July 10, 2023

How to Take Control of Your Time and Create Real Work-Life Balance That Works with Anna Dearmon Kornick

Are you struggling to manage your time effectively? Do you often find yourself overwhelmed by a never-ending to-do list? In this episode of The Fit Mess podcast, we explore the common challenges people face and provide practical solutions to...

Are you struggling to manage your time effectively? Do you often find yourself overwhelmed by a never-ending to-do list? In this episode of The Fit Mess podcast, we explore the common challenges people face and provide practical solutions to regain control over your schedule. Our guest, Anna Dearmon Kornick, shares valuable insights on the importance of having a clear vision, understanding your tendencies, and implementing personalized strategies.

Learn how to set meaningful goals, embrace productivity techniques, minimize distractions, and cultivate a positive mindset throughout your time management journey. Don't miss out on this opportunity to boost your productivity, achieve a better work-life balance, and unlock your full potential.


Topics Discussed:

  • Common challenges in time management
  • The importance of having a clear vision
  • Understanding your personality type and tendencies
  • Personalized strategies for effective time management
  • Uncovering the "why" behind your goals
  • Setting meaningful and SMART goals
  • Productivity techniques to enhance focus and efficiency
  • Minimizing distractions for improved productivity
  • Continual evaluation and adjustment of time management strategies
  • Cultivating a positive mindset throughout the journey

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GUEST WEBSITE:
https://annadkornick.com/ 

ANNA's BOOK:
"Time Management Essentials: The Tools You Need to Maximize Your Attention, Energy, and Productivity by Anna Dearmon Kornick: https://amzn.to/3NKdJJl 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

"When" by Daniel Pink: https://amzn.to/3JP9ECv 

"Better Than Before" by Gretchen Rubin: https://amzn.to/3rcnQyM 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Are you constantly feeling overwhelmed and struggling to find the balance between work personal life and self care. Yeah, me too. But I'm getting better. Thanks to some great advice from our guests this week. Anna Dearman corner because the host of the it's about time podcast. She joins me to share some of the science behind effective time management and actionable tips that you can implement right away.

So you can start to take back your day.

All right. Hi, again, Zach is off today. So thanks for hanging out with me and my guest, Anna Dearman Cornick we'll bring her in, in just a few minutes, but I want to start by giving you a little bit of context on this. Time management is something that I struggle with. I'm sure you do too. Most people do. I'm the kind of person that I'm, finding that [00:01:00] I'm externally motivated or as we'll discuss in a moment and obliger. This makes it difficult to hold myself accountable because I'm more likely to procrastinate or let myself off the hook. If I don't have someone else to answer to, for example, I love planning my calendar for the week and the day. It's so fun to make sure all the little blocks line up and nothing's overlapping and the day is just planned out perfectly.

It all makes total sense and is the roadmap to my success. But then when it comes time to execute. I make decisions like going to the gym later or working on that project tomorrow because it's a lighter day or making that phone call next week because it can wait. Sound familiar. No. Well, maybe you're the kind of person that has a, to do list or perhaps a, to do binder full of pages of things that you want to make sure you don't lose track of. Only to lose track of them because that thing you needed to do was on page nine, instead of page one. Or on your calendar where it should have been in the first place.

Well, my guests can help. Her name is Anna Dearman Cornick. She has a podcast called [00:02:00] it's about time. And she has a brand new book called time management essentials. The tools you need to maximize your attention, energy, and productivity. We get pretty philosophical about deciding what matters most and what should take up the most space on your calendar. But she also offers specific things you can do right away to take control of your time. So you have a better shot at reaching the goals you set for yourself. But I started by asking her why she says your time management problems.

Aren't actually time management problems.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: What happens is that. We either get frustrated and overwhelmed because we have so many different things on our to-do list, or we have said yes to so many things and over committed ourselves to the point of not being able to fulfill our, you know, responsibilities and obligations in the way that we would want, or we are so, Scattered and frazzled because we don't know , where we're [00:03:00] heading next or when we'll have time to do the next thing or what's next on the agenda.

