Anna Dearmon Kornick: You can do just about anything. You can solve any problem. You can reach into your toolbox and grab just about anything. But the thing is, is that the tool that you grab is going to be different from your sister or the person next to you or your husband, because your personality is different and your needs are different.

Jade Boyd: Welcome to the show, Anna.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to chat.

Jade Boyd: We were saying this has been a long time coming because we got bumped and we were just talking before the show. Nobody is immune to things getting bumped in our schedules, even if we’re time management experts. And so I would love for you to just start out for somebody who has not been introduced to you and your world. Just a little bit more about who you are and what you do.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Sure! So thank you. And yeah, this has been a long time coming, I think we were supposed to chat last year, and then we were going to try and chat again around April, but then I broke my wrist, and so now, now we’re making it happen.

Jade Boyd: Yes. Full circle.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: My name is Anna Dearmon Kornick, I’m a time management coach, I’m host of it’s about time, a podcast about work, life, and balance. I’m author of time management essentials, the tools you need to maximize your attention, energy, and productivity. And I’m the founder of the It’s About Time Academy, but when I’m not doing all things, time management related, I’m most of my most important job is being a mom to two little girls. They’re three and five Camilla and Elizabeth. My husband, Scott and I also run another business called Studio Pizza Productions that does podcasts and YouTube editing for small business owners and content creators, and we live in South Louisiana where we like to do all the things that happen down here, like festivals and Mardi Gras and, being outside and all that good stuff.

So that’s me. That’s what life looks like.

Jade Boyd: And how did you get into the space that you are today from the point of, you know, growing this business, becoming a time management expert, which is not something that like we traditionally go to school for, right? So I’m very curious of what brought you to where you are today.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah. So I definitely didn’t stand up on kindergarten career day and say that I wanted to be a time management coach when I grew up. Cause that definitely wasn’t a thing. And then even gosh, back in 2017/2018 when I discovered the world of coaching and had an interest in time management. Time management, coaching didn’t even really seem like a thing then either.

So I actually got my start in this world really in my first real job. You know, some people call it their first big girl job. When I was a congressional scheduler, so my very first job right out of college was managing time for a member of Congress. Literally I was in charge of creating an itinerary for his weeks from the moment he woke up in the morning until he went to bed at night.

Like that was, there’s a whole job for that, and I loved it, it was really fun. And it was, you know, DC is a really interesting place to work. It’s a really fun place to work when you’re young because the city is just full of young people. It’s super vibrant. It’s super interesting. Tons of really smart people there, and I loved that kind of job that I had that had me creating order out of total chaos, because I mean, we had a million demands for the boss’s time from all different directions, not to mention he was also the first Vietnamese congressman in the history of the United States. So that made him even more in demand and it was in that first job though, which happens a lot of time to us as young professionals, when we start to kind of come into who we are and we start to, our own personal values start to take shape, even if we don’t call them our values at the time, we start to realize when we have things we need or when something is missing. And I realized. That I really missed my family back home in Louisiana. And so I said goodbye to DC and I moved back home where I started a 10 year career in crisis communications and government affairs, where every day was super laid back and chill, except it wasn’t.

Every day was literally a disaster. Every day was truly insane. I worked on some of the weirdest projects ever. I worked through hurricanes and oil spills and earthquakes and tornadoes and droughts and floods and non profit embezzlement schemes and universities on the brink of financial collapse. And then there was this one nude swimming scandal at a restaurant that just about broke me. Jade, like those words don’t go together. That’s not, that’s, that’s not

Jade Boyd: Bad combination..

Anna Dearmon Kornick: That’s not supposed to be a thing. And again, it was so much like my first job in that every day was about creating order out of chaos. But what happened along the way that so many people experience is when a little bit too much of your life, yourself, your energy goes into your work.

