82. Decision Systems to Prevent Expensive Time and Energy Mistakes

00:05 Dr. Ann Tsung Are you struggling to advance your career and sacrificing time with your loved ones because of endless to-dos, low energy, and just not enough time in the day? If so, then this podcast is for you. I am your host Dr. Ann Tsung, an ER critical care and space doctor, a peak performance coach, a real estate investor, and a mother of a toddler. I am here to guide you on mastering your mind and give you the essential skills to achieve peak performance. Welcome to Productivity MD, where you can learn to master your time and achieve the five freedoms in life.

00:51 Hello, and thank you so much for tuning into my show. Today, we’re actually going to be talking about the decision systems and framework that I use in order to figure out how to ascend up the five stages of time freedom. For those of you guys who haven’t heard the five stages of time freedom that I created, please go to the last episode to see where you are in the five stages. Because it’s very important to know where you are, so you know how to ascend to the map. And then I’ll teach you in this episode, the decision systems in terms of vision, massive transformative purpose, and how do I say yes or no—how to ascend or figure out if you descend down the stage. Okay? So I call this the time and energy mission control. The reason I call it that is, when you are working in the NASA Mission Control, your decision is going to be a go, a no go. It will either affect the loss of life and vehicle—that’s criticality one—or it may affect just loss of mission. Some of the decisions are not so irreversible. Some of them are reversible. So it is just critical for you to actually figure out what you want to do with your time and energy capital. Because time and energy capital is really the only thing we spend that we do not know the balance to. So we really want to allocate and spend them wisely instead of just wasting it.

02:19 In order to figure out the decisions that you want to make, we really need to know where we want to go, right? We have a mission. We have a goal. The target is the moon, the target is the Mars, the target is International Space Station. But without that life vision, we don’t know how to aim our trajectory there, right? We’re going to be saying yes to everything, wasting a lot of fuel, wasting a lot of energy, and kind of course correcting every now and then. But if you know your North Star—this is where the life vision comes in—then you will waste less energy, right? You know what your filter is, your North Star for energy allocation. And if a decision that you’re making or trying to make contradicts your life vision, then for me, it is already a no go no matter how well it pays. For example, if it contradicts my life vision of health and vitality, I’m taking night shifts, or swing shifts, or traveling internationally and not getting enough sleep a lot, then that contradicts my life vision.

03:25 So for those of you guys who haven’t really done your life vision, if you’re at a place where you can get out a pen and paper, or reMarkable, or maybe even audio—I think audio is the best thing if it’s possible—get out your phone and start recording your answers into your AI or ChatGPT so that it will allow the stream of consciousness to come through for you, and more things will come out, right? So I talked about this before, but we’re going to go in a little bit more detail. So just answer these questions: what activities are you doing alone and with loved ones? What are your relationships with loved ones like—children, grandchildren, spouse, siblings? Imagine yourself when you’re 85, 95 years old. Again, this is with full physical and mental capacity, because you would have already worked on it and you know you can get there, right? As much as possible, you delay the onset of chronic disease. Now, what emotions are you feeling during that time? Where are you living? Where are you traveling? How much passive income per month do you have? What are you contributing to and what are you learning? There’s a lot more questions than that, but in this episode of the show, we’re just going to tackle these main ones.

04:40 So as an example, for me, the initial paragraph of my life vision: I’m spending time with my children, my great grandkids, grandkids, spouse. My husband, we still have a very intimate, passionate relationship, 3D relationship that’s not transactional with each other. We’re traveling to live next to our grandkids, to spend time with our great grandkids. So I imagine we’ll be rotating and just living to be really family relationships. It’s going to be very close to us. So that’s the beginning of my life vision. If you don’t have something already like this, then this is an amazing time to create your North Star. If you already had something like this, you really want to go back to reread this preferably weekly—but sometimes I know life gets away, maybe monthly—so that you could go back and cross check everything that you’re doing right now, this quarter, and see if it is actually taking you towards the life vision or away from the life vision.

05:42 Then next, you want to have come up with a massive transformative purpose, okay? So what that is, is you’re going to create three of these that you’re going to do where it’s something you’re always striving for, but you can never check off, okay? Something you’re striving for, but you can never check off. For example, it is a type of motivation, but it’s a very important filter for your decisions as well, okay? So, as an example, one of my MTP, my massive transformative purpose, is to help people live and die without regrets in how they spend their time and live life with flow, presence, and peace. Number two, I want to embrace playfulness, courage, compassion and Zen in myself, my kids and my husband. Number three, I want to embody my feminine self. I want to go through all seven stages as a female would go through. This is something that maybe I can go over in the later episode. I want to see the magic in myself, around me and everyone. Just think about one massive transformative purpose for your life right now. What would you ideally want to pursue just for the joy of the pursuit, the journey itself, and it will be always constant pursuit for the rest of your life that you will not check off? Alright. So just think about that for a moment. Write it down or dictate into something like your phone. Audio messages are great. I love dictating into my AI, so it stores all my thoughts, my journey, my own custom GPT.

