Anna Dearmon Kornick shares essential tools and tricks for managing your time and energy well.
You’ll Learn
- What most forget when planning out their day
- How to keep little tasks from distracting you
- How to arrange your week to maximize energy
About Anna
Anna Dearmon Kornick is a highly sought after time management coach and keynote speaker, top 1% globally ranked podcast host of It’s About Time, and founder of the It’s About Time Academy. A true Louisiana firecracker who has become known for making time management fun, Anna helps busy professionals and business owners struggling with overwhelm manage their time using her personality-driven HEART Method.
Building on more than a decade of experience in the fast-moving, high-stakes world of political and crisis communications, it’s no surprise that Anna thrives on creating order out of chaos. Early in her career, she wrangled media for a Lt. Governor and managed the hectic schedule of a U.S. Congressman. Her rapid response background and relentless approach to problem-solving position her as the go-to expert for purpose-driven time management for busy professionals.
- Podcast: It’s About Time
- Website: AnnaDKornick.com
Resources Mentioned
- Author: Laura Vanderkam
- Book: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
- Book: Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters (Getting Art Done) by David Kadavy
- Book: The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
- Book: Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by BJ Fogg
- Past episode: 052: Mind Management for Productivity with David Kadavy
- Past episode: 317: How to Form Habits the Smart Way with BJ Fogg, PhD
- Past episode: 482: David Allen Returns with the 10 Moves to Stress-Free Productivity
- Past episode: 617: Enhancing Your Productivity by Managing Your Mental Energy with David Kadavy
Thank You, Sponsors!
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Anna Dearmon Kornick Interview Transcript
Pete Mockaitis
Anna, welcome!
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Hey, Pete, how you doing?
Pete Mockaitis
I’m lovely. How are you doing?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
I’m doing great. Thanks.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear some of your time management wisdom. You have had some cool experiences from wrangling some hectic schedules in your professional world, so, I’d love to hear any really surprising insights about time management that you know and we don’t, but we should know?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Well, I’ll tell you an insight that I learned very early in my, I guess you could call it time management career. My first job straight out of college was as a scheduler to a United States Congressman.
And my very first week on the job, I was so excited to dive in and create the most perfect schedule anyone had ever seen. And on day one, mid-morning on Monday, our chief of staff Clayton walks up to me, and he says, “Anna, we have a problem.” And my heart absolutely sank, I had no idea what I could have done wrong. And he points out that I’d forgotten something very important, and it’s something that a lot of us actually tend to forget.
And he shared with me that the boss was not a robot, and that he needed bathroom breaks built into his schedule. And I was absolutely mortified. And it was such an important reminder very early in my career that we are all human, and that taking breaks is just as important as making sure that there’s time allotted to get things done.
Pete Mockaitis
Yes, we are all human, and time needs to be allotted. As we’re having this conversation, this is the day that, well, President Jimmy Carter’s funeral is occurring in the Washington Cathedral. And I caught some of the news showing that live broadcast. And it was sort of a unique moment watching all these presidents.
Just sitting and waiting. Just like the rest of us, like there are times, it was like, “No, a funeral is about to start. We are sitting and we are waiting for things to occur because even though we are super powerful, wealthy, important, that’s just kind of a reality. Like, they, too, need bathroom breaks and need to eat and sleep and do all the things, though that’s not put on the news stations.” So I think that’s a great point right there, is that whether or not you’ve scheduled it, these things must happen.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, exactly.
Pete Mockaitis
And when you’re in a highly scheduled environment, it sounds like that was your duty to literally put a line item in the calendar, which says, “Restroom.” Or, how is that operationally executed, if I may ask, Anna?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
You know, that’s a great question. It really looked like making sure that there was 15 minutes of buffer. Between every two meetings, there needed to be 15 minutes of buffer just in case, so often, when we think about time management, we tend to think about getting as much accomplished as possible and squeezing in as many things as possible into our day. But if that is the only lens through which we look at time management, we’re setting ourselves up for failure because the perfect day, maybe on paper, where you maximize every single minute of your day, it just doesn’t work in real life.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so funny, I’m so fascinated by the notion of scheduling every minute of another person’s life and what that experience is like for you when you’re fresh into your first kind of professional role there.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
I know it’s a crazy concept to think about that.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, so I guess help me out, literally, in that calendar, you’re having sleeping, waking up, and showering. Like, you have this written in there for every piece?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yes, that was all completely time blocked. So, I know your audience is no stranger to time blocking. It’s creating a block in your calendar that represents how you’ll spend that time, and we essentially knew that in order. So, as a congressman, as anyone in a high-powered, high-responsibility position, you have to divide your time in a lot of different ways.
