The Hidden Addiction Behind Productivity

In this eye-opening episode of The Recovery Vow Podcast, Eric sits down with Dr. Ann Tsung, a triple board-certified physician, former NASA flight surgeon, and expert in performance neuroscience who helps leaders stop sacrificing their health and peace in the name of success.

Dr. Ann shares how her work with astronauts, physicians, and high-performing entrepreneurs led her to a powerful realization about time, energy, and the addictive pull of constant productivity. From identifying the “time prisoner” mindset to exposing the false freedom of always staying busy, she breaks down the hidden ways people chase dopamine through work, phones, achievement, and control.

What makes this conversation so powerful is how practical it becomes. As Eric opens up about his own struggle to sit still, put the phone down, and find peace outside of motion, Dr. Ann offers a new framework for recovery. This conversation is a wake-up call for anyone who feels exhausted, overstretched, or afraid of the quiet.

\On This Episode:
• Dr. Ann’s journey from NASA flight surgeon to helping leaders achieve sustainable peak performance
• The 5 stages of time freedom and how to identify where you are
• Why overworking and over-optimizing can become their own form of addiction
• Eric’s honest struggle with stillness, white space, and the fear of slowing down
• How dopamine, phones, and productivity keep people stuck in survival mode
• What “zone of genius” means and why it matters for recovery and purpose
• How sleep, chronotypes, and flow blocks can help you reclaim peace and energy

Connect with Dr. Ann Tsung:
🌐 anntsungmd.com
📱Socials: @anntsungmd

Connect with us:
Socials: @‌RecoveryVow
Website: http://recoveryvow.com
Email: recoveryvow@gmail.com

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• Transcript

  [music] [music] Thank you so much for joining us on the Recovery Valve podcast today. I hope I've I've got my voice enough that I sound like a 1800 operator. Could be. I always just sound so robotic when I do these things, Ann. I hate that. It I don't know what it is. As soon as you hit record, it's like it just takes away who you who you really are in your voice. And so I just want us to both just settled in who we are and our voice, but also want to um to dive directly into this conversation with you and why I invited Miss An to come on uh the recovery bout podcast. Now recovery bow is known as a nonprofit. The podcast is just one part of it, but we offer our education department. We offer our uh book uh marriage after addiction. We're working on our second book now for parents who've battled um with their children in adult children and young children in addiction. and uh we're just helping people as in as many ways as we can. And I think that we do that through just different levels of conversation on the other side of recovery. Now, Miss Anne necessarily doesn't have anything that that puts her in a state of recovery, but she does a lot. This is a very smart woman that I'm about to talk to. We met in Miami um at a book launch party for for Paul Hutchinson. And um and I'm not going to give it all away, but Miss Anne, I want you to tell us a little bit about what you do when it comes to space, what you come to do when it comes to medical treatment, and then what you do and how you help people um just walk in their their built-in leadership. So everyone, thanks for joining recovery about podcast. This is Dr. An. Thank you for having me on the show. Um for everybody who is listening, thank you for your presence, attention. Um so I am a physician. and I am triple board certified in ER, emergency medicine, critical care and aerospace medicine. So, uh my full-time position was at NASA uh as the flight surgeon, which that means the doctor for the astronauts and I support them through their training, their mission, and I certify them for flight and also we're assigned to various programs of the the space programs to give our input as the physician. And so currently I'm actually on a one and a half year sbatical because uh in three weeks we're starting a one-year travel with my two kids who are two and four, my husband around the world for a year. Oh my goodness. When was the last time you worked with NASA on the medical team? Yeah. Seven months ago. Seven months ago. Seven months ago. Yeah. So it started it's a year and a halfatical. So seven months ago was when I stopped to start the prep for all this. At the same time I am also the founder of Anssung MD. Essentially what I do there I'm certified in performance neuroscience performance sustainable peak performance right especially with all the astronauts. That's our goal. So what I do is I help leaders and entrepreneurs stop sacrificing their own life their health uh remove the bottleneck that's themselves so they actually actually achieve their life mission with sustainable peak performance and we achieve that through flow systems which I will talk a little bit more about and actual like tactics and habits that we install and the mindset change. So what's important is actually value, presence, flow, and peace. That's awesome. And as you're saying that, Ann, I'm I'm picturing you talking to all these white coat physicians, people that are in some kind of training or just very, very, very smart people in a room. But what I also hear is just the practicality in it of how people that may be walking in their, you know, first steps out of addiction in recovery, these are the same thoughts they have to have. Maybe they're not being they're not being trained to um be doctors for NASA, but but maybe they're just being trained retrained in their thoughts um on how they walk through, you know, life. Um I can hear everything you're saying and just and just take that practicality and apply it to life situations. Yeah, I would say probably the biggest mindset shift for whoever in this world addiction or not going through addiction is actually they feel like they don't have control, right? And then they don't ask