Jade Boyd: Mm hmm.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: At the time I was still single. And so, you know, Parkinson’s law work expands to fill the time available. Pretty much all my time was available. And so where did all of my time go work and what happened as a result? Burnout. Because that’s what happens anytime we kind of end up living against the values that we have and live against the boundaries that we should have in place for ourselves. Boundaries? Boundaries? Who’s she? What’s that? And so I ended up hitting a really deep, deep place of burnout, which I mean, I look back now and, you know, it’s easy to be grateful for really, really tough experiences once you’ve learned the lesson, once you, once you’ve made it to the other side, because I know now that experiencing that level of burnout is what propelled me to want to live the mission of helping other women in particular, either avoid, you know, avoid burnout, like not have that experience. Like I don’t, I don’t want people to experience what I did. And In my attempt to get out of it. I was like, okay, I’ve always been a problem solver.

I’ve always been someone who can create that order out of chaos. Like let’s, let’s figure this out. And so I poured into every time management book, productivity book, goal setting book, vision setting book, business book, like you name it. And I’ve probably read the book about it because I was like, there has to be, living life shouldn’t be so hard. And, and I felt like every book that I read led me to three more. And those books then led me, it just led me on this total, down this total rabbit hole. and I realized that if I could just figure out how to manage my time, then everything else would follow.

And so by paying really close attention to what worked for me, what that combination was for me, and then my second love is personality. I am a Myers Briggs, Enneagram, you know, whatever personality assessment, like let’s talk about it. And so what I realized is that the thing that so many books about time management and so many time management methods are missing is the personality piece. Because a method, a time management method, like I don’t want to name names, but you know, a method out there will say, do it this way, follow these steps. But not everyone’s personality is meant to do it this way and follow those steps. We’re all so different. And so what I really love to study now is the intersection of time management and personality. And how that really is at the core of how we can all create our own unique method of managing our time.

Jade Boyd: I love that you’re starting with that. First of all, I have so many new questions, like forget about the questions I sent you. I have so many more questions now, but I love that you’re starting with how personality plays such a big role in creating to do lists, because I do think that’s why so many people are frustrated with time management and productivity resources because they don’t actually help everyone.

There’s no one size fits all solution. And as women, especially becoming a mom this summer, I’ve just even more realized that there are no, like, you can’t just read a book and put something into practice that actually works for women, especially like so many productivity books are written by men, for men, for people in traditional careers or roles where they have a lot of autonomy over their time. And for most women, especially, Moms, especially business owners, there’s not a lot of control that we can have. I mean, there’s things that we can do to control more of our time, but, you know, at the end of the day, there’s so many influences that play a role in how much energy we have. what is on our to do list is not just our own stuff. It’s everybody else’s stuff too. And so I love that you speak to personality and how there has to be a different solution.

And I would love for you to dig into that a little bit more. Like, what does it really take? What strategies do you give busy women that actually works? What makes your approach different? Help us, please.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Sure. Well, really, it’s almost like a double edged sword, right? Because I can tell you that my method, you know, it’s called the heart method, because I, you know, I’ve found that there are five key elements that really help us live our best lives and be our best selves. And when you have your habits, your energy, your attention, your recharge, and your time figured out. You can, you can do just about anything. You can solve any problem. You can reach into your toolbox and grab just about anything. But the thing is, is that the tool that you grab is going to be different from your sister or the person next to you or your husband, because your personality is different and your needs are different.

And the thing is, is that so often, As, not just as women, but as consumers, as humans, we want easy. We want to be able to pick something off of a shelf and have it fit us perfectly. You know, it makes me think about trying on jeans. Okay, have you ever gone to the mall or gone to a store and you’ve tried on jeans and you end up in a dressing room with like 17 pairs of jeans on the floor and you’re crying because nothing fits right.

But the thing is, is that you don’t give up on all jeans just because those didn’t fit you. You know there has to be a pair out there that fits, or you take them to a tailor and you have them hemmed. And yet when it comes to time management, we’ll pick a method off the shelf, or we’ll read a book and we’ll try it, and if it doesn’t work for us, we assume that we’re the one that’s broken, that it’s our fault, when that’s not the case at all.