And so, without having a minute-by-minute itinerary for the day, it’s nearly impossible to divide your time between all of these different pieces that have to be tended to.
And, of course, it took a really important upfront conversation of, “What do you want your day to look like? What type of breaks do you need?”
But it really had to look at, “Okay, so you want to work out, in the mornings. How long do you need to work out? What does that transition time look like from the gym back to the office? How much time do I need to block out?” I got really acquainted with using Google Maps and traffic projections in order to understand transition time from point A to point B because that was so key in making sure that buffer time was included.
Really, every single thing had to be thought of and accounted for to ensure that the day went smoothly and that we were able to have him show up everywhere that he needed to be.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, what I find intriguing about this notion is, I guess maybe I’m just sort of like a creative, free thinking, I like to get into my flow. Like, that’s my favorite is like, “Oh, there’s nothing this afternoon. Let’s just dream up some things.”
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Well, you should not be a congressman then. I would not recommend that path for you.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I think for several reasons, but I guess what’s funny though is if you are proactively taking into account every minute and the travel time, then it doesn’t necessarily follow that having a schedule that looks visually jam packed actually feels emotionally stressed, rushed, hurried, exhausting. It’s like, “What’s on my calendar? Oh, 45 minutes for strolling to the gym, exercising, and strolling back. All right then, I’ll just enjoy doing that now. Cool.”
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, I mean, what’s so interesting is that. A lot of my work as a time management coach now incorporates your personality and the way that you think, the way you make decisions, the way you approach structure, closure, open-endedness, all of those things, it deeply impacts the way that you spend your time and manage your time.
And for many people, a minute-by-minute planned-out schedule feels freeing because everything has been accounted for, and they’re not having to make minute-by-minute decisions as their day goes on because everything’s been planned. All they have to do is adapt as they need to. But for other people, having a minute-by-minute planned-out schedule is just an opportunity to rebel and do the opposite of what is on the schedule.
Like, “No, nobody is going to tell me what to do, not even me and my calendar.” And so, it’s really important to understand. I mean, you mentioned, “Hey, if I’m a creative type, I want to have time to think.” Having that minute-by-minute schedule probably wouldn’t be the best route for you to take. I would recommend something else for you. But if you have that type of personality where the structure feels like freedom, then time-blocking the heck out of your day or your week is going to feel right for you.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s handy. Well, I’d love it you could perhaps share with us a cool story of someone who saw a transformation with regard to their relationship to time management, where they were, what they did, and where they landed.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
So, it really makes me think back to a client that I worked with a few years ago. I’m going to call her Amanda. And when Amanda and I started working together, she was completely overwhelmed to the point where she felt hopeless. She was working in a job that honestly had her working 24/7. She was never putting her laptop away. She was missing out on spending time with her family and friends. She felt like life was completely passing her by and that she was completely just drowning in work, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
She reached out, and she said, “I feel like this is my last hope. Let’s work together, let’s figure this out.” And so, working with Amanda, we started, step by step, sorting out what it is she actually wanted her life to look like. And the thing is that, for so long, she had just been kind of swept up in this wave of everyone else’s expectations, of what her parents wanted for her, of what she thought that she was supposed to be doing.
And she realized that she wasn’t really doing anything that she truly wanted to do. And so, for the first time in her life, she actually started to create a vision for her life and what she wanted. And she started getting really clear about what she wanted for her future. And a lot of times you might think, “Wait, what does this even have to do with time management?” But without a vision for your future, you have no direction, you have no decision points about how to spend your time.
And so, I encouraged Amanda to write a letter to herself from a future version of herself. So, we worked together in 2020, and she wrote a letter to herself from 2025 Amanda. And in this letter, she poured into all of the things that she was currently doing, that she owned a home, that she was in a job that she loved, that she worked in an office with exposed brick and huge windows, that she had time to spend with her family and friends, and that, more than anything, she was happy and proud of herself.
Now, staying in touch with Amanda over the last five years, because it’s 2025 now, I’ve had the opportunity to watch her set boundaries in how much time she spends working. I’ve had the opportunity to watch her take care of herself by leaving work in order to actually go to the gym and work out. I’ve watched her invest in her health. I’ve even seen her, she called me the day that she bought a new car, the car that she had always wanted.