for what they want. The biggest example last week was um I was helping out somebody with their own surgical practice. They started a new surgical practice, but they were still setting the surgery time start first case start at 7 a.m. just like all the other hospitals, academic centers because that's how we were trained. But that's not his chronoype. We'll talk about the chronotype. His chronoype is actually his peak zone is going to be a little bit later and also you want to reserve that peak zone to become the CEO to work on the business instead of working in the business. Essentially, what we worked on was this is your practice. You have control of your start time. So, we're going to move his start time of his surgery like three hours later. So, he actually has three hours to sleep. Now, sacrifices health and then work on the business things that move the needle towards his life mission. That's really good. Why Why is it I've always wondered why doctors want to want to do surgery so early in the morning? Is it because of the you just said the CEO side of things too where they have to go run the business and work in the business? Well, when you are doing surgery in the morning, they can't work on the business. So he was sacrificing his peak chronotype zone working in the business which is surgery but not doing the visionary stuff the CEO stuff but when you go back and you look at the work that you've done which is very very impressive work and I I mean you're a very very smart lady tell tell some of the listeners like how you help the clients you have I guess is the best word to use or the people that you serve the the ones that you walk alongside of to to walk in full leadership potential and just help them think new thoughts and get out of their own head space. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a great time to talk about the five stages of time freedom because this is essentially a diagnostic tool for you to see where you're at. And just so you know, you can be in all five stages in one day. This is an identity you'll identify with. Am I acting as this stage or this stage? And then you'll know whether you're on purpose or not, whether you're in survival mode or not. So, this will apply to anyone who's recovering from addiction. We're going to go through multiple stages and I'm going to talk about the time freedom now and then you'll identify yourself. You're like, "Oh crap, I'm dropping to the lower stage. Okay, I need to go up to the higher stage." And then depending on the stages you're in, the tactics are different. So, diagnose yourself where you are and then I'm going to talk about the tactics for each stage. Okay? So everybody who's listening to this, I want you to think about you can think about a working day or a non-working day. For the working day, most likely you're going to be stuck in the lower stages, but there are non- workinging days where you can ascend up the stages because you have a little bit more freedom on what you want to work on. Okay? And I want you to think about where are you spending most of your time in percentage. So like 50% on this page, 25% on this page, 25% on this page or something like that. Okay. So Eric, you can do this as well. You can I'm doing it as you're talking. I'm laying [laughter] out I'm laying it out right now and Okay. Okay. So um the bottom stage, okay, it's called the time prisoner. And this is the stage where you say, "I don't have time." because you wake up and you're just like checking your inbox, your email, you're checking social media, you're checking your texts before you even like begin work. And so you're reacting to other people's demands before you're actually serving yourself. And this is survival mode. This is maximal sympathetic mode, fight orflight mode. Um, and people in addiction a lot of times they're in that mode a lot of times, okay? and they're trying to escape that pain by say drinking or using drugs and I see them a lot in the emergency room when I work. So it's just a form of escape and you're just as sympathetic all the time. Number two is time manager. So you're using calendar, checklist, to-do list, but everything is yourself. So you your oneliner is I'm productive but I'm tired. And you're not using any leverage. you haven't done any AI automations or any automations. You haven't eliminated the things that don't serve you because you don't have a clear massive transformative purpose or life mission because so you don't know where you're supposed to go or maybe you do but you feel like you can do things better. So you are performing all the things that are not in your zone of genius and therefore you're just tired and you're not moving the needle. Number three, the time creator. So as a time creator you start using leverage. You hire people, you use automations, you use AI to help you. So now you also um work in your peak chronotype zone. Everybody has a peak chronotype zone. There are three types I'll talk about. And you match it up and you do your deep work during that three to five hours where it's like your peak and you can 5x your output. So you free up all this space. And now with all the new opportunities that come, you'll say, "Okay, let me try that out." You'll juggle things around to make it fit in. And your oneliner is, "I can make the time." And because you feel very resourceful, you feel like you have a lot of power and control. And this is where the fake time freedom is. And this is where I realized I was in fake time freedom when I was on the satical because technically I didn't have any of the meetings and the obligations in NASA. And so I started saying yes to all these opportunities of collaborations and I was still stressed and I realized I wasn't fake time freedom. Fre time freedom is not about being able to control how you spend your time with whoever you want whenever you want because I had that and I didn't feel calm and I didn't have peace and I didn't have flow. So because I was looking at the gap and inefficiencies I was trying to fill the white