07:31 Next, we’re going to do a very quick summary of the five stages of time freedom, okay? So the first stage of the five freedom — just so you know, you can be in all five stages at the same time, alright? You don’t necessarily have to just be in one stage. Now, the most important part I want you guys to think about is, when you aren’t working—like not working clinically or in a corporation or something like that—what is the stage you spend more than 50% of the time in? I guess that’s the best way to put it, okay? What is the stage you spend more than 50% of the time to be in? Alright. That’s going to determine your primary stage.

08:14 As a summary here, the stage one is time prisoner. I don’t have time. Life is reactive. You’re just firefighting the whole entire day. You react to other people’s demands, and you really don’t have any control. Number two: time manager. I’m so busy, but I’m tired. Because you haven’t used any leverage. You haven’t automated anything. You have no boundaries, and you sacrifice your own health and vitality. You don’t have any leverage. So you’re busy, but you feel like busyness — you’re mistaking any sort of busyness for progress. You’re not really making strides, or very, very slow strides towards your life vision. Number three is the time creator. As a time creator, your one liner is: I can make the time, because now you use leverage. You hired people. You automate things. You eliminated things. You’re a master at delegation. You maybe use AI. You now free up the space, but you have a pressure to optimize that white space. You are uncomfortable with free space on your calendar. You have FOMO. You see the gap in things, how things can be always better. How can I make this better? How can I make this faster? How can I get more output from the people who are working with me? Right? So you’re addicted to optimization and, actually, you get irritated whenever time is wasted. You’re really not free at all. So this is the stage of fake time freedom. You have control of your time and your schedule, but yet you feel stressed and you don’t feel free. I know this firsthand. That’s how I realized that when I’m on this current sabbatical right now, that my relationship with time, how I want to optimize the time, and how I see the gap and things is what’s trapping me. My mindset was stuck in a time creator stage.

10:04 Then in order to ascend to the fourth stage, a time liberator stage, where you truly are living and spending time without any regrets, your one liner is, your filter is: Does this multiply or drain my energy? You’re filtering based on energy. Time is not a factor at all. You filter based on your values, your purpose. You don’t have FOMO anymore. You see the gain or the magic in everything. Whenever something comes where there’s a thing to do, a to-do list or whatever, you don’t attach any emotion to it. It is just as is, or you actually see the magic or the gain in it. You just say to yourself, “Okay, this will be done in due time at this day.” That’s it. So you don’t go down a negative spiral. Usually, you’re very clear about your no’s. Usually, everything is a no, unless it’s a hell yes. Then the last stage is a time transcender. This is a stage where you say this moment is all there is—that there is no present, there is no future. You’re in flow state. You have maximal creativity, focus, energy. You’re present with whoever you’re in front of, and you’re having 5x output if you’re working on something, business-related perhaps or creative. You feel joy, and you’re just doing this thing just for the journey in itself, right? So you don’t stay in the stage forever. Your mostly target is to become a time liberator, because you can’t really flow forever. Then you’ll let all of the practical commitments go in your life.

11:38 So what I want to talk about is, how are you a go for the stage, and how do you know if you’re dropping down a stage? Okay. So stage two — I’m going to stage two first, because I’m going to show you what it’s like when you drop down to stage one and how to get back up. Stage two is the time manager. Again, I’m productive, but I’m tired. So you are a go for stage two if over 50% of the time, your non-working days are filled with, or it could be your working days, depending on how you want to do it. But usually, it’ll be two different percentages depending on your type of work. When I’m in the ER, I’m in stage one and two most of the time. That’s it. There’s really no other way around it. So if you’re a go for stage two in more than 50% of your non-clinical days are with known priorities. You have lists, you have tools, you use productivity tools. You do most of the things yourself. You feel busy, but the needle is not moving much. Whenever you get stressed, you feel like it’s all on me. So you’re doing all the household stuff yourself because it’s faster. You don’t hire because training feels like hard work to you. It’s easier if you just do it because you know everything already. You color code your calendar, and you have your checklist. But at the end of the day, you are still constantly exhausted, right? So how do you know if you drop down to stage one from stage two? Stage one is the time prisoner. When you start becoming reactive instead of planning, intentional planning, you start checking your email, your messages, your inbox, or start responding to it instead of your top three priorities. You start serving other people again instead of serving yourself and what’s important in your MTP and your life vision. Right? You’re afraid of what other people think about you in both stage one and stage two.