And so we tend to think that all of this is a time management problem and when really what it comes down to is super surprising. And it's that most of the time people are lacking a vision.

Jeremy: Yes, that, that sounds frighteningly, uh, on target for me. And, and I'll, you know, I wanna highlight this with what I just saw you post on threads, you know, everybody's on the threads these days. I love that you posted. My toxic trait is that I love creating meticulously time, blocked schedules and then completely ignoring them , cuz can't nobody tell me what to do.

Even me sometimes, apparently this is so me, I can sit there, I can map out my week because I learned from you build the, the ideal week. I do that it's all in place. And then I get there and I'm like, eh, I could do that. Or like nine other things that are nowhere near as important. You, you [00:04:00] struggle with this, you lead on this.

How do you bridge that gap? How do you go from it's on the thing now I gotta just show up and do it.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah, well, you have to go in reverse for a bit and get to know yourself again. Most of the time what people wanna hear is tell me the planner that I need to buy. Tell me the time management hack that I need to do. None of that is going to work. Your ideal week is not going to work until you know yourself, you know what you want out of life.

As big and scary as that can sound, and you know what your values are, what matters most to you. That's the key to good time management. And so me, oh yeah. I will create this meticulously, this beautifully time blocked schedule for the day with exactly what I'm going to do at different points. And then I'll abandon my time blocks halfway through and go get a procrastination coffee down the street and then come back telling myself, okay, I'm energized, so now let me make up for it.

But the thing is, is that what I know about myself is that I am a. Questioner who leans rebel. [00:05:00] So if you hear that, you might be thinking, oh, she's talking about Gretchen Rubin's four tendencies. And if you're like, what is this Greek? I'm talking about Gretchen Rubin's four Tendencies. Gretchen Rubin was the author of The Happiness Project.

That's probably what she's most well known for, but my favorite book by Gretchen Rubin was called Better Than Before, and it was all about habits. Again, habits are one of the absolute tiniest building blocks to having good time management. But in this book, she talks about these. Four different, you could call them personality types, but they're four different descriptors of how you respond to enter and outer expectations.

And so what I have learned is that of the four types, there's the obliger who responds to outer expectations, but they're terrible at responding to inner expectations. So that means that if they say, I'm going to go for a run, they're probably not gonna go. But if a friend says, Hey, meet me for a run, they will be there with bells on.[00:06:00]

And then there's the upholder who responds to both internal and out external motivators. If they say they're gonna do something, they do it. If they promise they're gonna do something, they do it. But then we've got two more types, the rebel and the questioner. Now the questioner responds to inner expectations, but not outer.

So it has to make sense to the questioner in order to follow through and do something. And so as a questioner, I'll look at my schedule, this beautiful schedule that I've created for myself, and I'll be like, eh, that doesn't really make sense anymore. I want a coffee. Let's go and I'll go. And then our last, the last type, the rebel does not respond well to inner or outer expectations.

And they are that, Hey, can nobody tell me what to do? Not even me. And so it's, it's amazing because when you know your type, whether it's when you know your personality type, whether it's with Gretchen Rubin's four Tendencies, or the Myers-Briggs, or [00:07:00] StrengthsFinder, or the Enneagram, whatever it is, You get a shortcut cut, you get a fast pass to figuring out what strategies are gonna work best for you.

I said it a million times. Time management is not a one size fits all, copy and paste thing, and you have to start by knowing yourself because that clues you in to which strategies and hacks and tips and tricks are actually going to work for you.

We'll get back to the show in just a minute, but first I have a question.

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Jeremy: So I'd like to say this is for a friend, so I'm going to, this is for a friend.

I I feel like I'm a, a recovering obliger. I'm trying to, trying to become more of the questioner. I got up this morning. Normally I go to the gym. When I take my kids to the bus stop.

They are now done with school.

And I still had the time. It's still on the calendar. Go to the gym. I w I woke up and I went, everybody was still asleep. I was very proud of myself. I got it done. That's, that's new for me. Normally, it's like something has to already be in place for me to act and do the thing.