space that I freed up. And so the biggest difference between this stage and the next stage up is just that you see what's wrong and then you have the sense to optimize. You have this pressure to optimize at the time you have. So you're not really in peace or in flow. Now the fourth stage is called the time liberator. And it's called the time liberator because whenever new opportunities come you say will this multiply or drain my energy? And so time is not even the capital you're working with anymore. It's not how you measure it because you have the time but now it's by alignment, your value, your purpose. And then so you see the magic in everything. You see the gain in everything. You know you're at this state when you can think about a thing to do that's to be done like something on the to-do list or that's something you haven't done but you don't attach any negative emotion to it like um oh my god I still have this thing to do or oh my god that's still not done. I'm so behind. You don't do that. You just see it as a thing to do and it will be done at a future time on the next flow block and that's it. So you're aligned. You're in peace. You're in flow. Everything is a no unless it's a hell yes and you're only taking on two big things per quarter and that's it. You know, successful people have an addiction to optimize their time. That is their addiction. Their addiction is work and checking off boxes and an addiction to like do as much as they can with the white space that they have. So that is a form of dopamine hit. It's the same brain chemistry. You're absolutely substance addiction. All right. So it's about rewiring that entirely and then so that's why we want to live as much in the fourth and then the fifth stage uh as possible. So the fifth stage is called the time transcender and in this state you say to yourself time itself doesn't exist. The concept doesn't even exist. Right? So you're only focusing on the present. All there is is this moment now. This is the flow state that we try to live in as much as we can. This is the flow state where you can either 5X your output or it's a flow state where you're in group flow um or you're like you know doing a presentation that's a flow state you're spending time with your kids your loved one if you're not checking your phone that's a form of flow state and you know that you know when people say like you know you're having fun when time like flies by that is this form of flow. The memories you will remember at the end of your life, most of them are going to be timeless. And that is why this stage is so important to to keep up to live a high flow life. All right. And so, um, before we get to like the tactics, I am curious, uh, Erica, do you happen to know what percentage you are? And then we can just kind of use your case to know what's the best thing to do. Do you think you're half of the time non- workinging day or not working day like 50% as like a time creator, time manager, time prisoner? I am on the go until I go to sleep. So I work I have this nonprofit, the sign you see in the background, recovery vow, was what brought me to Miami when I met you. But that's my nonprofit. That's my that's my hobby. But it's a 30 to 40 hour a week hobby that I don't get paid for. I just love doing it because I'm helping people and it's become this thing, right? my job job, my actual career is is working for um churches and I oversee operation development for our you know the way the facilities grow. So if we're doing large projects, you know, multi-million dollar projects, I'm overseeing that. So, but I blend the two together so that I can do do the two successfully. You can only go in so many different directions and you will not be able to go at 100%. you won't be able to give a 100% worth of the quality of work that those things um depend on and what you can provide because you're going you just enough time in the day. Oh, and by the way, I've got a I've got three kids and a wife, you know. So, it's like, you know, where where do they fit in? Which they should be first, but you know, I'm in these other places more than I am at home. But I start these other places before I even leave the home. And then I'm often not putting it down until I've kind of just clocked out for the night. And then and I'll be honest with you, Ann, it's probably around dinner time. Around 6:30 is when I actually put the phone down for a certain amount of time. We spend time together at the dinner table. And I wish I could say I was better at just leaving it down. But um there's a time where I can check it and be on it and look at work or things that I'm I'm interested in. And I hate to say it that way. one, um, it's because my daughter's in, you know, getting ready for for bath time or, you know, my my oldest son's in college, so he's not even there. My my middle son is upstairs gaming and my wife is running around the house doing her thing and I actually feel like I'm sitting by myself and I cannot, as an a person in recovery, I can't sit still too long, but a percentage of that, I would say 80% of my time is go, go, go. I wish that I could turn off sometimes. Well, as a time prisoner, um, so you feel like 80% of your time is a time prisoner. And again, time manager is where you know you're working on your biggest goals, but everything is yourself. You're not using leverage. Time creator, you are using leverage. You have a pressure to optimize your white space time. Yeah. Do you have any other You think it's 80% time prisoner. This is reacting to messages. [clears throat] And the management of it is just not forgetting anything like everything that I've committed to whether it's projects or emails or everything. That's that's how I feel like I'm managing the time, but I know that's not what you mean. Probably I should be able to say, "Okay, I'm going to put this phone on do not disturb or have it set on a schedule for do not disturb." But then I often wonder, Ann, what am I going to do when the thing is on do not disturb? How do I spend time with myself? How