Secrets for managing time, stress, and people [PODCAST]

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“Every January, millions of people make New Year’s resolutions. It’s a joyous time full of high hopes.

Ask people what they wish to achieve or hope to accomplish in the following year, and the answer will usually be something such as any of these: “I want to: lose weight; improve my finances; get a new job; exercise more; revamp a relationship; manage stress; stop smoking; set aside more time for myself.”

But according to U.S. News & World Report, the failure rate for New Year’s resolutions is around 80%, and most people lose their resolve by mid-February.

Why? Because when it comes time to take action, we hem and haw, deliberate and dither.

We wait for the free time, the perfect day, the right season, a better mood, or optimal market conditions. Or we stall until we can resolve a medical crisis, smooth over a problem with the in-laws, or put some money in the bank.”

Nabil Fanous is a cosmetic surgeon and author of The Universal Rules of Life: 27 Secrets for Managing Time, Stress, and People.

He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, “Stop the ‘I will’ habit.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Rate and review the show at KevinMD.com/rate. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/follow. On today’s show, we have Nabil Fanous. He is a facial plastic surgeon and is the author of the book The Universal Rules of Life: 27 Secrets for Managing Time, Stress, and People. There’s an excerpt on KevinMD from that book titled “Stop the ‘I will’ habit.” Nabil, welcome to the show.

Nabil Fanous: Thank you.

Kevin Pho: We’ll get into your book and excerpt in a little bit. First off, briefly share your story and journey to where you are today.

Nabil Fanous: Well, very briefly, I teach facial plastic surgery at McGill, and a few years ago, the residents asked me if I could help them with managing time. I gave some rules, and I added a few later on. It became a success. The professors asked to have the course, and then it went to different medical conferences, and it was extremely well received. So I decided to write the book, and the book has been out now since April and is doing very well.

Kevin Pho: So from a medical trainee standpoint, tell me some of the biggest problems that you see when it comes to medical trainees and managing their time.

Nabil Fanous: Bad time management, bad time management. So there are rules in my book, I think two rules or three rules, that would answer that, because I said I have 27 rules. Rule number one, the rule that was the subject of the article, says, “Do it now, perfect it later: Stop the ‘I will’ habit.” That’s rule number one. Basically, the rule says just start. The important thing is to start, and the rest will follow. Just do something, anything, and later you can perfect it. So that’s number one.

Another rule that is very helpful, I find, is number six, which says, “Eliminate it, delegate it, or shrink it: The three time-management secrets of doing what you don’t have time to do.” So the best way to do something that doesn’t need to be done is not to do it at all: Eliminate it. The best way to do something that you don’t have to do personally is to let someone else do it for you: Delegate it. And if you can’t eliminate and you can delegate, at least shrink it. I’ll give you an example. You’re invited to a party. Arrive late or leave early. That’s shrinking things.

So this is the second. The third rule that is very helpful, too, in time management is “Unitask, you will succeed. Unitask, don’t multitask: How to be highly focused and yet totally productive, totally stress-free, and in the moment.” That’s one of the biggest problems with physicians. They just multitask. No good. Unitasking is the answer. So here we are.

Kevin Pho: So you have these residents who have made it through rigorous undergraduate training to get into medical school, and then they complete medical school, and now they’re residents and interns. Now, are you telling me that they still have poor time-management skills after going through all that schooling and training to get to where they are today?

Nabil Fanous: Yeah, because school training doesn’t teach you life. School training doesn’t teach you the rules of life. It doesn’t teach you how to treat people, how to treat people socially. It teaches you how to deal with people medically. It teaches you diseases. It doesn’t teach you people. It doesn’t teach you how to control your stress. It doesn’t teach you how to control your time. Big difference.

Kevin Pho: All right, so the book is titled The Universal Rules of Life: 27 Secrets for Managing Time, Stress, and People. Now, you said that this book grew at first from your talk to medical trainees. So what would you say are some of the biggest problems that you see medical trainees face? I know you talked about it a little bit earlier, but go into more detail. What would you say is the biggest problem that medical trainees face in making that jump from going to school to, like you said, dealing with people, and now during their medical intern years?