So how do you work on if there is, so most of us have a boss, right? The boss lays out the agenda. These are the things I need from you. A, a, B, C. Go get 'em done. Maybe you don't, maybe you are more of an entrepreneur, maybe you have a little bit more freedom in your schedule if there isn't someone to, to default to for how, how to get [00:09:00] through my day, how do you wrestle with that and, and come up with something effective?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah. When you don't have a boss that's telling you what to do and you are the boss, your why has to be the boss. You know? It goes back to you committing to going to the gym. I. It's so much easier to make yourself go when you have a compelling reason why. And you know, sometimes something as surface level as, Hey, I wanna feel confident while I'm at the pool, so let me go to the gym.

And that can be enough to drive people. But sometimes you have to dig a little bit deeper into that why. Asking yourself, okay, why do I need to go to the gym? Well, if I go to the gym, I'm going to feel good and be healthy. Okay, well, why do I wanna feel good and be healthy? Well, it's so that I can be at my best when I play with my kids.

Why do you wanna be at [00:10:00] your best when you play with your kids? Well, because I want them to think of me as like a good, active, involved parent. Why do you want them to think that you're a good, active, involved parent? Well, I want to be an example for them so that one day when they become parents, that they're able to pass on the experiences that they've had to their kids, my future grandkids.

And that just made going to the gym really deep. And so maybe that is not your exact motivation, but really digging deep into the why can sometimes get you to that root of, oh no, like this. This is why I am going to the gym.

Jeremy: okay, so there's a why for everything. There's the personal why, the professional, why there's all the different whys.

Again asking for a friend. How do you, I know this is something you talk about in terms of, uh, uh, deciding what the priorities are, what matters the most? Obviously like my kids, my family matter the most, but so does paying the [00:11:00] rent and the mortgage and being successful in my job. So when you've got a wide open schedule, if you've got the ability to sort of make your day, how do you weigh the two different, uh, or, or the many different competing worlds for priorities and, and decide what, what gets your time?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Oh my gosh, that's such a good question, right? Because when your schedule is wide open, anything could happen at any moment. , so this is what it really helps to narrow. Down or to, uh, kind of laser focus how you think about priorities. , if we think about. Priorities as one thing. Like priorities are important, right?

Just about anything could be considered a priority. It almost makes me picture a very large, like fenced in grassy area where everything inside of it is considered a priority. When everything is important, you're right, it is nearly impossible to know how to rank and categorize these things, but now imagine breaking that fence into [00:12:00] three different sections. And each section has a specific type of purpose associated with it. , I like to think of priorities. Not as something abstract, this idea of the most important thing, but I like to take the idea of priorities and to turn them into something that we can actually picture and imagine the weight of.

Um, you might have heard something similar before, uh, Stephen Covey's, uh, talked about it in his work. Um, there's also the parable of the pickle jar. And it's thinking about priorities in terms of boulders, big rocks and pebbles, boulders being, , the giant, um, giant boulders that I always picture being at the Grand Canyon, despite the fact that I've never actually been to the Grand Canyon.

Um, but if you were to push on a boulder with all of its might, it's not moving.

Jeremy: Just ask Wiley Coyote, right? I mean, how many times?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Exactly. I mean, it's not moving. And then big rocks, you know, you can also picture [00:13:00] a big rock. They're big, they're heavy, they've got some weight to them, but you can typically move them around. And we all know what pebbles are.

Pebbles are the little bitty pieces of gravel that kind of fill in all the other spaces. And so how do we take this idea of rock formations and translate that to priorities in a way that helps us make decisions? So, When we think of the things in our, in our days, in our weeks, um, the way that we spend our time on activities that help us show up as our best selves, those activities are important.

Um, so things like professional development. Okay. Things like cultivating relationship with your partner, things like working out all it's important. Right. It helps you show up as your best self. , but getting in a workout is not always the most urgent thing. Uh, we could very easily bypass working out to, uh, schedule [00:14:00] a client call or to get some work done or to record a podcast episode.