do I turn my brain off? Does that make sense? Yeah. You're uncomfortable with the white spaces. Yeah. Yeah. Don't Don't give me that. And and I hate to say that I'm scared of that, but I am. And that just goes back to my addictive mindset. Um, I often call my wife sometimes when I travel because if I'm in a hotel room for more than a day or two, I I get antsy. Like I don't want to be here. I don't care if I could be in the Bahamas on a beach or something. I'm just using an example. That's that's not where I'm at. But doing like conferences or things like that and it's just because I don't want to be alone. So I have to get on the phone or go do something because in my head, you know, a person in early addiction or I mean early recovery, later recovery, it's just I think it's just the way we're wired. I could be completely wrong but I just feel like it's and then we start we just start seeing the success come in and when we don't sit still we see now it depends on which how you want to measure it the success but success for me is just being appreciative or being needed or being able to use my mind and and and do things and see things come to fruition. You know that's what success is for me. It has nothing to do with a dollar amount like if I was in your shoes success for me would look like being able to take a two-month sbatical and travel the world. you know, it's a success and I feel like if I don't do something all the time, that success goes away and that's stinking thinking. Yeah, it's uh it it is very common. Um when you have the white spaces, you need some dopamine. There's so this is um dopamine. You're basically sensitized by dopamine with any addiction. So you need more and more and more with dopamine in order whether that's work or whether you know optimizing whatever you want to you know come to fruition. Um and then in order to get ascend up the stages to get more high flow you have to desensitize yourself from dopamine which is exactly the same whether it's your phone essentially we've replaced whatever drug or substance with like phone and work it's the same thing [laughter] does that do you feel like a lot of people that you work with that is the main thing yeah they have a pressure to optimize to succeed because you know the way they validate themsel is through external validation of their self-worth how much they can accomplish I got you. Yeah. So, now fix me, Ann. How would you fix me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, would you say it's 80 80% time prisoner, 20% manager, no time creator, no like time liberator at all whatsoever? I wouldn't say so. I mean, just just I mean, would you tell me to change that number up a little bit after hearing, you know, kind of my spiel that I just gave you? Like, like if you're leveraging and hiring people, managing people. Yeah. I would I would uh that's like time creator. If you're doing automations, elimination, delegation, that's time creator. Oh, yeah. Now, I do a ton of that. I mean, so yeah, we may want to split it up. But there's zero there's zero white space. Okay. I can tell you that pretty confidently just based on way that you described it. But even if I am delegating and time creating, I'm I'm expecting the outcome to be a certain way, if that makes sense. I'm just waiting to see how it comes back to me. Maybe like we'll just do like 40 40 time prisoner, maybe 20% time manager where you're doing things yourself and not delegating because you want to have a sense of control. Maybe even though it's not in your zone of genius. 40% time creator. Are you doing anything where you're feeling like you're on purpose? You this is protecting your like energy, your health, your sleep, um your your parasympathetic system. That's more of like a time liberator. What's your non-negotiables, which is really your health, your spouse, your kids? I don't sleep a lot, Ann. So, I mean, I have to take something to go to sleep if I want to get a really good night's sleep. I'm usually in the bed by midnight and or 100 a.m. and then I'll get up around 7. I'll wake up at 7, but I don't really move until about 7:30. I'm not the kind to just jump up and go. Now, okay, there's one thing that I do on Fridays that I love that has nothing to do with work, has nothing to do with family. That's my only me time, and that's golf. I play golf for for all all day on Friday. [snorts] But I feel like I need that. Uh I'm good at it sometimes and sometimes I'm not, but it's just a way to be outside. It's a way to be in fellowship with friends. Uh I don't drink anymore. And so the people I play with don't we they kind of want the same thing that I want in life. And it's people I can I can lean into if I want to, but I just love the game, too. Like, the game challenges me. And then, you know, I get to connect with folks like you and and Mark Cheney and, you know, all the different folks that were at Paul's event. Um, those are big wins for me. And I know that's just networking, but I think about it in golf, too. It's like a huge way to network because then like if you guys were ever come here or if I saw you in another travel, I could say, "Hey, let's go play golf or, you know, let me treat you guys to dinner and then golf." Or, you know what I mean? So, it's just I'm I'm still thinking about work and how to grow myself when I'm supposed to be unplugged. Well, that is part of your recovery anyway. Um, so we'll talk about the flow cycle, but after you've been on sympathetic for so long, you want to a little bit parasympathetic. So, for you, that's your flow. That's your recovery in golf. So, maybe I will put you like, you know, 10 15% time liberator or something like that. 10 or 15. Let's just say 10. 