13:25 And so, in order to course correct back up to stage two as a time manager, you want to reintroduce your structure, your planning, your flow blocks, revisit your life vision and MTP, your massive transformative purpose. You take away all the distractions—notifications, phones, email notifications—especially during the deep work times, and also before you go to sleep. You want to schedule your top three priorities the following day, the night before, and just have the mindset that not everything needs to be completed today. Just top three, and that’s it. Remove one obligation that’s there only because you feel guilty and you’re afraid of how other people might see you. As an example case, my client was a 60% time prisoner, 40% time manager. And in just 48 hours, we restructured her flow blocks, and she was able to tell me that she has never experienced flow like this before. Just think that in 48 hours, you can make the change up to a stage like that. Again, I said you can be in all five stages in one day. Which one is the most over 50%? Okay.

14:33 Now, when you are in stage three, the time creator, you say, “I can make the time.” Time is expandable. You can use leverage. You’re good at automating. You’re good at hiring people. You are a go for stage three if over 50% of the time, you have delegation, automation, elimination. You have deep work blocks, full blocks. You can create space whenever there’s opportunity. You can move things around, and you’ll be able to take it on. You’re usually doing things in your zone of genius. You’re capable. You’re resourceful. You have flow no policies. For example, like before 1 PM there is, “I’m just flowing. I’m doing my deep work, and I don’t take any meetings.” Or, “Between 5 to 8, it’s my kids time and I am not doing any work.” Or the weekend, there’s no work. You have daily recovery after your flow blocks, each flow block.

15:23 Well, let me just tell you, how do you know that you’re dropping down into stage two, the time manager? You stop leveraging and you start doing again yourself. You feel behind unless you’re busy. You resorb the task that you outsourced before, and then you resorb it back to do it yourself again. You lose your discipline, your structural discipline. Your calendar is reactive to other people again. You’re doing it yourself instead of really structuring it carefully where it’s the non-negotiables are non-negotiable. You want to course correct back up, because you want to rebuild any sort of leverage you have before adding new things on top, new open loops. So if you drop down to time manager, to go back up to stage three, the time creator, you want to reinstate one protected flow block and recovery a day, one delegated task a day, having the mindset that 80% done is better than 0% done from other people helping you. Then you want to change the language. Language is super important, because it will give you the emotion. When you think like, “I feel unsupported. I feel stressed,” you want to change it to, “I feel like I haven’t slowed down to give myself the recovery I need.” Some of the real-life examples when you drop down is, you let go of a virtual assistant temporarily, and you start doing everything yourself. You fill all the white space up, all the freed-up time, with admin stuff instead of deep work. You feel like you need to learn something before you delegate it out to somebody, or you don’t want to hire someone because you feel like you don’t have enough work for an assistant to do. Sometimes you’ll sacrifice your recovery break to accommodate either a new opportunity, a meeting that talks about new opportunity. But this can be changed in one day, right? I have a client. He was 70% time creator, 30% time manager, but dropped down due to adding more obligations. But the following day, we restructured the day completely. One day, he was able to make as much income that he has for the past quarter compared to the past quarter. He was not able to make that much since last September. And so just know that the change can be instant. It can be very fast—within a day or two days.

17:46 Stage four, you’re the time liberator. You say, does this multiply or drain my energy? You want to be in this stage most of your day. So over 50%. Time is not the metric anymore; energy is the metric. You are a go for stage four if over 50% of the day feels calm, spacious, intentional, and your decisions are filtered through your life vision, your massive transformative purpose, your energy allocation and the criticality of the decisions or the task. Because you know you have these decision soldiers, you say no easily quickly. You love white spaces on your calendar. It doesn’t threaten you. You don’t feel like you’re not doing enough or not serving your purpose. You don’t have any FOMO, what you’re missing out on if you don’t take on this opportunity, right? You have scheduled in long-term active recovery. Say, every two weeks, it’s going to be a massage. Say, you have regular, like for me, regular PT appointments coming up to make sure I have maximal functionality and flexibility with my weightlifting. So you want to know. Sometimes you’ll teeter totter between stage three and stage four because this is the most common example I see. My calendar was a stage four, a time liberator. It looked like I have all my non-negotiables set. Everything is very optimized, scheduled out. I have time with my kids. I have date nights, but my mindset was stuck as a time creator. My mindset, my relationship with time, didn’t catch on.