That, and, and, and we tell ourselves a lot of time. Okay, if I have time, I'll go to the gym or if I feel like it later, I'll go to the gym. Newsflash, there will not be enough time and you will not feel like it. And so by thinking of these important activities that are not urgent, that often get pushed to the back burner, but they help us show up as our best selves, we think of those as boulders.

We think of those as the things that we put into our schedule first. So we're, we're zooming out, we're thinking about our, our time in terms of a week rather than just a day. , Because one of the biggest mistakes that people can make when it comes to time management is operating under the assumption that they have to fit everything in every day.

Let me design my perfect day. No, don't do that. Just let's, let's zoom out and think about a week, because consistency is still possible without something happening. Daily, and that's something that I [00:15:00] always have to remind my clients. You can be consistent without doing something daily. And so, you know, if you're listening right now and you're thinking, okay, working out, that's a boulder for me.

That is something that is important, but it's not urgent and it helps me show up as my best self. I really encourage you to think about what are some examples of boulders in your life? Is it making time to call your grandmother? Once a week, you know, just to check in. Is it having a, , monthly date night with your partner just to continue developing that relationship?

Is it having a solo day with your kids once a month in order to have that one-on-one time with them? , because although these bolder activities are not urgent, the longer that we neglect them. And the more that we push them off and push them off, the more urgent they eventually become. Because , these non-urgent important activities, eventually they, they catch on fire.

, and all of a sudden you look up and you haven't been to the gym in months, [00:16:00] your relationships are not in a good place. Your boundaries have fallen apart, all because you did not put these boulders first. So whenever we're thinking about planning what our ideal week would look like, We wanna put our boulders in first, even before those important revenue generating business activities that we're gonna talk about now, because those are our big rocks.

So big rocks, these are the things on your to-do list on your calendar that are urgent. And they're important. They're urgent, and they're important. So these are the things that are typically time-bound. . They're project oriented. There is some type of deadline involved. Perhaps it's an obligation that you are completing for someone else.

, and these are the things that. Typically have an endpoint. , there, you know, there's the, the project will end, or this activity will come to some type of completion. But either way, we wanna remember that these big rocks, they're urgent, they're important, and [00:17:00] they move the needle. In your life or in your work, whatever that means for you, because of course, that's going to mean something different for everyone.

Another reason why work-life balance is not a formula, it's a feeling. You know what feels right as a big rock for you. And so once you've got your boulders in place for your week, you know when you're getting in your three workouts, you know when you're meditating, when you're going on a date night, when you're calling your college roommate to catch up, whatever it is.

Then this is when we add in those big rocks. , because even though they're urgent, they do have some wiggle room. And we do, we, we, so we place those big rocks in our week and then what's left? Everything else, all of the little tasks and to-dos that, uh, we can think of as pebbles. They're small. They're typically not super urgent.

They're typically not super important compared to our big rocks. They're not those things that are really moving the needle in our life [00:18:00] or our work. And so the great thing about Pebbles is that they're small. And so when we've got our boulders. Placed into our weeks, and we've made space for those big rock activities that move the needle.

We can fill in the spaces in between 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there with a pebble here and there to knock those out. , Another thing that I love doing is taking a pile of pebbles and squeezing them together and turning them into a big rock with something that I like to call a pebble power hour.

Just setting aside an hour once a week to knock out all of the little bitty random things. I mean, we need to get a babysitter. I need to order a birthday gift for a four year old from Amazon. I need to book plane tickets for a wedding in Montana in August. I need to. Order bookmarks for my upcoming book launch party.

All of that stuff is gonna be handled back to back in the course of an hour tomorrow.

Jeremy: So that is a lot to sit down and look at the calendar with and plan out. So I, I have a couple of [00:19:00] questions and, and one of them, I'm, I'm hearing, uh, Zach in my ear, he is, he's the get up at four 30 in the morning, go straight to the gym guy, like, go in, knock it out, get home, have the coffee plan the day, like he gets it all done early in the morning.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Love that for him.

