2 Life-Changing Habits Every Entrepreneur Needs for Time Mastery
30 Jan 2026 · 14 min
This content was created by Dr. Nneka Unachukwu. This content was uploaded by Dr. Nneka Unachukwu. This is a podcast episode titled "2 Life-Changing Habits Every Entrepreneur Needs for Time Mastery" (Entre MD) created on 2024-11-25. It is a solo-hosted coaching episode featuring Dr. Una (host) speaking to physician entrepreneurs about time mastery and productivity. Using a client anecdote, she teaches two concrete habits—taking control of phone notifications (be the boss of your phone) and organizing work into recurring theme days to enable deep work—and explains practical steps, benefits (reduced mental clutter, higher output, more sleep/family time), and how to implement them. The episode also promotes the Seven Figure Physician CEO audiobook and the EntreMD brand.
Chapters
If your business isn't working the way you expected, it's not because you're bad at business. It's because no one ever taught you how it actually works. We were trained to master algorithms in medicine, but when it comes to revenue teams and growth, we were never taught anything. We weren't even told to figure it out. We just assumed somehow we'd know. Like it would magically make sense. But it doesn't. The era of the seven Figure Physician CEO is here. And it's not about working harder. It's about learning entrepreneurship as a system. The same way you mastered ACLs and pals, you can master the algorithm of building a profitable scalable business. That's why I recorded the Seven Figure Physician CEO audiobook. Whether you're building a medical or non medical business, and whether your goal is your first million, first 2 million, first 5 million, first 10 million. This is where the journey starts. There is no Calvary coming to save us. We are the Calvary. So. So go get your audiobook now. Www.entremd.com 7Figurebook. And let's rewrite the narrative for physicians starting today. 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, docs. Welcome to the Entre MD 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. 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 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. 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. But, you know, 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 40s 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 is 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 total turnaround. You may be tempted to say, well, this doesn't apply to me. I'm not running serial 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, 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. 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 simply, 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 from 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 notifications. There's no notifications, like, not 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. On a. On a work Mode like, things just don't show up. 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 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 too 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 focus 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. 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. 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. And, you know, 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, you know, like, this one step on your phone. 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, right? 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. 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. The way he described it is, you know, he said. He said an email will come in, and he's like, oh, I'll get to 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? All that? So even though he said, I will do it later, so technically he's not being distracted. He was being royally distracted because he's still solid, right? 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. The second thing that I told him to do, I said, okay, you are at a stage in your business where you have three businesses that you're. You're responsible for. You have all these projects, you have life now. You, you know, 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. What he ended up doing was he had one day that was like his planning day. So for the project, 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 the projects. Right? And so he had this day. And so 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, you know, 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. 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 those kind 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 role. So that was what happened with the service delivery part of it. 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 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 that 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 those things. He has a designated time, they're able to do really high capacity work. And now he has his time back. So. So this is what he said to me. He said, I used to think that I could only work at night because that was the only time that was, you know, quiet and I can get deep work done. He says, what I didn't realize is that I had been distracting myself so much I had been distracting myself so much by, know, my phone and everyone having access to me at every time and not having theme days. So you know, like 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. That is what I do as well. You know, my phone, I go to it when I want to go to it. There are no alerts, no notifications, nothing. Like there's just nothing happening on it. The same with my, with my computer, I go to it when I want to go to it. And I do theme days. 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, email, social media, books that I'm working on, all of that is 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 development, I have all these themes. I didn't start doing this when I started running multiple companies. I started doing this a long time ago. 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, X, Y, Z time, because that is when that happens, right? 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. Like, I even have themed thinking, right? Like, 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? 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 this 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 how you use it for your own good. Rooting for you always. See you on the next episode.
More from Dr.
The Business Of Coaching With Physician, Lawyer And Executive Coach Dr. Adam Harrison