It’s Not Rocket Science, with Dr. Ann Tsung – Episode 436 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

NASA Flight Surgeon, peak performance coach, and “Productivity MD” Dr. Ann Tsung explains how delegation makes financial sense and why efficiency means automating, delegating, and eliminating, talks about working within your “zone of genius”, using an Eisenhower matrix, hiring a virtual assistant, obtaining the “5 Freedoms”, and learning English from Full House, and shares her super relatable hobby as an Olympic weightlifter, as well as a few travel tips….if you’re headed to Antarctica.

About Dr. Tsung:

As a physician who has gone through the journey of achieving success as defined by society, Dr. Tsung understands how it feels to have that nagging feeling that something is missing despite ticking off all the boxes on the checklist. After completing her Emergency Medicine residency, she embarked on a journey of self-discovery to figure out what was missing and why she wasn’t as happy as she thought she should be, travelling the world for 8 months and working on her productivity philosophy.

Over the years, she has spent countless hours on self-work, attending conferences and seminars, and reading over 120 books on brain training, leadership, peak performance, emotional intelligence, and coaching, learning to understand her values, build deep connections with loved ones and strangers, boost productivity at work, and mend relationships with family members.

Her productivity philosophy combines human optimization, flow states, dopamine desensitization, memory techniques, speed-reading, mind-body connection, functional nutrition, and practical skills, habits, and tools, with a goal to empower people to take control of their lives, achieve success and fulfillment, and make time for what truly matters.

Dr. Tsung has been able to work as a full-time NASA flight surgeon and part-time ICU/ER doctor, trek Everest base camp, climb Kilimanjaro, travel the world, launch a successful business, and still find time for family and friends. Her ultimate wish for you is to feel the freedom that she has felt, push past mental barriers, and have more time, inner peace, and fulfillment in life.

Credentials:

Work:

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA/UTMB)  – Operational Flight Surgeon
• McMurdo and South Pole Station, Antarctica – temporary staff physician
• Emergency Medicine Physician
• Medical and Cardiac Intensive Care Unit Physician

Education:

• University of Texas Medical Branch – Aerospace Medicine Fellowship. William Douglas Scholarship Recipient
• University of Texas Medical Branch – Galveston – Master in Public Health (MPH)
• University of Washington – St. Louis – Barnes Jewish Hospital – Anesthesia Critical Care Medicine Fellowship
• University of Florida – Gainesville – Shands Hospital – Emergency Medicine Residency, Chief Resident, Research Resident of the Year, Intern of the Year
• University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHSCSA) – M.D., Dr. Daniel & Helena Saenz Scholarship Recipient

Research/Projects/Training:

• Virgin Galactic Research
• SpaceX Medical Projects
• Jungle Medicine Survival
• Catalina Emergency Diving Accident Management
• FAA Aeromedical Examiner Mini-Basic
• Tactical Combat Casualty Care Training
• Helicopter Underwater Escape Training
• High Altitude Treks – Kilimanjaro summit, Everest Base Camp and 3 Passes, Machu Picchu, Mt Rainier
• Weightlifter in Olympic Lifts

Learn more at ItsNotRocketScienceShow.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Dr. Ann Tsung
Well, good morning, comm check. Sorry, just habit.

Stephanie Maas
So Dr. Ann, tell us a little bit about you and your background.

Dr. Ann Tsung
Yeah. Hi, everybody. My name is Ann Tsung. I am a physician and I’m playing in emergency medicine also did a fellowship and anesthesia critical care. And I did another fellowship in aerospace medicine. A my full time job is with NASA as their flight surgeon. So I take care of astronauts through training, and then their mission. And then on the side, I work in the emergency room and critical care, part time, productivity coaching on how to get people’s time back, and also a podcast show hosts of ItsNotRocketScienceShow.com. Everything I’ve ever learned throughout the years.

Stephanie Maas
Wow, it sounds like a real loser. Your parents must be super disappointed.

Dr. Ann Tsung
Yeah, it’s been, I mean, my mom has been telling me to be a doctor, since I was very young.

Stephanie Maas
I did look through your background. And not only are your professional credentials, incredible, but the things that you do in your spare time as well. So I wore my glasses today, instead of putting in my contacts in an attempt to look smarter. So we’ll see how that executes.

Dr. Ann Tsung
You look amazing. You look amazing.

Stephanie Maas
So you have this incredible background, I heard you kind of say in passing, you were told to be a doctor from when you were little. Walk me through that journey a little bit.