10. Okay, let's do 10. And then do you think you're more 40% time presenter or is 40% time creator? Um four presenter. Okay. So I'll make your time creator 30. So 40% time prisoner, 20% time manager when you're time creator 30%. That is about right. And then 10% time liberator. Okay. [clears throat] So you are probably in flow some of the times when you work. But so you might be in some of the uh transcender too. Do you feel like you're in some flow box when you actually work where time just disappears? Oh yeah. No, the day is over with before I even get started. It feels like sometimes. Okay. But you're moving the needle when you're doing that. Yes. A bunch of things are in process at all times. Okay. So, I feel like you are probably a little bit less time prisoner in a way. Um, you react to things that also move the needle. Um, but at the expense of like potentially your relationship, your health, that is what where time prisoner comes. But you are also in flow. So, as a time transer, I'm going to give you like another 10%. So, probably 30% time prisoner. You're like a fairly even split almost, but most of the time uh three 50 80% in the first three stages. We want to get out of the first three stages and get up to the fourth and fifth stage as much as possible. And I will say for me when I'm working in the ER, I'm actually the first two mo most of the time because I have to Yeah. Yeah. So, it's okay. So I think to go from time prisoner to up as a time manager is that number one you basically remove all notifications from all of your messaging your email. So there is no red bubble anywhere. It's easy. [laughter] Where's my phone at? I'm turning it off right now. You're going to have to go through each app to do that. But you know you can do that right now. And uh No, I'm not doing it right now. But I mean I'm I'm like writing it down. And then um number two, you'll grayscale your phone. Grayscale. Make your phone black and white. Mhm. Really? Mhm. So, my phone is black and white. It's hard because you don't have that dopamine when it's black and white. You don't even see the even if you have a red bubble, it's a gray bubble. And I got to I'm gonna have to pay you for this this podcast cuz you're [laughter] like fixing me right now. I've never thought about that. So, everybody, you can jot this down. The first step if you're stuck in one, it is remove all notifications and you'll set your emergency contacts to be able to call you, you know, in case of emergencies. If they call twice, it'll still ring. You can do that in the iPhone. I'm sure you can do that the Android. So, remove notifications. There's nothing that drops down. There's nothing on the fixed screen. There's nothing that basically you have no you don't check anything until you're ready to check. You are in control when you react or serve other people essentially. Um, and you want to do that only check it after you move like top three needles or priority for the day and that's it. So, grayscale your phone and then when you're in time manager, I think the biggest thing is really figuring out what's in your zone of genius and what's not in your zone of genius and either you eliminate that or you delegate it. That's it. Letting go of the control. Zone of genius. Kind of dive into that a little bit if you can, Ann, and just spend some time on that for a second before you move. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Because it's explain what zone of genius means. It's a thing that you do the best and you love doing it and time flies by and it's so fun and uh it's like it serves your purpose that it multiplies your energy. You're working as a time liberate as a time liberator. You're doing things that multiply your energy instead of draining your energy. So the perfect example is I am great at talking to people networking going out there you know external but I hate creating SOPs processes automations like just AI automate I use AI but I don't like creating agents and things like that but my husband is a software engineer he's an artist I'm the kind of like leader manager so he loves tinkering and creating things making things more efficient creating SOPs and processes so I recently uh brought him on to the company and he's the person doing that using automations and go high level creating AI agents, multiple agents, open claw to bring everything together for me. So that's not my zone of genius. Every time I even think about that stuff, it drains my energy and I get like impatient. Yeah. No, I get it. I can't stand anything admin. I mean, you saw me fondling around with this app trying to figure out how to get this sound to work and I was getting frustrated every second that went by because I wasn't accomplishing something, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's um it's not your zone of genius, so it's all good. And then we just work through it. And then so that's probably an example of like, you know, a difference between a time creator and a time liberator, too, because you see what's wrong and the gap in terms of like the audio. And then versus as a time liberator, you would just see it as is if you were in flow. And that's very Buddhist as well. Or it could also be um uh Marcus Aurelius Stoicism. You see things as is, not worse than this, and then you go with the flow. So anyway, um and then in order for you to really ascend up to the time creator, you really want to know what is first you're automating, you're delegating, um you have like these systems, you're super efficient in order actually to ascend up to the time liberator to escape the fake time freedom is you set your non-negotiables, your true non-negotiables. And for most of us, it is our health longevity because without our body, we cannot perform our life mission. And then also it's our kids because if we do not spend time with our kids now then while they're still at home then you will not have a close relationship with them later. And then you're kind of generating you're teaching them you're modeling them this cycle of having to produce and perform and they will do the same. And that's you're not saying that's necessarily bad but you just also you're trying to get them people to understand this is how you show them balance because we don't want them to be lazy, right? But we want them to perform. Yeah. We want them to uh have recovery. So