And it was such a huge step for her because she was finally doing something for herself that she wanted. And she reached out to me a couple months ago, and she said, “I’m about to step into 2025 Amanda, and almost every single thing that I wrote in my letter five years ago has come true. And it’s come true because of the vision that I created and the way that I shaped my time to match that vision.”
Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. All right. Well, I think we’d all love a little more of that going on in our lives. That’s delightful. So, tell us, I think we’ve all heard some tips or tricks, some listicles, maybe we’ve got an app or some tools that we dig, can you share with us perhaps, fundamentally.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
So, a lot of times when we want to make a change to the way that we’re spending our time, we want to go straight to our calendars or our to-do lists and start rearranging things. We want to download an app or try a habit tracker. But the thing is that, whenever you go straight to trying to rearrange things or add a new hack or an app, you’re starting in the wrong place. The biggest mistake that most of us make when it comes to improving our time management is that we skip the most important first step.
And it’s exactly what I shared about Amanda. It’s creating that vision for your future. And the thing is that, when you have that vision, you have a direction to move in. You know where you’re going because every single decision you make about how you spend your time either gets you closer to or further away from that vision. But let’s say you have that vision, you know what it is that you want, then what? How do you actually make that happen?
So, that’s where I like to share basically my time management Swiss army knife. I really think that there are three core tools that really serve as the foundation for time management once you have that vision in place. And that’s time blocking, task batching, and theme days. Time blocking, task batching and theme days. When you are able to pull one of these tools from that time management Swiss army knife, you’re able to do a couple things.
So, there are two productivity pitfalls that all of us are constantly fighting, whether we realize it or not. One of those is Parkinson’s Law. So, Parkinson’s law tells us that work expands to fill the time available. And you might be like, “No, Anna, I would stop working at some point. Work’s not going to expand all over the place.” But the thing is that it does.
When we don’t have a clear understanding of what done or complete or enough or success looks like, there’s always something else that we can tweak or adjust or edit in order to get ever so much closer to impossible to reach perfection. And so, we just kind of keep going without a limit. But when you use time blocking, you’re able to beat Parkinson’s law because a time block gives you a set start time and a set end time. And it helps you contain that work within a specific timeframe.
Anybody who has ever said, “I am so good at working under pressure. You give me a last-minute deadline and I can crank it out.” That’s Parkinson’s law making that happen. Because when you have that set deadline, you find a way to make it work.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, if I may, when it comes to the time blocking, I totally hear you that the work will expand to fill the time allotted for it. Although, I don’t think that the reverse quite works, in the sense of, if I say, “I’m going to accomplish this thing in 12 minutes,” but, like, it’s actually impossible. How do you think about setting an appropriate amount of time for a thing?
Because I’ve heard studies show that we humans are not the best at estimating how long something actually takes. But at the same time, I see there is value in having a number there that keeps us from spinning our wheels and going to unnecessary layers of iteration that are really not that helpful. So, I think you can assign too much time, you can assign too little time, and we’re not that good at it. How do you go about blocking an appropriate amount of time?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Okay, I love that because you actually stepped right into the next productivity pitfall, which is the planning fallacy. So, that thing, that study show, it has a name. The planning fallacy states that humans are terrible at estimating how much time things take. And when you know that that exists, then you can do something about it, right? Because it’s kind of like the first step is acknowledging that there’s a problem. Our first step to getting better at estimating how long things take is acknowledging that we’re all naturally pretty terrible at it.
So, I really encourage my clients to kind of create their own formula. My rule of thumb is if you think something is going to take an hour, add an additional 30 minutes. If you think something is going to take 12 minutes, give yourself an additional 12 to 30 minutes, just in case. Because most of the time we are going to underestimate. So, anytime you think, “Hey, I think it’s to take me about this long,” add more time. You’re probably going to need it.
And if you want to take it even a step further, so let’s say that it’s something that you do on a regular basis, maybe it’s submitting invoices, or doing some type of report, or just something that you’re doing on a regular basis, time yourself. Next time you do it, time yourself. See how long it takes because that’s going to give you a much better example to refer to in the future is when you have some actual data to work with.