Dr. Ann Tsung
I was born in Taiwan moved to from Taiwan to Houston when I was nine. And yes, like, you know, in the Asian culture, being a physician, or lawyer, as a very, like it’s prominent in that culture for parents who want their kids to, you know, go towards those professions, became a physician, at that time already being in Houston, when I went to visit the Space Center, I already know that I was interested in space. And no matter what specialty or what profession, I ended up going into, I was going to work for NASA. And then third year medical school. That’s when I was studying at borders, but didn’t want to study anymore. So I googled space doctor. And that’s when I came about, like this whole new world of aerospace medicine, fellowship training. And I went down that route, essentially, I was always good at planning and visualizing the future. But in terms of learning productivity, I wish I had known this like maybe elementary middle school high school, I didn’t learn this until residency or as an emergency medicine. When I learned about Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins, and kind of took me down that road of efficiency, maximal efficiency that 80/20 rule. In general, my superpower is efficiency, I’ve always been able to achieve what I actually set my mind to. And I realized that that’s where I want to take it like I want to, you know, not only do my main job, I would love to share in my knowledge about how to elaborate your time. So you can spend that doing what you love and spend it with your loved ones.

Stephanie Maas
It think it’s common in practice, regardless of what your practice is that you know, time is money, your most valuable asset is time. So you mentioned specifically about coaching folks on really how to spend your time when they come to you or when you talk to folks, what would you say is the biggest time mistake you see people making.

Dr. Ann Tsung
I would say it would be doing things that you could be paying others to do less than your current hourly rate, the leverage other people’s time you automate it, you delegate it, you’ll eliminate it. For example, think about your hourly rate. And if you can pay somebody to help you with housework, if your hourly rate is more than that, then go ahead and pay somebody to help you with that. And so those are things that I pay for, and I can come down from work be, you know, I can do things in my zone of genius. For me, my zone of genius is planning is talking to people is coaching is working on the medicine. So my zone of genius wouldn’t be utilized. If I was in the medical room equipment room, that wouldn’t be my zone of genius. So what is your zone of genius? What is your ultimate goal? Like? What freedoms are you trying to achieve like time freedom, location, freedom, emotional freedom, vitality, freedom, like for health, and then you worked out you chopped down to perhaps a three year goal, one year goal than 90 Day goal. And once you have a focus of the 90 day goal that you would like to achieve, then you have a plan on essentially creating SMART goals very specific time base for the week. But once you figure that out, then you’re not distracted by the other little things that you feel like you need to control. Because there are things that you can outsource to other people who can do a way better than you way faster than you, for example, social media marketing, ads creation, or even just putting things in Excel sheets. It’s a micro step process. But once you can leverage other people, then you will free up more time to work on your five goals and the focus things that move the needle towards your freedom and not just doing things to be busy to check things off. So that’s why I feel so passionate about it. But I wanted to share this everything. I’ve learned that because when people get more time freedom, it allows them to do the things that makes them happy. We’re always stressed for time. And when we can prioritize correctly, then we’re not going to be missing out on time with our loved ones, essentially. And this is why I do what I do.

Stephanie Maas
Absolutely. You talk about prioritizing tasks through the Eisenhower matrix. Tell me a little bit about that.

Dr. Ann Tsung
Yeah, absolutely. I use that all the time. On days, especially on days, I’m overwhelmed. So the Eisenhower matrix was developed from President Eisenhower, there’s one side on top, it will be like, urgent, not urgent. And then on the other side, it is important and not important. The top left quadrant is the urgent and important. And that’s where you don’t want to be, you don’t want to be rushed. Things that belong there are family emergencies, and medical emergencies. And some people say it would be like time sensitive items that you’re working on. Like say at work, like say the International Space Station is somehow is in jeopardy or the crew is in jeopardy, that would be important and urgent, though, you want very few things to being there. On the top right quadrant, if you’re looking at it is the not urgent but important item. And that’s where you want to spend most of your time on, say, a big project that you’re working on with a deadline, like two or three weeks out, but you have time to work on it. You want to be, say creating experiences or date nights with your spouse or your children and take each child out to experience separately to connect. I think that’s important. It’s not urgent, but it’s important. Looking down and left. It is urgent, but not important. So those are items that people are requesting things from you, and it seems urgent to them. But really, it can wait, a lot of times we have this inner an easiness that we just want to respond right away. So then what the minute they ask, or we have our notifications and that Outlook or email on all the time, and every time it pops in, you want to respond right away because of fear of missing out. And actually, a lot of those things are urgent to other people and maybe lead to us. But really it’s not that important. The bottom right? Is the not urgent and not important, as should be eliminated. Right? So those are things like checking social media mindlessly. And I’m all for you know, winding down watching TV, Netflix, but if you’re doing that, in place of doing things that move the needle or procrastinating that I will say that’s a non important and not urgent task. Once your energy is brought down, then you cannot work in your zone of genius, which is the important but not urgent task.

Stephanie Maas
Absolutely. Thank you for walking me through that.