Jeremy: you have to be that guy or can you make it work for you? Like, is there, is there science that says get up before everyone else on the planet and get it done, or is it customizable to each person?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Oh my goodness. That is a great question. Funny enough, I just finished reading 5:00 AM Club by Robin Sharma, which is all about getting up at 5:00 AM and following the this set routine and doing the this for 20 minutes and this for 20 minutes. And I think that that is great for some people. I. But not everyone is biologically built for 4:00 AM mornings, 4:35 AM even six or 7:00 AM One of the most eye-opening and impactful things that I've [00:20:00] learned about time management along the way is that each of us has our own unique biological chronotype.

And if all of us attempt to wake up at. 5:00 AM there's gonna be 25 to 50% of us. That absolutely does not work for, , And so really, you know, it all goes back to knowing yourself. Knowing yourself is so much more than just knowing your personality type and what makes you tick. It's also understanding the unique energy flows of, of your body and how you operate.

You know, 25% of the population is biologically considered a night owl. And our night owls, they don't truly come alive until the early evening, and they're living in a world , That favors morning people,

and they ha they have to meld themselves to, to the, the daytime morning schedule. You know, I I I'm what's considered a, a third [00:21:00] bird.

So, to, to rewind for a second. , in Daniel Pink's book, when the Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, he talks about three different biological chronotypes. Okay? You've got your morning lark that comes alive early in the morning. Your night owl, who we know comes alive in the evening, but there's this middle person that he calls the third bird that really doesn't get up and going and, um, on all cylinders until mid-morning.

Hi. That's where I am. By the way, I am the time management coach that was written up by my supervisor for being late, no less than 17 times in a quarter when I worked for a PR agency. Not kidding. I mean, I, I mean, had to be there at eight that just. Doesn't, that doesn't work for me. I'm sorry. And so first of all, so if you think that time management is hopeless for you, let me tell you, I literally got written up [00:22:00] for being late 17 times.

I. But when I look back on that time, it's because I was trying to operate in opposition to the way that my body actually works. And so if you are struggling because you think, oh, all the greats get up at 5:00 AM I'm a loser. If I can't wake up at 5:00 AM that is false. Lean into your body's natural rhythms.

Find your energy, find your natural energy peaks, and then guard that time. So,

Jeremy: And, and just anecdotally, Jeff Bezos, I read that he has to, he literally has to have his putter around time until 10:00 AM like 10:00 AM That's when he gets to work, but he just needs time to just. Put her around the house and do

nothing like

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Oh man.

Jeremy: if he can put her around, I'm gonna feel pretty good about it.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Right. I think I'm a couple billion away from totally giving into the putter around time.

Jeremy: Yeah. It's a, it's a nice dream to have for sure. Uh, by the way, the K chronotype, I dunno if you know this, but like, so I'm, I'm a nerd for the aura ring and it has your K chronotype, like it [00:23:00] monitors like when you should go to sleep, tells you when your peak sleep time is. Like, so if you're into the nerdy data stuff, that's a, that's a great way to figure that out.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: I love that. That is a piece of the nerdy data that I have not jumped into yet, but I do. That is, that is fascinating. I'm going to have to, um, see if I can get somebody from Aura on the podcast

Jeremy: Oh, I, I

Anna Dearmon Kornick: on my

show.

Jeremy: be able to connect you. I, I know some people.

Uh, cool. Um, you mentioned a few minutes ago work-life balance, and I know a lot of people that say that's not a thing. Is work life balance a thing? What does it look like?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Oh, that's such a fun question. I think that work-life balance is a thing just as much as imagination is a thing or democracy is a thing, or I. Any other concept that you can't touch and that looks different to different people because that's what it comes down to. [00:24:00] Work-life balance is something that is different for every single person because we all have different responsibilities and different family dynamics and different personalities, so it's.

Ridiculous to say that work-life balance doesn't exist just because someone who chooses to say that. Doesn't feel balance to me. They just haven't found their version of balance yet, and it's really easy to stop looking for it and to give in to the chaos if you just tell yourself that it doesn't exist.

To me, that's just giving up work life balance is a feeling, not a formula. I can't copy my version of work-life balance onto you just like yours wouldn't work for me. And it takes getting to know yourself, knowing what you want out of life, and knowing what matters most to you. Without that, [00:25:00] you're not gonna find it.

