7 Principles Physicians Can Learn from Reading the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

2023-09-09 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CR3VLaolhE Transcript YouTube English auto-captions. [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] books that affected my life and career in a significant way was 2007's book The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss no doubt you've probably heard about the book but on this episode I want to share with you seven takeaways that I think phys white Physicians should read this book and what they can get out of the four hour work week that can affect their career and their life in this episode of bootstrap MD hey guys this is Dr Mike limbang welcome to another edition of bootstrap MD this is the podcast for physician and Healthcare entrepreneurs I am a physician uh primary care physician who actually had to retire from corporate medicine uh nearly 20 years ago and now I have my own practices I run online businesses and I don't work the traditional way that most Physicians employed Physicians do and I just want to share what I've learned throughout my experiences on this podcast and I love reading books whether I read it the traditional way or you know more often these days since I do some traveling is I listen on Audible on audiobooks in my car or when I'm flying and I really enjoy reading different books and how it can be incorporated into my life and what I love reading is biographies about people who've done some tremendous things and not only in entrepreneurship just way that they live their life and a book came out several years ago called the four hour work week and I feel that most people know about it but what I want to focus on are takeaways if you haven't read the book why Physicians should read it now at the time 2007 I believe is when it came out I had already retired from corporate medicine full-time I I fully left and what it did is it really cemented to me that I was on the right path of what I wanted to do I had I was involved in a startup and um it just really some of the principles some of which I've heard some of which I didn't uh it was interesting to see from a gentleman who was well traveled also had a startup company and did rather well with it and um you know he if you haven't heard of him I inquired you to go check out his blog and check out his newsletters some really interesting things that he's done and throughout now in especially in the entrepreneurship World in business World he's well known in his book for our work week you could still find it either in the top 10 of Amazon for on most weeks so I want to cover why doctors if you haven't read it should start reading it because I do think you know whether or not you decide to become an entrepreneur you need to have the mindset first you need to have the mindset and it's something that as doctors we don't really get exposed to a whole lot you know we're reading principles of internal medicine and you know entrepreneurs are reading books like from Tony Robbins or another ramekan so with that being said let's take a deep dive into the for our work week by Tim Ferriss and see why I believe Physicians should read this in my in my estimation a really important book that could affect your life and career so the four-hour work week as I mentioned came out in 2007 best-selling book what it does it explains to readers the strategies to escape the nine to five grind and live a life rich in experiences and I know many doctors work more than the nine to five in general but I think you'll still get a lot out of the book just by it really doesn't puts in contrast um uh for people who are are working and employed uh model which is for most we are exposed to to a different way of uh building a career so the core idea is it designs a lifestyle that prioritizes time prioritizes Mobility over the traditional Notions Notions of Career Success and uh the subtitle talks about this concept of the new Rich so the new Rich uh or and our our people who prioritize time and prioritize experiences over merely just accumulating wealth it makes a distinction between people who are just working at the end of you know get out of college or get out of TR you know uh education traditional education and work from somebody from nine to five usually the same company for 30 plus 40 plus years with the hopes that and you'll get some type of a retirement package 401k and then can retire at 65. so what they produce what Jim Tim talks about is called the deal framework and that's an acronym and deal stands for definition elimination Automation and Liberation so what definition is is it redefines success to mean what you truly not to me not what Society tells you what should mean e is elimination that we do a lot of stuff a lot of busy work and that's probably not the best use of our time and it talks about applying the 80 20 rule uh 80 20 principle which you're probably known as the Pareto Principle to certain tasks and obligations knowing that 20 percent of tasks can produce 80 of the results that we want and it gets rid of you know less impactful things to focus on really the most rewarding things that can help us in our career it was Automation and this is a time before AI it was time before um most where virtual assistants really get got traction is the idea that I've talked about before that a successful business is but is a business that runs on its own that you have systems in place automations in place and that could generate predictable income and once it's set up it requires minimal or ongoing effort and then L stands for Liberation so it's going to liberate you so you can achieve the freedom that you want where you can work from anywhere at any time so what are ways as Physicians that we could or we could benefit from reading that book especially if you're one who wanting to go into entrepreneurship and if you are I think you are because you're most likely listening to this podcast or watching this podcast right now um so let's talk about the 80 20 principle because this is important it's Pareto Principle it's been around for years you've heard it where but I don't think a lot of people really kind of understand it but it's it's I it's implementing the 20 that 20 percent of tasks that usually focusing on 20 of their tasks produce 80 of the role results in my company we identify like 20 of our uh patients or clients results in Eighty percent of our revenue and so as a physician we could get tasked with a lot of different UH responsibilities right we spend a lot of time we have patient care which is what we should we do it but we also get other times where we get placed on committees or we get placed on doing electronic medical records you know or you get placed a lot of times filling out forms that really um and sometimes like most of the time we don't really get kind of paid for and it's identifying uh positions in our jobs that really focuses on producing the most results so whether it's in patient care for Physicians or for physician entrepreneurs looking at different business ventures and it's the idea