Me, personally, I am not a huge fan of time tracking for the sake of time tracking. But sometimes one of the most valuable exercises that we can do is a time study where you spend time tracking how you are spending your time for the course of a week in 15-minute increments because it is so telling and it exposes all of those places where we waste time, that we don’t even realize that we’re doing things that we don’t even realize that we’re doing.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that is handy, yes. And I also like the notion of when you put more time than you estimate is necessary, I think that creates just really nice psychological feedback things going on because sometimes I get frustrated with like, “Ugh, this thing is taking way longer than it ‘should.’” And that makes it more aggravating as opposed to, “Oh, wow, I allocated an hour and a half for this thing. And by good fortune, it only took 52 minutes.” Well, then, one, I feel like a winner, like, yay me. And, two, it feels like there’s a little bit of a present, like, “Ah, well, here we have this extra time right here.”
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Bonus time.
Pete Mockaitis
Yes, “What shall I do with this surplus?”
Anna Dearmon Kornick
I love that. I love that. You know, that actually reminds me of something that I shared with a client yesterday called the shiny things list. So, we can have the most pristine organized environment to work in, we can turn off all of our notifications, put our phone in airplane mode, but we still have ourselves and we can sometimes be the most distracting thing in the room. We’ll start working on something, like you said, “I gave myself an hour and a half to work on this and it only took 52 minutes.”
And in that 52 minutes, we remember that we need to order toilet paper and have it shipped, and that we need to get a birthday card for our mom, and that we need to follow up with Tony about the Jones report. And so, what we tend to do naturally is we stop what we’re working on to order the toilet paper to have it shipped from Amazon, and we stop what we’re working on to order a birthday card, or to make a note, or to stop what we’re doing and we check in with Tony about that report.
And we end up ping-ponging around to all of these different things, which ends up slowing us down, causing us to make more mistakes on the thing that we’re trying to focus on and just making it take a lot longer. And so, what I encourage people to do is to have a notepad right next to your desk so that, as you are working, let’s say that you have an hour and a half to get something done, so at the top of our notepad, we’re going to write down, “One o’clock to 2:30 because, boom, that’s the time that I’m committing to work.”
And then below that, we’re going to make a list of the three things we’re going to accomplish in that timeframe. Now, you might only set out to do one thing, but what if you finish it in 52 minutes? Then you have this bonus time. And what do most of us do with bonus time, Pete?
Pete Mockaitis
Social media. News.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
You got it. We just kind of flop into default mode when we could transition that focus time into something else useful. So, I love to recommend, “Okay, what are the one, two or three things that you’re going to accomplish during that focus time so that you’re able to go straight into the next thing without having that waffly decision mode?” And then once you have those three things decided, you draw a line underneath it, that’s your line in the sand, and then you write, “Shiny things.” The more scribbly you can write shiny things, the better because it really emphasizes, like, the frivolity of them. And then you get to work.
And every time something pops into your head, instead of acting on it immediately, you write it on your shiny things list. You contain your shiny things instead of chasing them. And so, after you finish this work block, and you have this list of shiny things, now you have some decisions to make. You can decide, “Do I need to do these now? Do I want to defer them to later? Do I want to delegate them to someone or delete them altogether?” But the point is that you didn’t go off on a million different rabbit holes. You stayed focused because you didn’t chase your shiny things.
Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And it’s a good feeling, too, because there’s a little bit, again, psychologically, when I have the idea, it’s like, “Ooh, there’s a thing that I should do,” and it comes into mind, we do tend to do them right away, because there’s a little bit of a tension. It’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to forget. This is in my mind, and that’s the way to relieve that pressure of it being in my mind.” But you could also just write it down, and then it’s like, “Oh, and here they are all captured here. How handy.” Super. Okay, so we got time blocking, task blocking. And then theme days?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Theme days, yes. So, I love theme days, and theme days are especially a good fit for people who want flexible structure. So, if you’re the kind of person who, having a minute-by-minute time blocked schedule, makes you feel itchy, then a theme day is probably going to be the best bet for you. So, it’s basically choosing a different theme for each day of your week.
So, let’s say you’re in a marketing role. And maybe Mondays, you want to make that social media Mondays. And that’s the day that you focus on creating social media content. It doesn’t matter if you write captions in the morning or in the afternoon, as long as it gets done on social media Monday. Maybe on Tuesdays, you call it, “Tell them all about it Tuesdays.” And that’s the day that you put together PR pitches and do media outreach and write your newsletter. Again, it doesn’t matter when it happens during the day, as long as it happens.
Go a step further. Wednesday could be website Wednesday. You can come up with a different theme for each day of the week. And what this does is that it creates some mental consistency for you. It puts you in a consistent mindset all throughout the day so that, even though you’re working on a collection of tasks that are related, you’re not jumping from one moment writing a social media post, to then sending an invoice, to then updating a website. Those are all three very different mental processes and ways of thinking.