Jeremy: See, and it's interesting cuz uh, I, I'm sure you're familiar with Alex Hormoze. He talks about how like literally all he does is work.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy: He absolutely loves it. And he's like, if I, if I literally fill every minute of my day for the rest of my life doing this, I could not be more thrilled. And people from the outside would go, well, how come you don't ever take a break and put, you know, put your feet up and just chill?

And, but he's like, that's not me. So it's just interesting that, that there are people that say, oh no, that's completely toxic and, and unhealthy. But it does seem like, like most things in this space, it's, it's, uh, up to each person.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: It might be toxic and unhealthy for one person and that it may be pure joy for someone else. Uh, there are some of us, there are a lot of us who work is a form of love for their family, and that's something I work with a lot of professional women and. [00:26:00] Entrepreneurs and they feel guilty because they, they spend so much of their qual quantitative time working and they have this, this guilt that I should be spending more time with my family, but at the same time, that work.

They feel deep down is like an act of love for their family because it's, it's caring for them, it's supporting them. It's, it's being in that protector provider mode and that, again, love takes on many different forms and expressions, and for some people, working is truly an act of love for their families, and they shouldn't feel guilty about that.

Jeremy: Yeah, we've been pretty philosophical with a lot of this, so let's, let's talk tactics. What are some things that somebody listening right now is like, yeah, my calendar's a mess, or I don't do what it says I'm supposed to do, or I'm doing it and I get distracted by all the things that are happening. Gimme a couple of, just real basic, I want to get my, my calendar, my life in order.

Where do I start?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: I love it. If you wanna get [00:27:00] your calendar in order, start by doing a calendar audit. Um, it's not as scary as it sounds. The IRS is not coming for you, but. Take a beat, what? This week, next week, and just examine what is on your calendar. , chances are you've got. Obligations. You've got time blocks, you've got meetings and things on your calendar, and you're, you might not be in love with every single thing that you have committed to spend your time to.

So I really encourage you to ask yourself, what is on my calendar that I am not looking forward to? What is on my calendar that I typically avoid or skip over? Where do I find myself? Blowing through and ignoring the time blocks that I've set for myself. And then for each of those things, ask yourself why?

Because that's something that we often don't take enough time to do. Okay. Why am I dreading this meeting? Oh, it's because I'm, this really isn't a good fit client. Okay, what can you do about that [00:28:00] in order to free up that space for more? Good fit clients. Does that mean that you need to take a step back and look at your ideal client profile, or that you need to take a look at your marketing and see the type of people that you're attracting?

Sometimes those tweaks, while they aren't directly moving things around on your calendar, they have a ripple effect of helping you create the life and spend your time in the way that you want it. So, If you're totally overwhelmed, do a calendar audit. Um, and then the next thing that I would recommend is Test tracking time blocking. Uh, if you have never, if, if you've been solely operating off of just a to-do list or your task management system, I would really encourage you to take those to-do items from your to-do list and put them on your calendar and actually create almost like meetings with yourself to represent the time that you'll spend working on each of the items in your to-do list.

This is how you eliminate that [00:29:00] feeling. You have at the end of the day when you had 37 things on your to-do list and you only did seven of them, and then you hate yourself. If you wanna eliminate that, put the items on your to-do list that are most important and most urgent, arranging them around your boulders, of course.

And then boom, chances are you'll have a to-do list with only about seven things on it for the day. And so you'll actually get to end the day feeling accomplished because you have put a realistic number of things on your plate.

Jeremy: The thing that I love about that, like just mentally, the, the space that it takes up in your head and on that list, you're constantly referencing that list. The minute you give it a time and a place, you can stop thinking about it. Cuz you know, on Thursday at two o'clock, that's when you have to care about that.

Right Now you

Anna Dearmon Kornick: it's there. It's like scheduling a time to worry. Like I'll worry about that later. That's why I, I handle all of my financial tasks on Friday because sometimes I don't like, I don't like sending invoices or reaching out to clients with overdue bills. I can worry about that on Friday. Um, and then the last.