that I think most doctors need to learn to start saying no to things because saying no to opportunity to certain opportunities is probably just as more impactful or more than saying yes to different opportunities on there just because you're you're invited to committee doesn't necessarily mean it's going to help you and your career and that's what I learned as an employee doctor when I was placed on so many different committees and it really didn't amount to what I wanted to get out and what I wanted to get out to my family so it does require you to be selfish sometimes but I think as doctors we say yes to everything and uh it often results in our own detriment and maybe resulting as why medicine is the way that it is [Music] I wasn't used to asking for help especially when it came to subjects outside of medicine but then I found physiciancoaches.com in an instant I found hundreds of experts to help me in all aspects of life on areas I was afraid to ask dealing with burnout starting a side gig money management even help with my marriage and the best part nearly all experts are Physicians themselves after reading their profile in a quick chat I knew I found the right Mentor for me at physiciancoaches.com help from professional colleagues is just a click away [Music] another key principle from the firework week is automation and we should be automating systems in our practices we should be automating systems as an employed physician we've seen this with technology but you know we have a automated appointment scheduling billing sometimes with certain procedures are starting to get automated but remember as I've said till my I get blue in the face why is the fax machine still in interval part in medicine it's an Antiquated dinosaur type system and so what are ways you can be automating uh your practice your career um and they'll allow you free up time for uh doing the things that have the biggest impact like like patient care uh when you were starting up a business are um setting up everything where you know you're producing content or are you using things such as AI automated AI that uh for you when looking at your scheduling are you having uh tasks even even things like you know sitting with time for a meeting right are you using a system like calendly or doodle or are you going back and forth on like okay what time should we we get back uh you know are you using uh you know Sops you know um standard operating procedures when implementing uh repetitive tasks in your procedures when you are working with um you know let's say people who may work under you such as medical assistance and you know you are training and burning and you're going through them and each time you're hiring them you're having to repeat yourself over and over again um when you could be having them trained to create you know screen capture videos that record every process so when you're training all you have to do is then show them the videos and onboard them uh correctly um when you are having procedures are you having to go in and repeat the same things that you've been saying to each and every patient are you having them watch a video explaining everything about the procedure uh so by the time they get to talk to you you're just basically answering specific questions that may not have been covered in the videos those are things that you should be incorporating right now through Automation and along those lines an important principle principle that for our weekly talks about is outsourcing and this was a time when virtual assistants were still early on but now it's kind of commonplace so you know these days with the cost of medicine a lot of these things a lot of these companies I know um understanding that Outsourcing can be a vital component to their company uh in your task are you Outsourcing there's things that you could be Outsourcing right now I think one of the most important things this doctor is instead of you having to write everything down and putting them in an electronic medical record you could be having a scribe and now you're going to Virtual scribes that could cost Pennies on the dollar so you don't have to be on your computer you know typing that in at the at the end of the day most often not getting paid for that type of work um using Outsourcing items in marketing and doing any research such as if you are starting up a company you're doing all the research you could be hiring someone to doing 40 hours a week uh on on Research uh using the the internet or um and not even just talking about human Outsourcing but using AI using AI based systems I'm heading out to a AI Conference next week just so I can learn like what is the latest in the in this so that could help Propel me and give my business a competitive Advantage so Outsourcing is very important component what they talked about he talks about in the firework week another thing that was kind of fun and kind of interesting is you know my father uh you know unfortunately he passed away a few years ago but I didn't get to spend a lot of time with him when he was working at as a pediatrician and we would you know once a year we would go on a vacation which is great sometimes we didn't and most look forward to you know the two or three weeks of vacation that we get um and we've seen of course burnout is at an all-time high right because we're working intense long hours and in this concert was really foreign to me when I was reading it was this idea that we should have mini retirements so for example uh my friend and business colleague Peter Kim he takes time off he's gone for like three months out of the year uh because he has a lifestyle now that lets him do that and you get to spend time uh with his kids but you know he's difficult to reach during those times because he is you know in another country he may not have um you know phone access and this kind of gives you a reset right into what you're doing and now we have different types of ways that medicine can be treated such as the growth of telemedicine such as using lucum tendons this is now getting to be more acceptable for a physician where you know even though I still see times especially someone who runs a practice where you know the if they have to take any type of vacation they lose money because they're responsible for bringing in uh the revenue seeing the patients and if they're not able to do that then they're losing money um I've talked about you know when I designed my practice I'm able to go on um long trips uh we go on cruises we try to increase this once a year many times with a really crappy internet but that allows me time because I built my clinic that they why I wanted to kind of lead my life and not kind of be chained to it and the business can still uh run on its own and even thrive on its own so having many retirements again is is not only good for the soul and I think it's good for your mental health and it'll also allow you the opportunities to explore different Avenues um you know we work with clients who uh start to recognize that and they're they're taking time to like you know I'm going to look into this venture or I'm