going from fight or flight, we actually don't want you in much in fight or flight, but we don't want people or our kids to be uncomfortable to know it's okay to take a break. It is now time to go into parasympathetic rest and digest. We don't want them to tie performance and output to their sense of selfworth. And then we want them to just be okay and comfortable with whites space and know they've done enough for the day and there's always tomorrow. And especially for them not to sacrifice their sleep and their exercise because most of the people I talk to will sacrifice their sleep for output. Yeah, absolutely. What do you recommend when you I've heard you brought up you brought up sleep along with several other things, but uh how many how many hours of sleep are you getting a night and what do you recommend for people to try to get? I've heard you know anywhere between six and eight. Are you thinking more than that? I would take a look at the deep sleep that you have and the REM sleep you have. Uh, I would get a URA ring or Whoop or some sort of sleep tracker. I don't have any financial relationships with them, but I have a UA ring here. Yes. So, you want to look at your REM and deep sleep. For me, I feel the best when I get an hour and a half of each. And when I don't get an hour and a half of each, then I my eyes feel tired when I wake up. I'm just not optimal. I get more impatient in the ER with patients or with like ambulances rolling in and rolling in. I don't have as much reserve or compassion when I don't sleep. So, I'm not as good of a doctor. And so, you want to also look at if you go to sleep late, how late are you going to sleep? And that will cut your deep sleep. Um, and then if you wake up too early compared to your chronoype, that will cut your REM sleep. And then this is a good segue to your chronotype. You really want to know what your three There are three chronotypes and we're going to figure it out now. Have you heard of chronotype, Eric? No, ma'am. Okay, so this is very easy. There are only three types and I want you guys to think about the time you naturally go to sleep and naturally wake up with no obligations, no alarms, um, no caffeine, no blue light like TV, phone or anything. When do you naturally just want to go to sleep and when do you naturally wake up without an alarm? What is yours, Eric? I would say that naturally I'd love to be in the bed by 9:30, but then I'm blue light glow face till about midnight. So, two and a half hours. Sometimes I'll get back up too. Um I don't watch a a ton of TV. I'll watch the news when it's on between that 6:00 and 7:30 just to catch up on everything. I hate to say it, but I'm I'm looking to at AI a lot to see what I can do to to grow what I'm working on. Optimally, I would love to be asleep by 9:30. And then and and I'd love to see myself get up around 6:30. Not that I have anything to do till 9:00, but just to um either be with myself and in some kind of reading or um devotion or or or just time sitting in quiet. Naturally, in the past, when you didn't have all these obligations, you would go to bed, get tired at 9:30, and wake up at 6:30. I'd love to say yes. That's optimal. Um, the reason I want to say this because I'm thinking about me and maybe the person that maybe listening that's not getting any sleep because of their addiction, but in the past, I mean, I wouldn't sleep at all. You know, I used to sleep maybe three, maybe four hours. Now I get more hours than that, but it's going to be with some help. And I often think it's because I can't get into that um deep sleep or that um sleep. It's it's just I'm just on the you ever know how you just close your eyes and you can see yourself sleeping. I feel like I'm that sometimes, even to the point where I don't get a lot of dream sleep in that deep sleep. Um, I don't dream a ton. Um, and so, but I' I'd love to sleep more. I know that it just it'll slow aging down and different things like that. Makes you just feel better. Um, I used to take naps. I don't take naps as much as I used to. But I also know that as you get older, like you sleep less. Am I right? And it and life feels like it goes by quicker. You do sleep a little bit less. You'll wake up earlier. your chronotype will shift a little bit. Yeah. Um but you're right like in terms of sleep if we can change it so it's matching your chronotype and you have to be careful of whoever is taking sleep medicine you have to look at what type of sleep only the newest type of medicine is mimicking the deep sleep otherwise it's just light sleep not restorative sleep okay so um a lot of the sleep medications are that way um so 9:30 to 6:30 everybody you can think about your natural awake uh and go to sleep time You want to take the midpoint of that, right? So yours is uh midpoint of that. Let's see. This nine hours, correct? So it's probably 2:30. Wait, hold on. 9:30 to 2:30. 3 3:00 a.m. is your midpoint of your sleep. If your midpoint of your sleep is before 3:30 a.m., you are a lark. And then if your midpoint of your sleep, your natural sleep is between 3:30 to 5:30, you are a third bird, which is most people. Okay? And if you are a lark, I'm going to go to the owl, but if you're a lark, your peak chronotype zone where you're going to get 5x output is 5 to 9:00 a.m. You can extend it by another hour or two if you fast. So, and you do all the flow tactics and habits. So for you, Eric, if you wake up and just dive straight into flow for an hour, an hour and a half, your first flow block, you'll accomplish more than you like if you just have two flow blocks between that time, you will be like done for the day. [snorts] So you're saying I should I need to adjust that midpoint to be later in the night. So maybe go to bed a little bit later. What I mean is that you're going to to match your chronotype peak zone, your natural genetic chronotype peak zone. Yeah. So instead of staying up till 12:00 p.m. doing work, you're going to actually build in time to do that the stuff that you know automation social that's actually