Nabil Fanous: Look, there are many problems. I mean, basically, the three things that I mentioned in my 27 secrets, and again, it applies to them: problems with time, problems with stress, problems with dealing with people. The three are kind of interconnected, because if you don’t have time, you’re stressed, and if you’re stressed, you can’t deal with people. Again, it’s not just medical students. I think it’s everyone. The problem in our society now is these three things.

People are, like, I’ll give you this. I told you rule 16, about unitasking: Don’t multitask. Everybody is multitasking, on the phone, on the computer, on the internet, on an app, and basically, it does two things: It stresses you out more, and it kills interpersonal relationships. So it’s all interconnected. I really don’t think there is one problem. I think the whole thing is interconnected. You need to approach these three together.

Kevin Pho: So let’s talk about unitasking versus multitasking. Like you said, this doesn’t just apply to resident physicians. It applies to pretty much everyone out there, every physician out there. As you know, I’m a primary care physician, and we are just inundated with things coming at us at all times. So give us some techniques on how we can unitask in an environment where so many things are coming at us at once.

Nabil Fanous: Well, the first thing is to use rule one and rule 16, and rule six, which is eliminating. OK, here: The biggest secret of time management is rule six, but the biggest secret of rule six is elimination, not efficiency. People think you have to be efficient. No, you have to eliminate what you’re doing, not try to be efficient in what you’re doing, because efficiency has no end. You have to be efficient, and then you work. The more efficient you are, the more work you get.

Because remember, before the internet and before the smartphones, we had more time, but we weren’t busy, too. And now, with the phones, in spite of the fact that the letter that used to take you two weeks to get to its destination now takes you two minutes, still you have more and more letters. So there is no end to overwhelming your time. You have more and more supplies of work and things to do.

The trick is elimination. You stop some apps, you eliminate some emails, you stop dealing with some people, and so on. You delegate some of it. But elimination is the most important. Delegation is very helpful, but it’s amazing how we can eliminate things that we don’t need to do.

Kevin Pho: So go into more detail about your mindset for eliminating, whether it’s tasks or people or things. Tell me your mindset in terms of how exactly we should go about doing that.

Nabil Fanous: Good. So, elimination. The first section of elimination is emails, eliminating unnecessary emails. Any one of us should have at most three emails: one personal that only friends and family know, one medical or professional, and if you are a business owner, one just for your business, say. But that’s it. That’s it. All the other emails have to be eliminated.

Now, sometimes when you meet people and they ask for your email, you have to give an email. I call that the dead email. Get an email that you never open, and you give it to the people you don’t want to hear from ever. And, of course, you don’t have it on your phone. So whoever asks you for your email, if you don’t want to give your email, just give that email, which is functioning, by the way, but it just accumulates, no answer. So you end up with three emails, and that’s number one.

Number two, in terms of when to look at your phone, I call that the windows, the daily three windows: three times a day, maximum four times a day, morning, evening, and in the middle of the day, 15 minutes. You go through your phone quickly, and you answer. When you answer, you have to use rule number three in time management, which is cutting corners. It’s shrinking. Instead of saying, “Hi, Michael, how are you? I hope all is well with you. I wonder,” all that, it’s “Michael, please send me that.” End of story. So we really have to cut corners.

Eliminating is number one. Delegate anything you can delegate. I mean, most clinicians have the means to get someone to help, and the most helpful person is usually not a regular assistant or secretary. It’s just someone who is willing to do your jobs for you. That would be the most helpful. It could be a son. It could be a neighbor’s son. It could be a neighbor. It could be an elderly person who wants to work, to just pass things: Get me this, get me that, order this, and so on. So it’s amazing how you could do that.

You have to understand, I am extremely busy. I have a huge practice in Montreal, probably one of the biggest in Canada, and we have 22 people working in our clinic, and yet I had the time to do that book. Not only that, but I had time, once it went out and it was a success so far, to translate it into French, so the French version is out now. Within six months or a year, we’ll have a Russian and a German version coming out, but I have to work on all that. And yet I have the time to never work on Saturday or Sunday. So as I said, it’s amazing how you could manage time if you really take it seriously, blocking the time you spend on the phone.