It’s that, you know, we want the easy, we want the template, we want the ChatGPT version. I, this morning, I kid you not, I asked ChatGPT, Hey ChatGPT, what is the ideal morning routine for a millionaire business owner mom with two small children? When I tell you that this morning routine that it spit out for me was absolutely laughable, like it had, it had you waking up at 5 a.m. to have five minutes of quiet time. It like had you working out for 30 minutes. It had you reading, oh my gosh, between breakfast and getting the kids to school, you were supposed to read a personal development book for 20 minutes. Like,

Jade Boyd: Very laughable. I’m sure all the moms listening are like, that’s hilarious.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: I was like, are you serious? Like finish breakfast with your kids, then read a personal development book for 20 minutes. Are you joking? But, but that’s the thing is that a true method of managing your time has to be just as unique as you are. So how do we figure out what that is? Because there is not a time management for Anna Dearmon Kornick book that I can go and order from Amazon.

We have to almost write it ourselves. And so, but the shortcut is found in your personality. That’s where the shortcut is. So I, in addition to being a time management coach, I am a credentialed Myers Briggs practitioner. And so I really study personality based on Myers Briggs. So Myers Briggs, I’m sure a lot of you have heard of it as either 16 personalities, or it’s the one with the four letters, like E N T J, or I NFP.

Jade Boyd: Last time I took it, I was an ISTJ,

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Really?

Jade Boyd: Tell me what I should do.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: That’s what, that’s what my husband is.

Jade Boyd: It was a long time ago, though, so it might have changed. Does Myers Briggs change?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: So it actually can, whenever you experience a major life event, like let’s say, it’s meant to measure nature versus nurture, so really it shouldn’t, but it can if you experience a major life change.

Jade Boyd: Yeah, it’s been over a decade, so I’m sure that it’s changed a little bit.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah, a ton of people I know took it in college and if you haven’t taken it since college, it’s definitely time to take it again, just to see what happens. But the thing is, is that the Myers Briggs and really any personality assessment gives you insights and clues into the way that you think. And what I love so much about the Myers Briggs is that In helping you determine, okay, are you more on the extroverted side or more on the introverted side? If you’re more on the extroverted side, it’s really important that you create intentional socializing opportunities in your week or else you are going to start hating your life. I mean, you’re going to feel exhausted. You’re going to feel listless. You’re going to feel like something’s wrong and you can’t put your finger on it. And on the flip side, if you are someone who is more introverted, you absolutely have to build in more intentional recharge into your week.

And so one of the very first things I do with my clients, whenever we start working together is I have them take the long form version of the Myers Briggs and we go through each of these aspects of their personality and almost, it almost feels like palm reading or reading their fortune or something silly like that because it’s like, okay, so I see here that you have a preference for introversion and you present to your company twice a week, don’t you? And they’re like, yes, and I’m always exhausted after and then I have to go into these other meetings. And what would it look like if you were to give yourself a block of time after those meetings just called decompress? Just so that you can come down from the high of that super energy draining experience that you just had. And so it really helps you take care of yourself, be more aware of how your energy impacts your days and, and map your time out accordingly.

And of course, there’s much more to it than just the extroversion introversion part. I mean, it dives into the type of information that you need to make decisions. So Jade, you being an ISTJ, I’m going to bet that you prefer a good checklist that’s concrete, give me the instructions, show me the proof. I bet you love reading testimonials before you buy something because you, someone who has that preference for that sensing side, that S side, really needs the facts and they really, they really feel most comfortable with things that are real and concrete. And so if we were working together, I would encourage you to incorporate journaling into your days because that tactile feeling of capturing your thoughts and getting them out of your head onto paper is going to make your ideas and your dreams and your vision that much more real, which then makes it easier for you to connect to it and go for it.

Jade Boyd: So this is why I love journaling then. All the dots are connecting.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yes! See? Isn’t that, isn’t that, it’s just, it’s so much fun. And there, I, I haven’t found anything out there yet that truly connects these pieces of our personality way that we can approach time and goal setting and how we map out the way that we spend our weeks.

Jade Boyd: Yeah. So let’s paint the picture of what this actually looks like from a real life example or even from your own story. Like, what does it look like for somebody who is completely overwhelmed, starting from square one, has no idea what to do to move in more alignment, to manage their time better?