19:30 So you know you drop to stage three if you start wanting to optimize outcome and output any time, time addiction, optimization, addiction comes back. You say yes to something because something’s too good to miss. Any sort of delays or inefficiencies are irritating to you, and we fill up the space with more work to do. You say yes to things that could cost you your sleep or family time. You feel this pressure when your mornings are productive, but the afternoons are not productive. You get very irritated when somebody slows down your schedule. When you drop to stage three, how do you course correct? You pause any new yeses, any new commitments. You want to re-anchor, revisit your life vision, your MTP. You want to decide on things to make sure, does this multiply or drain my energy? We restore any sort of white spaces on your calendar before adding anything else. Any choke points—calendar flow killers is what I call it—anything that’s like 15-minute maybe meeting here, you wait another 15 minutes and 30 minutes here, those are all flow killers. You want to remove these little blocks and collaborate more asynchronously as possible via text or audio message.

20:48 And so, as an example case, I was dropping down to time creator. I wasn’t focusing on my health and vitality as much as I felt like. It didn’t match my life vision. If I wanted to have cognitive and physical capability at 90, I really wasn’t focusing on it as much of, you know. Like I want to be as healthy as a 20-year-old right now, if that makes sense. Two decades younger. I was just weightlifting and getting mass, but I felt like I could go further. So I changed my priorities. Health and vitality is at the top now, because I want to spend time with my kids, my great grandkids, grandkids. I have went for a VO2 max testing. I’ve gotten a DEXA scan in order to assess my bones, my muscle, visceral fat, sub-q fat. Because now I have measurement, a baseline, and then I have a target to aim for. The target is a VO2 max of a 20-year-old, and same thing to increase my muscle mass to prevent muscle loss. So if you guys feel like your relationships with your loved ones are important, and you really want to be there for them with full functionality when they start having families themselves, to enjoy your time with any grandchildren that you have without not being able to get up from the floor with them, not being able to sit on the floor and play with them, then now is the time to kind of build up that reserve. Another thing I did to get back up to a time liberator is: I added one no-meetings, no-obligations-week per month as well. Just giving myself some white space week.

22:33 So now you can see that your time and energy capital decisions will either gain you true time freedom and your life vision, or it will sneak in quietly, compound, and cost you your time, your health, your family or business months and years later. In a mission, astronauts, during a mission, we actually track their work time and, as flight surgeons, daily work duty hours. As a flight surgeon, we actually have to look if it’s exceeding by 15 minutes or if it’s exceeding by 30 minutes. And if it’s exceeded a lot hard work week, we’re actually required to give them some payback for some rest. Otherwise, we know that this overworking—by 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes a day—will quietly compound and actually decrease performance, decrease their cognitive speed and capability. And so we are tracked. There’s a whole tool just to track this, okay? We need to approve it. But we don’t do the same thing for ourselves. We just let it quietly compound and compound until we need a vacation. Then when we go on a vacation, then we come back and we do it again, right? So we want sustainability.

23:53 Tony Robbins says that it is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. I truly believe that. Because you want to understand right now, for those of you guys, in whatever stage you’re in, one through four—sometimes you’re in five because you’re in deep work and flow state, but most of you guys are in one through four—you want to ask yourself right now, how do you ascend up the stage? What decisions do you need to make in order to ascend up the stage? What is the criticality of your decision right now? In terms of criticality in NASA, criticality one is loss of life for vehicle. Criticality two is loss of mission. In earth criticality, I translate it to, number one, it’s a loss of our health, vitality, relationships or business survival. Number two, it’s loss of our own mission, our impact on this world, our business direction, short-term revenue efficiency of our business. That’s criticality two to me. Alright? So your decision right now, what is the criticality of it? Okay?

24:57 As a summary of the stage descend and ascend, if you experience this constant reactivity to other people, you’re in stage one. Immediate correction is that you need to introduce, reintroduce the flow block structure into your life that’s matching with your chronotype. Number two, if you are experiencing exhausted productivity, where you’re just doing everything yourself, you’re back in stage two, you want to add some leverage, either automating, delegating or eliminating. Number three, if you feel like you’re optimizing time, lots of time pressure, you’re in stage three. Now you want to re-anchor to the energy filter again, instead of figuring out if you have the time. And also, if you’re in stage five, you actually don’t know you’re in stage five until you’re out of stage five. You drop down to stage four when you start thinking about the past and the future. That’s when you’re back in stage four. It’s okay. You re-engage in the deep work the next flow block after you structure and some recovery. When you structure in recovery, it’s going to be something that activates your rest and digest system, the parasympathetic system. So that could be laying on the floor, Shavasana. That could be breathing. That could be looking out in nature, taking a walk in nature, anything to kind of calm your nervous system down. I want to tell you that descent down the stage is normal. But if you don’t notice, unnoticed descent will cost you.