The phone is the biggest killer. The phone, block the time on the phone. Turn off all notifications, because they are deadly. The most important phone number, by the way, is your phone number: Nobody knows it except the very important people. If they want to call you, they can call you on their phone, on an answering machine. And so you block the phone. That’s one. That’s already a lot. That gives you a lot of time. And then you cut down TV viewing to, say, half an hour a day, and the rest, you’ll end up talking to people and enjoying yourself.

Kevin Pho: So blocking emails and spending less time on the phone is one thing, but you also mention people, in terms of your interactions with people and how often you should interact with certain people over others. So how do you go about deciding who to interact with more or less?

Nabil Fanous: OK. Rule number 10 says, “Your goal number one in life is happiness: How to implement the four indispensable secrets of living happily.” So what are these four indispensable secrets? You can start guessing, but you’ll be surprised. The first is working and keeping busy. The second is exciting expectations in the future. The third is staying healthy. And the fourth is having a family and friends network.

So family and friends is one quarter of happiness. It’s like a table with four legs: You remove one leg, and the table doesn’t stand up. Now, not all friends are equal. You have very close friends, you have good friends, and then you have acquaintances. Same thing with family: a very close cousin, not a bad cousin, and even with brothers and sisters.

So my rule is you have to have that network. You have to communicate with that network. As long as you communicate, you keep the network alive, meaning when I send a text to a good friend and say, “How are you?” I have revived the link, the communication. Now the network is alive between me and him. It’s like a light bulb going on, just that.

And sometimes you need to do that maybe once a year for acquaintances. They would even be surprised. If you have time, you send the text. If you have more time, you make a phone call from your car, as long as you know your way, the usual way, in other words, going back to work or going home. So you know your way, and you don’t have to think.

So it depends. Very close friends, I think you have to contact them to revive the link, by any way, every two, three months minimum; average friends, minimum once every six, seven months; and acquaintances every year, just something. And of course, that applies to family too.

So it’s the idea of don’t take your friends and family for granted. They need to be contacted, and you don’t need to contact them when you need them, because believe it or not, loneliness is a silent killer. We love to belong and to be loved, and we don’t realize the important people in our life till we need them. And then when you call, it’s not the same. It’s like someone who is looking for work. If you’re looking for work and you’re working, that is one thing. If you’re looking for work and you’re out of work, that is another.

When you call someone when you don’t need them, that’s appreciated, and then when you need them, it doesn’t bother them, because your credit is there. But if you call them only when you need them, not good, and that often happens. So the fourth secret of happiness is just keep that network buzzing with anything: with a little call, with a card, with a little, sometimes, an email, a quick email, a picture, sharing an article, just a link. They remember you, and that’s it.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Nabil Fanous. He is a facial plastic surgeon, and he’s the author of the book The Universal Rules of Life: 27 Secrets for Managing Time, Stress, and People. Nabil, what’s the number one thing that my listeners can do right now to better manage their time, stress, and their network? And maybe you can end off with some take-home messages.

Nabil Fanous: The number one thing that we should do right now, it’s not one thing. It’s really more than one thing. There is no one thing. I’ll give you an example. If I ask you what is the one thing that will make you in good health and faith, what are you going to say? Exercise. It’s not enough. You need exercise, you need good sleep, you need good nutrition, you need the annual medical examination, you need the lowest level of stress. I mean, all this makes good health. Good health is not one thing.

So I really think there are 27 rules. Some of them are more important than others, but I would say, yes, they’re only important. I’ll give you actually the most important things about happiness. I mean, number 10, happiness. When you think about it, make sure you have something in your life coming: a little trip, a lunch break, a visit with friends, something that makes, a TV show at the end of the day, something that you look forward to. And staying healthy, and that’s a long chapter, by the way, that you’ll like, because there is a lot in common between you and me on that. I heard some of your videos. And the last one is friends, and this is so important. Friends, people, we cannot live without them. We think we can live without them, but when something happens, the phone is not good anymore.

Kevin Pho: Nabil, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight. Thanks again for being on the show.

Nabil Fanous: It’s a pleasure.

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