And then what is like the end result that we’re hoping for? Cause like you said, the goal is not that like, we’re going to master our time or be in complete control of our schedules. So what, what does the end result look for and what should we be trying to create in our own lives? If it’s not mastering our time and you know, owning every single minute of our day, which I think we can all agree sounds really exhausting.

What should we be aiming for?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah. So that’s such a great question. So let’s start with that end goal. Let’s start with that end goal and then work our way back into how we get there. So that end goal is going to be pretty unique to each of us. I mean, can you tell how important, like, I really feel like the individual is here? Because for me, my end goal might be presence.

I want to feel more present with my girls. What is it that is going to give me more presence with my girls? For some people, that feeling might be space or peace. Or calm or prepared. And so I would really encourage you to start by, you know, it’s like the Stephen Covey habit, begin with the end in mind.

What, what is the end goal? You know, if you could fast forward to a year from now and imagine your best self, you are killing it on all counts. What do you feel like? And what comes to mind for you and really kind of sit with that. Like, is it presence? Is it hope? Is it calm? Because I believe that work life balance is not a formula.

It cannot be a formula. There is no step by step way to get there. Work life balance is a feeling and you know when you’ve got it and you know when you don’t. And when you can give a name to the feeling that you are aiming for it gives you something much, much clearer to aim for. It’s kind of like , I was just saying, you know, if you journal and you write down the words, I want to feel peace. Just the, the, the act of writing that word down, peace, makes it more concrete. It makes it more real. It makes it easier for you to wrap your head around. You can almost picture yourself feeling peaceful. And so then, knowing that that’s the feeling that we want, how do we get there?

Like, how do we create that?

And so whenever you are in a total period of overwhelm and we’re all going to get there, we’re all, I mean, even me as a time management coach, I’m so grateful that I have a process that I can use to get out of overwhelm when I’m there. And I have captured this process and I actually teach it in my free video course, blueprint to balance.

But you start by really kind of getting everything out of your head. You know, because whenever we feel overwhelmed, it’s because we’re just kind of swirling and we’re like, okay, well, I’ve got this birthday party to plan and I need to get a gift for that. And I need to change that hotel reservation. What’s our budget for Christmas? What are we going to wear for Christmas card pictures? My mom’s birthday is coming up. Have I checked on that client lately? Have I sent that contract? Have I gotten that questionnaire back? Like we’re constantly swirling with all of these things. And again, they’re just kind of, it doesn’t give us anything to grasp onto, and we’re not able to take action or come up with a plan for any of it.

And you know what I realized recently, Jade? I realized in the last week that it is easy to be overwhelmed. It is easier to be overwhelmed, to say, I’m overwhelmed, and to stay in a place of overwhelm, is to work your way out of it.

Jade Boyd: Mm hmm.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: And so, a lot of times we just kind of sit in that overwhelm and we stay there because there’s not a clear process or way for us to get out.

Jade Boyd: I also think that it can be like a comfort thing, like we are so used to it that it feels comfortable just to stay in overwhelm rather than to do something about it.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Oh, 100%. And don’t even get me started diving into the impacts of cortisol in our adrenal glands and how all of that can, can put us in this constant state of fight or flight. There are much better people than me who can speak to that. But. It happens. and then the next thing you know, you’re getting, you know, iron infusions because you’re deficient in minerals anyway.

That’s another podcast episode,

Jade Boyd: We could go on a long time here.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Right, exactly. But so when you are in that place of overwhelm, easiest thing you can do. Grab a notebook, grab a giant piece of paper, and just, and a pen, marker, whatever, and start writing down everything that’s in your head. Just get it out. Get it out until you literally can’t think of anything else. Because that will quiet the noise. That will enable you to, essentially take your brain and just put it on paper. Now some people like to call this a brain dump. And I totally get that. I just, that word just feels kind of icky to me. So I prefer mind sweep. And I also feel like sweeping is a lot tidier than like dumping stuff out on the floor.

