have the opportunity to live without mental clutter, and it's all tied to this one step on your phone.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so this is something that you absolutely want to schedule a time to get done, or you want to do it right now and just take all those notifications off, like every last one of them, so you can go to them when you want them. Set work hours on your phone. So these are the times things just don't come in. It will actually with the iPhone, it will actually mute your apps and stuff. So your screensaver is just nice and clean and clear so you can focus on work. Because the mental clutter is real and it is so draining.

Speaker 1:

The way he described it is. He said an email will come in and he's like, oh, I'll get to that later, but because he saw it, his mind will still be processing okay, what could the email be about? What would my response be? What could I do with this? So, even though he said I will do it later, so technically he's not being distracted he was being royally distracted because he still saw it, and so doing that one thing will create such a huge change, and I want to challenge you to really go in on that. So that's the first one.

Speaker 1:

The second thing that I told him to do, I said okay, you're at a stage in your business where you have three businesses that you're responsible for, you have all these projects, you have life. Now you're going to homeschool your kids and all of this stuff. You really want to put yourself in a position where you are doing theme days and so, for each day, you're able to go really deep on a few things, as opposed to trying to touch everything every day. Granted, you may be running one business, you may still be very heavily involved in the service delivery of it, and so I still want you to think about how you can do theme days again, as opposed to trying to do everything every day, which a lot of times will either lead to analysis paralysis, because you're like there's too much to do and I don't have time to do it, or it puts you in a position where you're just running like a scatterbrain. You don't get the opportunity to do anything long enough to do it really well. So your genius is hidden if you cannot get the time to do deep work.

Speaker 1:

What he ended up doing was he had one day that was like his planning day. So for the projects, you know what is the project, what is the problem we're trying to solve, what are the steps, who do I need to get involved in this? All of that. So he's mapping out everything, and so that was his planning day. So not planning the week, but planning his projects, which is very different from delivering on. He can do it deep and he can go on all three companies, but he can go deep on, okay, this project, these are the things that I need to do. And then he had another day that was kind of his meeting day. So the decision makers for the three main companies that he's running, and all of that. This is when we do our meetings, this is when I do our strategy, this is when we do all of that stuff.

Speaker 1:

And then the three days in between are service delivery days where he's working on the projects. He's not talking to anybody. There are no meetings scheduled there, there's no planning there. It's just execution, execution, execution. I want you to think about this, right, and I think on one of the days he had half a day that was admin, you know. So you know emails he had to get to and all of those kinds of things. And so I was like, how, how was it? He's like, oh, my goodness, the ability to have these three days where I just go in and I'm knocking out projects. I'm knocking out projects, I'm getting things done. He says this was such a game changer for me. Such a game changer for me because now my output is so much higher and I get to do deep work, like when I get on a roll, I can just stay on the roll. So that was what happened with the service delivery part of it.

Speaker 1:

And then for his planning days, he's like now, you know, I have less fires that I need to put out, because every week I'm coming back and I'm like, okay, what's the next project? You know, what do we need to do, what are the steps, who needs to be involved, all those things. He uses a task manager, so everybody has what they're supposed to be doing and everybody's on the same page. And then for the meetings, he said what is so wonderful about that is that now he has all these meetings and people know on Friday, at whatever, this is when I meet with this company, so people are not trying to meet with him all through the week and all of those things. He has a designated time. They're able to do really high capacity work. And now he has his time back that I could only work at night because that was the only time that was quiet and I can get deep work done.

Speaker 1:

He says what I didn't realize is that I had been distracting myself so much. I had been distracting myself so much by my phone and everyone having access to me at every time and not having themed days, so everything was everywhere. But now that everything has a home, I just work when I'm supposed to work, and now me being up at night is an exception rather than the rule. I want you to think about going from being awake most nights to rarely being awake just because you did two things right. And so he did the theme days and that has been an absolute game changer for him.

Speaker 1:

That is what I do as well. My know my phone. I go to it when I want to go to it. There are no alerts, no notifications, nothing. There's just nothing happening on it. The same with my computer I go to it when I want to go to it and I do theme days.

Speaker 1:

So you know the companies that I lead. I have a day where I meet with all the leaders of those companies. I have a day that is my content creation. So whether that's podcast episodes, emails, social media, books that I'm working on, all of that, it's like a whole day. So when I get into that groove, I can stay in that groove. I have a day that is, you know, I kind of call it my personal development day, and so the coaching program that I'm, you know I'm a part of doing that work. You know, like all of those things will fall under that the books that I need to read, the courses that I need to complete, and all of that. I have a day that's for collaborations and things. So I just have all these things product developments, I have all these things. I didn't start doing this when I started running multiple companies. I started doing this a long time ago.

Speaker 1:

But you know, like, even for you let's even say you're in a busy practice and you're seeing patients four days a week Well, that one day that you have, there's a half a day you can devote to something right. You can devote to, maybe, the projects, the development projects that you work on in your business, and you can have another half of the day. That is for your team meetings or your team trainings and stuff like that. You can have, you know, a two hour block here you have that is for admin, like, you just want to have these blocks, and they're recurring. So even when people say, oh, I want to meet with you about XYZ, you don't even have to think about when am I going to meet with this person. You can legit go like, okay, I can meet with you on Friday, xyz time, because that is when that happens, right?

Speaker 1:

So I want you to start thinking about things in that way and these are the two things that you absolutely want to change. Number one, you want to become the boss of your phone instead of allowing your phone to be the boss of you. And then, number two, you want to start thinking theme day so you can do deep work, you can do long work, and this is something that is going to make you a lot more productive and you're going to get a lot more done in less time. You're going to have so much more calm and peace. You're going to put yourself in a position where, oh, my goodness, you can get your time back to spend with your family, to sleep, to take care of yourself, to think I even have themed thinking right, you can do all of these things. It would change the way you lead your team, it would change your output, it would change the number of clients or patients that you have. It would change the peace that you feel. It will change the way you feel about your work, because you'll be building a business that allows you have the time to build your dream life right.

Speaker 1:

So I want you to go apply this and come back and send me a DM or send me a private message and say Dr Una, this is what happened when I made these two changes. I got my life back. I got my time back. I am rooting for you because I am a big believer that every doctor deserves to have a dream life and a dream business right, like you deserve to have both. You've put your life on hold for long enough and now this is your time, okay. So, absolutely rooting for you. Go do this. Cannot wait to see you know, like, how you use it for your own good. Rooting for you always. See you on the next episode.