going to be built in. You're going to do that in the morning so that you're faster and more productive in the morning because that is your natural chronotype. So you're basically instead of do when you do it at night you'll be slower and you don't have as much like stamina and cognitive ability you have all these attention residue from the morning like you know the full day and now if you are a lark I'm sorry a third bird for people who are a third bird that midpoints between 3:30 to 5:30 then your peak zones 8 to 11 am so my client's peak zone is 8 to 11 am but he was doing surgery at seven and sacrificing sleep and sacrificing his peak zone that he could be doing to move the needle of his practice, right? He could visualize how to market it and what's the best thing for his patients, but instead he's working in the business. Now, [snorts] people who are owls, your midpoint of your sleep is after 5:30 a.m. So, your peak zone is actually 4 to 9:00 p.m. So, what owls would do is they will wake up and they will serve others. They'll have meetings. They'll do go gym. They'll do whatever. Serve themselves. They'll re they can react if they want to. And then and when everybody gets off work, then they focus from 4 to 9:00 p.m. And they get a ton done. But is a really hard to function normal society as an owl. If you took those three birds, not not necessarily one is worse than the other one, but it sounds like owl is is the worst. um that lark is not the best, but that middle one is where you want people that you're working with to try to I know you want them to match, but um when you pick one of those birds, the healthiest one, the one in the middle, um no, it's your genetic. You want to match wherever you're at. Okay. Okay. So, if you are a lark, don't work towards like a like a third. If you're a third, definitely don't want I mean, if you're an owl, definitely try to work as an owl. Gotcha. Um because if you're working in peak, so you'll have peak chronotype zone and then you'll have trough chronotype zone. So for the the first two their peak is yes like as a like 5 to 9 and then the trough is like 12 to 5 or 1 to 5. So that's why doing anything after you basically want to do as much as possible before lunch because doing anything after lunch you're just going to be five times slower. Yeah, this is great. I mean let me tell you why this is so great. It's it's practical resource thinking for listeners of that are in recovery or people that just want to hear this that this is this is good information and it's not um it's not homemade like you this is educational great practical information. Oh yeah. Yeah. This comes from the flow research collective. Um and I I was certified by FL you know we endorsed Steven Cutotler. They are the co-founders. So I dove into this for eight months to kind of study this to be certified in performance neuroscience and that's this is exactly that's it. So Eric for your flow schedule I'm going to give you a flow daily schedule in the next five minutes. How do you structure your flow daily schedule and never sacrifice your health your non-negotiables? So ideally what you would do you'll have to adjust this slowly because you're already shifted to like midnight sleep and 7 a.m. wake. Ideally, you could start at 6:00 am wake and then by the time 6:00 to 6:30 you do hygiene and then most people can do flow cycle from for an hour and a half. It depends on how much stamina you have or how much practice. Do you think the very first flow block you can go for 90 minutes or two hours from 6:30 to 7:30 you're going to be doing your first flow block tackling the top three non-negotiables. And then now from 7:30 you're going to take a very short break because you're in your peak chronotype zone. Then you'll short break maybe like 45 minutes. And then during that short break a break means you're not doing anything to stimulate your dopamine. All right. So how do you for someone that is has come to you and says, "Hey, this I'm dependent on that dopamine." Not that it's a drug, but how do you um is this a hard shift that you're trying to put yourself into or is this like a tapered thing that you do it? Help me understand that. The taper thing would be, you know, initially when I was working on this, I had to move my phone outside my office when I was working, right? Uh I moved my phone. My phone currently also is uh in my kitchen charging at night, so I don't bring it to the bedroom ever. Um, and whenever I do slip, my sleep suffers for sure and I be be I go into stage one the next morning because it's right there. So, it's a gradual thing. So, first you take the phone away so you're not so addicted and then you have all the notifications off, of course, that includes your desktop. And then the next thing is probably just breathing. That's like your break. Foam rolling could be your break. Maybe some squats and push-ups. You want to add that in some um kettle bell swings. Or the extreme is that you're staring at a wall and doing nothing. [laughter] That would drive me that that that drives me crazy just thinking about it. Hey, can I ask you a random question just because we we brought up sleep again? When you go to sleep and your phone is in the kitchen charging and you go to your room and lay down to go to sleep, do you go to sleep in a quiet room? Do you go to sleep in a room with a noise machine? Mars is quiet. Baritz is noise machine. So, it's really up to you what if noises wake you up. Um, and you need to cover it. Okay. Yeah. For some people, it works better. For me, I don't like it. I used to, but I don't like it anymore. And do you feel like it's true? I do. I love We It sounds like we sleep in a hurricane. Um, and do you think it's true the temperature of the room helps you sleep differently? Oh, yeah. So, with sleep, there's five things. You want to go to bed cold, blind, deaf, hungry. Uh, what's the other thing? Let's see. You want to be very your cold like 68. You want to not eat three to four hours before um deaf kind of like what we talked about the sound sound machine and bl like not seeing any electronic like charging lights or anything like that. Uh at the same time every time. That's the fifth thing. Same time every day. Wow. I'm going to give all this a try. I just want you to know it. Yeah. Yeah. You have to let me know how it goes. And then so we're going to get back to your flow schedule so you know when to do the top three. Okay. So, you're taking a short break, no dopamine, 7:30 to 7:45 or very low dopamine. And then 7:45, you're going to go for the next go. You think you're going to go for an hour or an hour and a half? An hour. So, 8:45. Okay. So, you have two flow blocks. Flow one, flow two. Flow one is 6:30. I'll send this to you after this. Yeah. 6:30 to um 9. I'm sorry. 