And so I, you know, get everything out of your head onto a piece of paper, and then you can do something with that. You can start grouping things you can maybe if you like to color code get out some highlighters and everything that goes together like make it blue every kid thing make it green, you know, you can begin to identify like patterns and groupings of the things that are in your head that need to be done, but this gives you that starting point to start to say, okay, now, based on all of these things that are on this piece of paper, you can put all of them into one of four categories.

Everything is either something that you must do, something that you should do, something that you could do, and something that you want to do. Whenever all of these things are living in our heads, our brain reads them as things that we must do.

And therefore we carry the weight and we carry the pressure of all of these things that we feel that we must do.

How can we possibly do all of these things? But after you kind of quiet the noise in your head by getting things out onto paper, just, you know, you can grab a piece of paper and you can draw a line down the center. Top to bottom, a line across the middle, left to right, and you’ve got four quadrants. And so you can kind of sort everything, but you have to be honest with yourself is the thing.

One thing that can trip people up is they start to put things that they want to do in the must do category. See, so this is the part where you kind of have to be honest with yourself, and it can also be nice to have a coach or a friend or a biz bestie or whatever, to kind of hold you accountable here and almost say like, Hey, can you take a look at this with me and make sure that I’m not putting too much in the must do category, because when you’ve got an outside perspective, they’re like, girl, you don’t need to revamp your website again, like put that in the want to category.

Cause that, that can really relieve some of that pressure because then once you really have what’s in that must do category and you focus on that and you pick one thing to like really start making progress on, you’re able to start whittling away that big mountain of stuff that’s been plaguing you.

So, I mean, this is what I do. This is what I encourage my clients to do. And I find that this is a method that really works kind of with a lot of different personalities because it, it speaks to a lot of the differences that we have, you know, writing it down, making it tactile, doing a brainstorm, putting it into groups.

Sometimes the hardest thing is just sitting down and making yourself do it.

Jade Boyd: Yeah, for sure. And even just having the framework and having that. That prompt to go to because I think a lot of times when we are in that state of overwhelm. It just sucks that it works like this, but we obviously aren’t thinking as well as we do usually when we are flooded with cortisol feeling like everything’s happening all at once.

And so having a go to system like that is really helpful. But like you mentioned. There’s lots of different tools in productivity toolkits and people might grab for different ones, depending on their personality or really the stage of life or where their business is at, where their headspace is at.

And I would love to know, from your experience, what are some of your favorite go to tools that are in your toolkit? So it sounds like this is a great exercise for when you’re feeling overwhelmed and need a place to start, but is this something you use on a daily basis or like, what does your to do list look like?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Oh, that’s a great question. No, I, I use the, I, I, I call it the overwhelmed management matrix. Overwhelm management matrix. That’s the must do, should do, could do, want to, because it really helps you manage your overwhelm. No, that’s kind of like an in case of emergency break glass kind of thing. Like that’s definitely not an every day, but it’s so helpful whenever I do need it. another one of my favorite tools is using a shiny things list.

Jade Boyd: Mm

Anna Dearmon Kornick: So my, my shiny things list, this is a method that I came up with with a one on one client that I was working with. She was really having a hard time staying focused on the work that was right in front of her and would just find herself getting completely derailed.

And then the next thing she knew she would have to go into a meeting and then she would lose like all of that time that she had to focus and actually get work done was eaten up with little silly, trivial tasks. And so we created what we call a shiny things list. And so it’s super simple. You don’t need a special notepad.

Although I definitely had some special notepads printed for this.

Jade Boyd: Makes everything better.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: It does and they’re blue and cute, but you can just take a piece of paper and at the very top. This, so this ends up combining a lot of different time management strategies. At the very top, you write the start time and the end time of the time block that you’re using. So let’s say you have from 12:00 until 1:30. So at the very top of your shiny things list, you’re going to write 12:00 to 1:30, because what this does is this creates your fence, this creates your fence of focus. Parkinson’s law tells us work expands to fill the time available. And so what you’re doing is you are deciding this is the time that I have available, my start and my end time.

So then below that you’re gonna write the one to three things that you are going to work on during this time block. So I recommend putting at least two things on your list, three max, because if you get started on thing number one. And you finish it. Nine times out of ten, if we don’t have a plan for what’s next, we’re gonna go check our email, or we’re gonna pick up Instagram, or we’re gonna default to whatever thing we usually do when we’re wasting time.