And so, it enables you to really streamline your energy, your creativity, and your focus and to basically shape your day around each of these themes. It’s also really cool because it helps you create consistency and set expectations for yourself about when you can accomplish certain things. And it helps you set expectations with your team if you’re collaborating with others. Because if your team knows that, “Hey, every Wednesday is Anna’s website Wednesday,” they know that they’ve got to get any updates to you by Tuesday afternoon so that you can incorporate them on Wednesday, you know?
And so, theme days can be a really great way to introduce some flexible structure that helps you be more efficient with your time, your creativity, and, plus, it’s just fun to use alliteration and come up with fun names for theme days. I mean, to me, that’s like half the fun.
Pete Mockaitis
I was asking if alliteration was required.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
I mean, personally, I think it should be, but you do whatever you want.
Pete Mockaitis
And what’s nifty about themes is the organizing principle of the theme can be any number of things. Like, when you say website Wednesday, it’s sort of like, “Okay, on website Wednesday, there are a number of,” let’s say, “environmental context things in play.”
Like, “Okay, I’m going to be in an office at a computer with some quiet. I’m going to have a few pages or tools open and at my disposal.” And so, in so doing, there’s time savings that just shows up because I’m not logging into a new thing, and they got the two-factor authentication, you know, blah blah blah blah. It’s like, “I’m doing that once, and then, all right, and then I’m in the thing, and then away we go. Cool.” And, likewise, you are well equipped. It’s like you’ve got all your stuff for doing the thing at hand.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Your mise en place.
Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and you’re in the mental groove, and you have like a bit of expectation and understanding of, like, in a way, you’re almost warmed up. So, I see a lot of value in the themes. And in my experience, sometimes you can even just have like a theme half day in terms of, “Well, hey, before lunch is this theme, and after lunch is that theme.”
Anna Dearmon Kornick
One hundred percent.
Pete Mockaitis
And in the startup communities, they talk a lot about the maker schedule versus the manager schedule, which I think is fantastic because those feel wildly different. Like, “I’m creating some stuff thinking deeply and I’m not available to anyone, go away,” versus, “I am super responsive. I am your most accessible, friendly, quick manager and collaborator you could dream of because I’ve got the slack. I’ve got the email. I got all the text, window. I got all the things to message and communicate up a storm quickly,” and they do feel totally different.
So, I would love some of your pro tips from your clients in terms of like themes, categories, contexts, mind states. What are some buckets that you find pretty handy for holding a variety of things together in a theme?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Oh, I love this. I love this question so much. And if you have not had a chance to read the book, Mind Management Over Time Management, I think is the name of it. It’s by Dan Kadavy.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, David Kadavy. That sounds like David Kadavy.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
David, yeah.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, he’s been on the show a couple times. He’s a buddy.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, I thought so. I loved that book so much, and I’ve actually taken a lot of what he shared and incorporated that into some of the way that I teach theme days because it’s just so good. But when we think about different ways to approach theme days, we have to think about the way that our mind works. And that Monday morning time block is when we are freshest, typically when we are most energized.
And so, any opportunity that you have to give yourself heads down work on Monday morning is going to be huge. So, that could look like thinking about what is your most important project right now, what is the most important thing that you need to do in order to move your goals forward, and stick that Monday morning, if that’s when you’re going to be at your best.
I’ve had people make that their book writing time. So, Monday is for content. Monday is for marketing. Monday is for really just that heads-down thought work because that’s when we’re at our freshest. And we decline during the course of the day. Our energy gradually drops. We have a little bit of a second wind in the early evening, but, typically, we start fresh. And so, like you mentioned, using the half day theme concept.
It’s also great to think about your day in terms of two parts, “What is your before-lunch theme? What is your after-lunch theme?” I have some clients who arrange their days based on the different industries that they support. So, I have a handful of consultants or PR advertising agency folks, and rather than, in one day working on an industrial client and a health care client and a food and beverage client, instead, they align their days with, “Okay, Monday is my healthcare day. Tuesday is my hospitality and hotel day. Wednesday is my education and nonprofit day.”
And this, again, allows them to align their thinking in a streamlined way. They get into that groove, that flow state, even though they’re performing different tasks, it’s all under that same umbrella. I have different clients who have created research theme days, if part of their work involves research or academic writing so that they’re able to identify when during their week are they at their best for that type of work, and they arrange their theme days accordingly.