Dr. Ann Tsung
I would bring up also regarding delegation, we talked about delegation, in terms of how about hiring house managers. And I would like to talk about the only the other huge help is I had was my virtual assistant, my virtual assistant does everything from business to personal, I’m leveraging his time to basically put something on a PDF or a slide or website and putting in numbers in Excel, my time is used to go in there to the Excel to analyze it. That’s my Zone of genius, little things that once you hire a virtual assistant, you start realizing how many things that you get annoyed that you don’t want to do. And you just outsource it to them. Like they can do all of it.

Stephanie Maas
And of course, I can hear people the audience go, oh, that must be nice, because she makes all this money. She can afford it all these things. But that’s that’s what it is. It’s the catch. 22 is your time is freed up to do all the things that make you the most amount of money instead of having to split your time on things that are better served elsewhere. Yeah. Okay. So sometimes when we talk with folks that just have this on believable, over achieving presence, and what they’ve accomplished, what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, it can almost make you unrelatable and that I mean, I feel like on some days, it’s a miracle that I brush my teeth every day. So in the spirit of making you very relatable, What are you not good at?

Dr. Ann Tsung
Oh, letting go of control, it’s always a work in progress. Because I’m very I mean maybe in medicine and maybe that’s why because you know drug dosages, it’s in milligrans, I want it, I’m very meticulous. It’s letting go of control and doing things that that really matter in the long run. But it’s a work in progress.

Stephanie Maas
What do you do for fun?

Dr. Ann Tsung
Regularly? I do Olympic weightlifting.

Stephanie Maas
Yea that sounds super fun.

Dr. Ann Tsung
I mean, I’ve been doing it since our emergency medicine residency and I love it. I think it’s it’s been almost 10 years. I started with more of our CrossFit type workouts started learning Olympic weightlifting. And for those of you guys who don’t know Oh, it’s more. It’s like snatches cleans and jerks, plus, you know, a lot of front squats, back squats, deadlifts, etc, as training for it. And I just I don’t do any cardio anymore. And I just love the feeling of like, flexibility core strain, I don’t need anyone’s help carrying my 50 Plus pound luggage. When I go trekking in the mountains, I could carry my own pack because I got the 60 pounds, and that’s fine. And I like the feeling afterwards. And it’s efficient, I can get done really fast and an hour and the burn it’s gonna continue on. And it’s for longevity as well because it’ll keep my bow strain and bone density, muscle strength and bone density high as high as possible. And then other things I do for fun cooking, but I don’t like prepping and only cooking certain things but not regular cooking. So I love like special things. I love sourcing, authentic ingredients, things that you can’t get. Unless it’s like from that country like special Italian like Parmesan Reggiano from the red cow olive oil that’s harvested last season. Marcona almonds, I love like culinary delights. And then the other part is traveling sharing experiences with my child. And also with my husband and myself to like, Anywhere. Anytime I get a chance I would like just take off and travel. And we’ve taken our eight month old on two plane trips, and I think two or three road trips already. And two hikes when he was 10 weeks old. So yeah, just creating experiences.

Stephanie Maas
Who is somebody you’ve always wanted to meet, but haven’t yet.

Dr. Ann Tsung
I would love to meet Jay Shetty. I listened to his his podcasts a lot his teaching, you know, in terms of authenticity, his message has a lot of great content and tips for emotional intelligence. And I feel like if we can be done like a mug, high emotional intelligence, then no matter where we are in life, or what life throws our way we can handle it and will actually become stronger from it.

Stephanie Maas
What book are you reading right now are listening to.

Dr. Ann Tsung
I just finished “what happened to you” by Oprah and talks about the childhood trauma and why people could be acting the way they’re acting. And instead of saying, Why are you doing that? Why do you do this, but instead ask what happened to you, because a lot of times it can be traced back to infancy stage, from then Nick Nicola. Abuse, etc. And that’s why they act the way they act. And this is a different approach to treating.

Stephanie Maas
So do you think you’ll spend your entire career as a traditional doctor?

Dr. Ann Tsung
No, no, no, I don’t think so. I think and they, and I’m hoping to achieve the five freedoms. And two, so the five animals again is time freedom to be able to change, you know, work my schedule, location, freedom, or location agnostic, I could work anywhere, anywhere in the world, really, emotional freedom, that’s where I want to be in terms of emotional intelligence, and having the capacity to take on anything in life, vitality, freedom. So in terms of longevity, and financial freedom, of course. So it’s always working towards that goal. And I want to be able to control my own time, I definitely want to do medicine, on my own time. So it’s not like full time, like I need it to survive, but on my own time, to practice to provide value, and also do coaching to help create time for other people, and to travel the world, with my one son and more kids to come and to share and teach them through experiences, like going somewhere to do some sort of volunteer work in a different country to actually travel and track and experience the hardship of going up on altitude to track for like hours a day to be on the coal to carry their packs, etc. To survive. Those are the things I want to create down the line.