But when you know, okay, if I finish this proposal, then I’m going to start on this project. And if I somehow finished the second project, then I’m going to move on to this. It keeps you from wasting that precious focus time, figuring out what you’re going to do next or worse, like squandering it on something meaningless.

So you’ve got exactly what you’re going to work on. Then below that, you draw a straight line. And then you write shiny things and I like to make it really squiggly and ridiculous, cause that’s fun. And then you get to work and then you almost treat it like you’re doing yoga. Not yoga, like you’re meditating. Cause you think about whenever we’re meditating. You focus on your breath, and then you have a thought, and then you acknowledge that thought, and then you focus on your breath.

And so, it’s just like that. You get to work, and you realize, oh, I think we’re out of toilet paper. Instead of going to Amazon to order a box of toilet paper, you just write it on your shiny things list, we need toilet paper, and get back to work.

You realize that you need to follow up with that client about their edits, instead of stopping what you’re doing and sending them an email, you write down, follow up with Jane about the edits, and then you get back to work. And so that way you’re able to capture all of these things that pop into our head because let’s be honest, sometimes we can be the worst distraction.

Jade Boyd: Mm hmm. Mm

Anna Dearmon Kornick: You, you have a place for all of those things to live so that whenever you finish your focused work time, you’ve used it for the purpose that you gave it. And now you’re able to take a look at this list that you’ve created and decide what to do with it. Am I going to, do any of these things need to be done right now? Are they going to take two minutes or less? Sure, let’s just knock them out real quick. Can any of these things be delegated to someone else on my team, to my husband, to anybody? Because maybe I don’t need to be the person to do that. Do I want to do any of these later? Like, do I want to defer them, put them on my calendar for another time? And then sometimes we capture things on this list that don’t even need to be done at all. Like it seemed very important in the moment when we wanted to be distracted, but it’s like, no, I don’t really need to do that. So let me just move on.

Jade Boyd: Yeah. So, I think a lot of people manage their to do list in their head, like you said, like you have so many things swirling and then they sit down every day and just write down everything that they’re thinking of and they start doing things. I think that’s a common approach when you don’t have a system.

And so I would love to know before it even comes to sitting down and creating your time blocks and deciding what to do, what does that system look like that you are putting those tasks that must be done or that you actually have decided. you will do. What does that look like before we get to our to do list every day?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah. Great question. so there are a couple of ways to, go about this as you can imagine. And it kind of depends on what works best for your personality. Me personally, all of my to do’s that are work or personal related all live in Asana. Like I love Asana as my project management tool and, and the way that I am able to have separate project boards within Asana so that all of the tasks associated with those projects can live in one place.

All of the tasks associated with podcasting or speaking can live in other places. And then I can see all of those tasks together in this beautiful view called my tasks. Really and truly, I cannot imagine what life would be like without the my tasks view in Asana because it pulls a date based aggregate, which sounds so official, but it pulls all of your tasks for a certain day into this view.

So, so essentially when I sit down in the morning, my to do list is already made for me because it’s taken the plans that I have for each of these projects or each of these things that I’m working on, it’s pulled them all into a, you know, calendar view. So I just do what’s on the list. but of course that, that also takes a lot of preparation.

I didn’t just wake up one day and suddenly had that in place. I mean, it takes being really intentional about, okay, what projects, am I focusing on right now? What are the steps for those projects? What are the timelines for those projects? Which again, could be an entirely different, like rabbit hole to go down.

But for me, it’s all about Asana because I have such a wide variation of things that I’m working on at any given time. I mean, right now we have podcast episodes that are in the mix. There are podcast episodes that I’m guesting on. There are speaking engagements that we’re planning for. There is a planner coming in 2025. Exciting, exciting. And so like that’s on the board and then we’ve got the, It’s About Time Academy and everything happening there. And so if I were to allow all of the tasks and to do’s associated with all of those projects swim on the same list, I would lose my mind. Like I would be so overwhelmed to see all of that in one place.