going to take this um I'm going to look into this opportunity and really kind of dig deep into it to see if it's right for me it allows them to go to Industry and networking events that can be crucial to the success of whatever career that they want to get started or maybe they'll say you know what I'm going to work on a startup for a few months on my own and see if I like it and see what this is what I want to do another important principle they talk about is geographic Arbitrage so I've already alluded to this is that the way that medicine has changed we have a lot more opportunities especially since covet ended and this is allowed Physicians just to be engaged in different types of job opportunities that were really never thought possible before we see this if you have any of telemedicine where you could be you know working at home or you could be traveling and working on uh you know your vacation and maybe doing a few hours of Television that way you're no longer confined to it we talked about through locums and having [Music] um not a traditional where you could be working for a high intensive period of time and then maybe take a few weeks off and allowing those many retirements and um you know another way is is identifying places in the country where your dollar goes a little bit further perhaps you're going to be working in a rural area perhaps you're going to get some loan repayments because of it Public service loan of repayments um lower cost of living so uh you're going to get more out of your your income and uh because of the physician shortage they're the the income that you can make has increased and if you work in a underserved area it may go even more to it so um again this book came out you know 15 plus years ago but now a lot of these things that you know are now could be commonplace we're still relatively new at that time batching task is another important principle that I learned from the for our work week and it applies to looking at your Castle you're doing and you're doing the same things kind of every single day are there ways that you could be batching certain tasks such as instead of checking your email throughout the day you check it twice a day uh is there work that you could be doing that you could be matching uh in your business for example with this podcast you know I often credit batch you know a few episodes at a time and allow me to focus specifically and get really good at doing that in the interviewing people and then um there are other tests that uh you know when to their test like that so would you be making content and doing it and then you're completed are there things that you could be doing at work that you could be batching such as with uh training or creating um content for your practice what are ways that you could you could be uh doing it you could perhaps schedule certain periods of time uh you know let's say you want to only want to do surgeries on so many periods of the month and just batch it and then you know have that over the next few days and then allow you to focus on different different aspects of your career an important principle that I also learned from the Florida work week is the idea of selective ignorance now we know we get bombarded by information through the internet you know they've done studies and it's you know 10x 20x the amount of information that we get how do we know you know what is important and what's not and as a doctor you know there's always new things that are changing you know protocols that you learn are are no longer being effective and we also get other stuff of just noise as well and just in terms of what we're doing and the idea of a selective ignorance is that given the amount of information that we're getting in research and in in literature focusing just on the most impactful things that you could be doing to make your practice uh more efficient to becoming a better employee uh to learning uh different skills that you need as a doctor such as negotiation which you often get discussed in at all or in medical school but it's so important when we're looking to get uh arrays or more benefits from our employer so you know getting rid of getting rid of things you know maybe with social media you're turning off some some things and these can all can be very important and it can make you a more productive physician and then those are my seven uh takeaways that I got from before work week but since you're continuing to listen on it I'm going to give you a bonus and that bonus takeaway that I got from Tim Harris's uh book that changed my life is setting boundaries I've said earlier that Physicians we say no uh we're it's uncomfortable for us saying no and we tend to say yes to everything and much to our own detriment but it's about saying boundaries uh for yourself so for me for example there are times that I'm not available you know unless it's you know a dire emergency when I tell you know then please call 9-1-1 and you can contact me earlier but there are times that I've set in my calendar that I'm not to be disturbed so in your office you know do you have an open door policy or are you able to shut it and say hey look if we sign up I'm not to be disturbed this is the time where I'm doing some critical thinking I'm doing some deep work and so you should be able to set time slots and that's going to help with your mental health it's going to help you become more productive and allow you to explore different entrepreneurial Ventures and so you have to be very wary of those time vampires you know those people you know who who suck the life ahead of you um and or those opportunities that you you say yes to that suck the life out of you as well and it doesn't Propel you on what you want to do in your career so the importance of setting boundaries again fundamental uh takeaway that I got from the book and you're going to be better for it so again you know the book has been out you know I think it was the four hour work week um and this is just my opinion you know was uh it was a catchy title um he had a different title from it but his Publishers felt that it was a very catchy thing because like hey everybody wants to work four hours right um it's not necessarily that you are gonna be able to like work for hours um so it was more about like a clickbait type of title but it just shows you can work differently be part of the new Rich live the life that you want and I think you're gonna be a better doctor because of it so I encourage you to uh to to pick it up um and what I liked is that you know it did set me on the right path to my career back then and you know and I think it could do the same for you so thanks again for listening to this episode of the uh bootstrap MD podcast and no matter where you are in your career you want to do something that's good for you it's good for your family it's okay to say no to things it's okay to um to be a little bit selfish because you're going to have ups and downs but at the end of the day if you do one thing a day that propels you a little bit closer to goals uh you're gonna be so much better for it so keep moving forward [Music]