[00:30:00] Tactic Tip trick that I would recommend is to, um, head over to anna d cornick.com/book. I'm sure we'll link this in the show notes and grab a copy of Time Management Essentials. It's my new book that is dedicated to everything that you need to know about values based time management, managing your time with.

Purpose rather than just rearranging the mess on your calendar and putting a bandaid on it inside, you'll find everything from how to create that vision, how to identify productivity pitfalls before they trip you up, and get really comfortable with the time management tactics that will completely save the day and save you time in the process.

Jeremy: Well now you stole my last question, which is. Where can we learn more about you in the book? So I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll lob up a softball of what did we not cover that you, uh, would like to leave our audience with?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: One thing that we didn't cover is probably the most underrated productivity tool there is, and that is [00:31:00] sleep. Again, everything productivity oriented isn't all, isn't necessarily about getting more done and less time and squeezing more and more into your day or on your to-do list.

If we don't take time to recharge to rest, to get seven to nine hours of sleep a night to take breaks during the day to plan actual seasons of rest in our work, we are not going to have the mental capacity to. Show up as our best and highest selves. And so I think that if there's one thing that I'd love for you to remember, it's to get some sleep.

You need it.

All right. My thanks to Anna Dearman Cornick. She is the host of the it's about time podcast and she has a new book called time management essentials. The tools you need to maximize your attention, energy, and productivity, you can get those links and the links to the books. You mentioned in the show notes for this episode@thefetmass.com.

And there are so many great takeaways from that interview. For example, the [00:32:00] idea that time management challenges often stem from a lack of vision rather than a lack of time.

It's a matter of knowing what your priorities are, knowing what your tendencies are and knowing how to use them to your advantage. So things don't get lost in the shuffle and they find a place on your calendar and they get done when they need to get done.

She offered a lot of different techniques, like time-blocking for example,

But this is not a one size fits all approach. You have to experiment with a lot of different techniques and find what works for you.

And when you struggle to get motivated to do those things, to actually work on those goals that you set for yourself, it always comes back to that idea of connecting with what your, why is, what is the reason that you are trying to do the thing you need to do? And if, if it's not big enough to keep you moving. Find something bigger or maybe take a look at what that thing is and decide that it's not worth it after all.

And finally, I want to call back to an episode that we did a few months ago. Now, I believe where we talked about the Eisenhower matrix. Just basically a framework of four quadrants in a box where you can prioritize things based on [00:33:00] importance and urgency.

Using that to sort of dump your thoughts out onto, onto paper and organize them in a way that makes sense for you.

To then move them to a calendar where you can tackle them as needed. It's a great tool to use, to stay organized. But Anna also introduced me to an alternative method . Called the drip matrix and it focuses less on urgency and importance. And instead helps you prioritize what lights you up and makes you money. And what I like about that as opposed to the Eisenhower matrix, is it plays a little bit more on your emotions, which maybe will drive your why a little bit stronger. Than just urgency and importance in having to answer to other people or answer to. Uh, clock. If it's something that emotionally means something to you.

Or it could benefit your bank account. Perhaps that will be the motivation that you're lacking. Now that gets in the way of your progress.

We'll have a lot more on that in our upcoming newsletter, which you can get@thefitmass.com. . And that's where we'll be back in just a few days with a brand new episode. Thank you so much for listening.[00:34:00]

Anna Dearmon KornickProfile Photo

Anna Dearmon Kornick

Time Management Coach / Author / Host of It's About Time

Anna Dearmon Kornick is a Time Management Coach, wife and mom who helps busy professionals and business owners master time management so they can stop feeling overwhelmed and start spending time on what matters most.

Her debut book published by McGraw Hill, Time Management Essentials: The Tools You Need to Maximize Your Energy, Attention, and Productivity is filled with assessments, tool kits, and actionable advice to give readers everything they need to feel fully prepared to put their skills into action right away.

As the host of It’s About Time - A Podcast about Work, Life and Balance, Anna shares time management tips, productivity strategies and real-life advice to help her listeners make the most of their time.