And so I say that if you are someone who has a large variety of different types of projects, different things that you’re working on, a tool like Asana that enables you to keep all of those different projects and timelines organized is, it’s a must have. It’s an absolute must have. But not everybody needs something that robust.

And so if you are someone who doesn’t have, you know, a million different projects, like I do, I recommend having two different to do lists, a today list and a to do list. So your to do list is sort of that master list where all of your to dos live and your today list is just the things that you’re working on today.

Jade Boyd: Mm hmm. And I love Asana. I’m a ClickUp gal personally. So I similarly have a system and it spits out my daily to do list, but I love what you just said about a today and to do because I sometimes feel there is so much in ClickUp that sometimes I get to that day and like speaking to being women and not having the same energy every day, not having control of our schedules every day, depending on, you know, what priorities we have and what season of life we’re in.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: What’s going to happen next?

Jade Boyd: Yes, I oftentimes get to ClickUp and I’m like, you know what? All of these things that I typically might do on a Tuesday. I only have half the capacity today. And I think it’s a good exercise to go through because I think a lot of women think that the solution is how do I figure out how to get it done?

Like, that’s the goal. How do I hack my way into getting everything I want to get done? And that is not the case. Like it is deciding what you have capacity to get done. And in general, like having less to do and being honest with yourself. I love that you brought that up, that it does help so much to have an outside perspective because a lot of us are just living in denial about how much we’re capable of holding.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah. I mean, I, I had this amazing client once who was so incredibly talented and intelligent, and she was very high capacity as well. She had many different consulting clients and she had a full time job and she was working toward her PhD and she had just all of these different things.

And she, one day in a session, she just kept saying, I just, how do I get it all done? How do I, how can I add another client? And it really brought up a conversation around enough. What does enough actually look? Do you need, first of all, do you need to bring on that other client? What is your, you know, what is your enough number in terms of number of clients or the, the revenue that you’re bringing in from your business or hours worked in a week?

Because when you have no idea of what enough actually means or looks like for you, you can just keep going until you get exhausted. And I also had to tell her, I was like, We have time management ninja’d your schedule. As much as we can ninja, it we have been, we’ve worked together to be intentional about the time blocks you’ve created.

You’ve got exercise time in the morning. You have built in your work day startup and your work day shutdown routines and your weekly planning session. And you have all of these essential routines that you need to support everything that you do. We have ninja’d this as far as we can ninja it. At some point, you have to stop taking on more. At some point, you have to peel it back if you want to create more space for yourself. And we don’t want to believe that we can’t do everything that we want to do.

Jade Boyd: Yeah.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: There just aren’t enough hours in the day to do every single thing ever. But there is enough time to do the most important thing if you’re clear on what the most important thing is.

Jade Boyd: And speaking to like the methodology too, it doesn’t matter how much you find time to fit in. If you never name how much is enough, because whatever time you do create, you’re just going to stuff it and you just keep spinning in that cycle of like, now I’m going to optimize this part of my life and then fill all that extra time with more work and feel the exact same way.

And I love that you started out this conversation with going back to that feeling like it’s not how much time are you creating? It’s like, what feeling do you want to feel in your schedule? And I do think when people think time management, that’s where our minds automatically go. Like how do I fit in everything I want to get done in these perfect little blocks of time, and increase my capacity to do everything that I feel like I should be doing or everything that I want to be doing. And that’s not actually the goal. And I think that is the reason why a lot of people get stuck because they think that next book is going to teach them the secret hack.

I think I’m past the phase in my life where I thought a productivity book could solve my problem, but now I’m experiencing it with motherhood of like, just, you know, the next blog post that I read is going to give me the answers of how to get this child to sleep. And that’s, there’s just no secrets, you know, like we’re all just doing the best that we can in these areas. And all of us have such different goals and such different lifestyles that there truly is no one size fits all solution, no matter what. area we’re looking at. And so I think it’s so funny realizing, just realizing that in my own life and how that plays out when you do start a business.