Stephanie Maas
What is, and this is a kind of a silly question, but I like asking anyway. What’s like a little known fact about you that not very many people know.

Dr. Ann Tsung
I don’t know this, people know or don’t know. But English is my second language. And I actually had to learn English I didn’t. I was an ESL until middle school. And I actually didn’t, I had to use a dictionary but one of those electronic dictionary that you type in one word to translate. I will use that all the time in middle school in order to read books. So I wasn’t able to get out of an ESL English as a Second Language Program. I didn’t go into regular classes until I was in seventh grade.

Stephanie Maas
Wow, that had to be difficult.

Dr. Ann Tsung
I think it was initially because when I first came, I was nine years old. I took English classes in Taiwan and Sesame Street with Sesame Street for seven years wasn’t enough and I was very shy. So I spoke a few words and I had you know, friends who are only Chinese and we spoke Chinese only Mandarin, and it was during a competition and middle school, that the more books you have You need to go and answer questions in the library, you get points and whoever wins gets like a prize and that was competitive. So I wanted to win. So I read books, like voraciously in sixth and seventh grade up to like the 10th and 12th grade level, but I did it by, you know, started lower, of course, and I did it by translating, almost like every sentence had a few words, and it just learned English that way. And Full House.

Stephanie Maas
Full House, that’s great. Oh my gosh, that’s awesome. Okay, so this is just a personal question. I’m curious about you went to Antarctica. So my son loves penguins. So my bucket list is to take him. I mean, he wants the real penguins. I want to take him to Africa. I’ve looked into some and now look, I hate the cold. So this is not going to be we’re not going to be trekking anywhere. I’m not playing around. I’m gonna get off of something warm, walk around, take some pictures and then get back on to something work. So what advice would you give knowing I want to go to Antarctica?

Dr. Ann Tsung
Um, let me think. Yeah, so for those of you don’t know, I went to Antarctica as part of the aerospace medicine program when University of Texas Medical Branch Galveston and you go there to learn remote medicine, just like when the astronauts go into space and the space station’s remote medicine, telemedicine. So I was there for a month. It was summer. And McMurdo. So, I would say if you want to go to Antarctica, number one, it’s not as cold as winter in the Midwest, when it’s summer.

Stephanie Maas
Okay, so go in the summer, okay.

Dr. Ann Tsung
And it’s maybe 30s, unless you’re on the south pole can be colder. But it’s yeah, it’s like 30. Sometimes there’s Windchill sometimes, of course, there’s snow storm, there’s like, but it’s not like negative. So it’s doable, because we do it here in the Midwest. And so it depends on where you want to go. You can go from Christchurch, New Zealand. Or you can go from Oshawa, I believe as well South America. And you could go to the McMurdo Station and the in the US side. Or you can pay a little more, you can go to South Pole, but the penguin sightings a lot of it is that McMurdo Station from when I was there, and when the ice starts melting, I believe it was like January, February, later on, that’s when they see the penguins come out. And then the penguins. I mean, we saw, we saw seals, and I believe we saw occasional penguins when they started warming up. But I know later on, you’ll see penguins like within the base, just roaming around, not scared of people at all. That would be so cool. Yeah, just oh, one of the warm tie, and specifically asked them for penguin sightings. And I know there’s other bases, too, that is close to the water. So it may be a different timing in terms of when you can see wildlife. But it’s not that cold. It’s not like I’ll just dress warmly dressed like it’s for the Midwest. If you go to the summer, you’ll be fine.

Stephanie Maas
Okay, noted. Thank you. All right. Anything else as we head to the end of our time together?

Dr. Ann Tsung
Yes, I would say one big takeaway I want you guys to take you know to get from this whole thing is to please leverage your time. Think about your hourly rate. And think about what you’re doing. If you can outsource that to somebody else, like a house manager to do your dishes, fold your laundry, your proper you then outsource it. So you can work on creating your five goals for your life, your year, your 90 days. So think about that. And then think about hiring a virtual assistant as well. Also, if you need my help to kind of assess your five goals for your life, I am offering a 60 minute complimentary coaching call that you can schedule with me. You can go apply at Anne Sung md.com. That’s n sang md.com go through the questions. There’s a Calendly link at the end, you can book a call with me one hour, the space is very, very limited because I do work full time. And then the last thing is that if you would like to check out the podcast you can go to It’s not rocket science. show.com I’m on all the social media, Instagram, Facebook, they’re all and sung MD A n n t S u n g MD and feel free to check me out. Also YouTube as well. You can see me in person, see what this and lots of ways to reach me if you need help.

Stephanie Maas
Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. And just the opportunity to get to know you are truly inspiring. It was really great to see some of their realness and really appreciate you being here. Thank you.

Dr. Ann Tsung
Yeah, thank you so much, Stephanie for having me on The Action Catalyst. I love our time and I hope this was a valuable to your listeners.