6:30 to uh 8:30. 8:30. Actually, you're going two hours. And then you have a short break. 8:30 to 8:45. And then from 8:45 you're actually going to go for 9:45. And at this time it is time for your big recovery because with flow you have struggle to focus struggle phase. You get to the top which is release and then you come down flowing. You're in rolling down the hill in momentum. You don't know you're in flow until you're out of flow and then you have recovery. So we need to schedule in recovery. And this is where you put in your non-negotiables. Basically, you're going to finish two flow blocks and then you're going to go back, work out, 12:00, you're done, you're going to eat, and then the afternoon, that is when you start serving other people. So, that is when you will put your meetings, you do your communication, batching, checking your email, your messages that your inbox, like responding to people. That is when you have a block in the afternoon that is strictly you'll have flow three and you'll dedicate the days of the week maybe for any working on the business visionary type stuff like AI automation or a part of communication batching could be the social media networking messaging others etc. And then you're going to have a work cut off time what is your work cut off time ideally so you can spend time with your kids and your wife um as much as possible ideally. Okay. So, work cut off at 6 p.m. So, at 5:30 p.m., what you'll do is the shutdown routine. So, as a shutdown routine, what you'll do is you're going to look at you're going to write down the wins that you've had in the day. And then you're going to um um think about the lessons, the gratitude that you have, and then you're going to label top three priorities in order, one, two, three numbered that you'll tackle tomorrow. And then you're going to start the one micro action of task one. and then done and then you leave and you close everything. You don't bring your laptop with you. If you need to get a business phone to do that, that's what you do. Um so you already have the momentum. So you're doing uh divergent planning is divergent thinking. So you want to do that the night before, you know, 5:30. And then so when you wake up, when you wake up as ready to go at 6:30, then you're just executing like a lion going 100%. There's no thinking or deciding because you don't want to use any of your decisions muscles in the morning. You just want to perform and go and flow. For me, I've um sending the red bubble, I guess, is just as important sometimes is getting it because I want a pretty automatic response, but that's expectations that don't meet reality. Yeah. Yeah. I think it just depends on it is really just a mindset, you know? I don't care if other people respond to me days later because I don't even see the red bubble anyway until I check. So, it's um there's no dopamine. There's basically you you're addicted to the dopamine of the red bubble and the responses and you want it faster. But if you can just remove the notification completely, just like when you remove the substances completely, then you don't care that much anymore. Long story short is you can change your mindset, the way you view things. Eventually, you don't even need the alcohol. eventually you don't need a response anymore of the red bubble of responding to you quickly. I created a school um time and energy mission control. I will send you the link and your listeners, people in your community, they will have the link. Yeah. And and I'll close us out really quick and and then and then I'll let you get going because I know you probably got a lot of pack. You said you're going to Greece uh in three weeks. So no packing just that the kids might wake up from their nap soon. Well, listen. I want to take just a second and thank you for coming on this podcast today, for sharing uh so much in uh insight and wisdom. I'm so honored that we ran in each other uh last year and made a connection. I'm I'm sorry that it took so long to make this happen. I'm in Augusta, Georgia. I was trying to get you to come live in Dallas, but it worked out exactly the way that it needed to work out. Um so, for you that are listening to this podcast today, thank you so much for for watching. Thank you so much for subscribing to us. If you haven't yet, you can do that by going to our YouTube channel. Uh we are also updating our school platform. So you can get our workshops there. If you haven't yet, you can stream on any platform, this podcast or any other p podcast. If you want to follow us, you can follow us of course on Facebook for the older folks. Uh Instagram for you young folks. And then we're also on Tik Tok too. But Miss Anne, if they want to connect with you, how can they do that? Yeah, I would say just go to anssung.com uh anssungd.com. That's an tsun.com. Um or they can go to my social media um which is uh Ansung MD as well. So there's so many letters behind your name. It's I mean it's hard enough. Okay, but NASA doctor just just the smartest woman in the room. Thank you so much for being in the room with me today. I truly appreciate you and your insight and thank you Eric and thank you for all of your listeners because your time is precious as well and listening. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much.