Because then, like you said, shiny objects, it’s so huge for business owners, especially creative business owners getting distracted and wanting to fit in like one more thing. But I just want to try. What if I did this? What if I started this offer? What if I worked with that client? And it really doesn’t unless you name how much is enough.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: 100%. And it doesn’t help that we’re constantly being fed messages that we need to have this thing and this thing. And we need to be on this platform and we need to show up on this platform in this way. And you need to have a podcast, but you also need to have a YouTube channel and you also need to do this.

And why don’t you have a retreat yet? And just all of these All of these things when it’s like, no, this is, this is my business. And I started it to call the shots, not to let marketing noise tell me what I should be doing.

Jade Boyd: Yeah. 100%. So, like I said, we took this conversation a completely different direction than I intended, but this has been so good. And one thing that I’ve been ending my conversations on recently, a little bonus question is what is one thing that you think business owners can stop doing right now to be more productive?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Ooh, that’s a really good question. Honestly, it all comes back to your to do list. And I think that you can stop rewriting your to do list every single morning. And I used to do this. I used to sit down and I used to rewrite my to do list every single morning, but you can get your time back by shifting your to dos to a digital task management system.

Like, even if that task management system is a Google Doc that you update every day. Stop, stop writing and rewriting your to do list. Because what’s going to happen is one day you’re going to forget to move something from yesterday to today. It’s going to fall off and it’s going to be not fun. And I say that from experience because that has happened too many times before I moved to digital.

So stop rewriting your to do list every day.

Jade Boyd: You’re preaching to the choir. I love that advice. Please say it louder for the people in the back. I think that you can get away with a paper planner for a long time, especially if you have autonomy and you aren’t working with a team or you’re not managing a business. But I do think that business owners will always hit that point at some point in your business where you literally cannot manage it on paper.

There has to be some systems there. So I love that advice. Stop rewriting your to do list every single day. Although it can be very therapeutic, I will say that.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: There is still a place for paper in the lives of business owners that have all of their stuff digitally. I mean, I am creating a planner in 2025. So, I mean, there is a place for it because that’s just that feeling of writing things down, but it’s Writing down the right things and letting the digital be your brain and the planner be where you process.

Jade Boyd: I love that. I am definitely a paper gal, so I’m really excited to see your planner when it comes out. You will have to let me know. I want to take a peek. So like I said, we barely brush the surface of everything that you have to offer. So for those who want to learn more from you, where can they find you after the show?

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah. Okay. So I have three things that I’m going to share with you. So it’s like, choose your own adventure, pick what’s best for you. First of all, It’s About Time, my podcast about work, life and balance new episode drops every single Monday. And I’ve really been into doing bonus episodes on Thursdays lately. So check out the podcast. If you’re looking for a way to continue learning from me. If you know that feeling of overwhelm all too well, I’ve got a free video course that can walk you through the steps that I shared today and a few additional to really help you beat back that overwhelm. It’s called Blueprint to Balance, and you can get your hands on that over at blueprinttobalance.com. And if you’re really feeling like you’re ready for a change in the way that you’re managing your time and that you want something that feels much more custom and much more you. I want to talk to you. Let’s chat. Book a call with me, head over to freetimecall.com and there’s just a couple of quick questions that you can answer to apply for a free call with me. I would love to spend an hour talking with you to really dig into what’s going on, what’s that big vision you’ve got, and what’s standing in the way of you making it a reality with your time.

Jade Boyd: And you also mentioned your book. I want to give one more plug for that too, because I would like to read it as well.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah, I do have one of those. It’s called Time Management Essentials and you can pick up a copy of it on Amazon, but if you actually go to timemanagementessentials.com and let me know where you picked up your copy of the book, I’ll send you a free action guide that pulls out every single action item from the book so that you have a really easy to follow guide to taking action on everything that you learned in the book.

Jade Boyd: I love that. Perfect. We will make sure to link all of those things in the show notes, but thank you so much for being here today. I talk to a lot of different productivity experts, and this conversation really stands out. So thanks so much for being you and bringing all of your expertise to the podcast.

I really appreciate you.

Anna Dearmon Kornick: Thank you, Jade. I appreciate it so much. I’m so glad we were able to make this happen.