26:25 So the time and energy mission control, this is where we make decisions, okay? This is now the decision board room. What is a critical decision that you must make right now to qualify for a go for the next stage of time freedom? What is the cost of inaction? What is the cost of not making this decision and going for it? Okay? Say, in a year, what would like it be like in a year? What would it be like in five years? What would you gain if you actually made this decision right now, in a year or five years from now? Alright. So think about that for a moment. What is a critical decision? I’ll give you some examples, just so you can think about what type of decisions these might be. So a decision for me was cutting all the night shifts because the cost was, essentially, I had low energy all week, even though I didn’t do that many nights. But one night shift, two nights before, I would have some stress about the nights, because I was like, “Oh crap. I got to make sure I adjust my sleep.” I know I’m going to be tired day one, no matter what I do. Then two days after, I’m still tired. And so I’m not present with my kids. Everything was slow progress in my business, right? The gain when I cut off the night shifts completely, I have more presence with my kids. I was waking up to do my first flow block very easily, because I was now waking up by 4:30 AM, 4:45 AM even for work. So it’s perfect. It’s just more vitality, longevity on this earth, more playful with my husband.

28:01 Another decision example from one of my clients: she’s cut the remote shifts that was actually draining her energy because of the household. When she’s in the house, it’s distracting, actually. The cost was slowing productivity with the patient’s interruption of patient care, and also just annoyance with the people in the household. What she gained after: more focus with patients, more parasympathetic activation, more calm, more presence with the patients, more rest and digest, and actually, $24,000 more revenue per year. So that’s a win-win situation. The third example decision is pivoting into telemedicine versus full-time working in the ER. When you work full time in the ER, you have a lack of sleep, your focus and presence. You’re always flipping back and forth. Your sleep is never consistent, so you’re always annoyed a lot of times, impatient. She was labeled as “the angry parent” by her children, her family. So the gain after making that pivot was more sleep, of course, more energy. Of course, everything is more consistent, more time to make it to the sports that she wanted to do. Less cortisol activation, less sympathetic activation with the fight or flight response during ER shifts, because there’s less ER shifts. Freedom to travel on vacation, and also less cognitive low on decisions on when to do things based on the ER shift schedule. Because the ER shift schedule can be very irregular. So a lot of times, before the switch was like, “Well, I don’t know when I can do this. Let me check. It’s so irregular, I don’t know. There’s no irregularity. I have to check my ER schedule for everything.”

29:52 So, again, think about the critical decision you must make right now to ascend up the stage, and what is the cost of inaction? Okay? What would you gain if you made this decision right now? I know we talked about a lot. Your mission right now is to allocate your time and energy to avoid any costly mistakes and protect your life vision. This is a photo of the South Pole, okay? In the South Pole, everything, every decision you make will affect everything else. You have such limited resources of people, of fuel, of food, of electricity, that you really have to allocate everything very carefully. Sometimes the planes can make it in for resupply. Sometimes they cannot. Sometimes they can make it in for medical evacuation; sometimes they cannot that same day. So it’s all dependent on weather. So I want you to allocate your time and energy as if you’re this vessel, this life. You’re like you’re in the South Pole. It’s precious, so precious. I want you to get to your life vision no matter what. And really, the most important thing is your health and vitality. That’s the most important thing, right? Without your health and vitality, you have nothing else.

31:15 Thank you so much for your time, energy, and attention here. Usually, I have just one-on-one advisory. But because, from other people’s advice, I wanted to serve more people, I think the best way for me is to create a community in school. Currently, it’s called the time and energy mission control. This community is only for people whose decisions affect profits, people, and outcomes. It’s not so much content and support, but it’s a monthly decision boardroom where people can come in live, and we pressure test real decisions before they become expensive. We use decision systems and filters to eliminate wasted time, money, energy. We just have fewer open loops. You will leave with less decision or leave with fewer open loops, decision closed, lower cognitive load and protective focus. Okay? So if this actually resonates with you, if this resonates with you, I would actually go to school and find time and energy mission control. You can take a look to see if this is a match of where you are at. If you want to ascend up the stages in time freedom, then go ahead and join the community. We will have live sessions and also recorded sessions. But the goal is actually in the live sessions, where we can make decisions, right? So again, thank you so much with your time, energy, attention, for listening to me. And just so you know, that everything you need is within you now. Alright. Thank you, and have an amazing day.

32:56 Disclaimer: This content is for general information purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine. No doctor or patient relationship is formed. The use of this information linked to this content is at the user’s own risk. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical conditions they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. The views are personal views only and do not represent any university or government institution.