I’ll say that the most consistent theme day on Friday is admin and, like, financial catchup because a lot of the time, by the time we reach the end of the week, we’re kind of spent. We need to kind of take it easy. And so, a lot of times my clients choose to make Fridays either a no-meeting day or a light meeting day, and they use it to catch up on tracking metrics or completing reports or updating databases because it’s a light lift before they do an afternoon planning session heading into the weekend.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And I also like the notion of when it is, is that groove. Like, sometimes I enjoy, I don’t know what I would call it. I call it in my brain, like, task slaying in that there are many little things.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Pebbles.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there you go. Pebbles. That’s fun. And, I’m just going to obliterate them. And it feels so good because a lot of them, it’s sort of like they’ve been lingering for a while. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got some laundry there. I should probably handle that.” So, it’s sort of like, it’s surfaced in my consciousness numerous times. And there are things like tidying, replenishing supplies, email. I like the OmniFocus Task Manager. There’s some time management dork-ness for you.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Love it.
Pete Mockaitis
Like, old voicemail clutter. It’s like there’s lots of little things and they’re kind of weighing on me a little bit, and have been weighing on me a little bit repeatedly, and to decide, “This is the afternoon in which I’m going to annihilate many of these things in quick succession,” feels just phenomenal.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Oh, yes, it does. Pete, you would love a pebble power hour.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there you go.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
You would love them. So, when I’m working with my clients, we like to break down the things on their to-do list, the things in their life as boulders, big rocks, and pebbles. Boulders being those things that are important and not urgent that help you show up as your best self. Big rocks being your project-oriented tasks, the things that really move the needle in your life and work. But then there are pebbles, and pebbles are everything else. Those are those little tasks and to-dos that weigh on you.
My favorite example of a pebble is filling out a reimbursement form because I can think of a few things that are less mundane than filling out a reimbursement form, and like tidying up your email, and all of those things. And so, I really encourage people, over the course of the week, to put all of those little tiny tasks in a different place. Don’t let them swim alongside your most important tasks.
We want to separate out your pebbles because, let’s say Friday afternoon, you schedule a pebble power hour for yourself. You’ve got just set a timer for an hour and knock out as many of those little bitty insignificant tasks as you can. You’re going to feel amazing heading into the weekend because you’ve just done this total dopamine burst of accomplishing so many little things.
And you’re clearing your plate and you’re lightening your load because individually each one of those tasks is small, but they add up to weigh on you, and they pull you down and they hold you back from really giving your all to what’s most important. So, hey, maybe you need a Pete’s pebble power hour on Friday afternoon to knock out all those little things.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, even more alliteration. Okay. And Anna, I’d love your take on what is some common advice that is just wrong or bad or ill-advised and you recommend we disavow entirely?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
I’d say that the worst advice that’s out there, really, can be applied to any, so any time management system, okay? If you do not follow it 100 % and correctly and by the book, the way that it is written, then you are failing. And let me make sure that I’m super clear about that. There are so many different ideas and books and thoughts and methods around time management and organization. And what is so disheartening to me is to talk with someone who has tried to follow a system, but it doesn’t work for them. And they think that they are the problem.
But what’s really happening here is that the system as written is not a match for the way that they think. It’s not a match for their lifestyle. It’s not a match for who they are. And I hate to see people think that there’s something wrong or broken about them because a system that worked perfectly for someone else didn’t work for them. And so, the flip side of that advice is, adapt. Take what’s out there and use what works for you.
If you find an amazing book on time management and you try some things, but maybe part of it doesn’t work for you, it’s not a you-problem. It doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you. Just adapt it, treat it like an experiment, keep trying. The more self-awareness that you have and the better you’re able to understand yourself and how you think.
I mean, this is exactly why I have my clients take the Myers-Briggs as soon as we start working together because it’s so incredibly revealing, and it’s such a boost to their self-awareness, which helps them take what they need and leave what they don’t to create a system that works for them instead of trying to copy and paste something else that’s out there.
Pete Mockaitis
Anna, I love that a lot. It reminds me, we had a conversation with BJ Fogg from Stanford, who’s fantastic, and he wrote the book Tiny Habits, in terms of he likes to think about it as, I believe he calls it behavior design, which is just fun because design conjures images of whiteboards and Post-it notes and Sharpies. And it’s, like, we’re trying to design something that works. And if what we have done hasn’t worked, it doesn’t mean it’s a moral failure, “Oh, I’m lazy. I’m insufficiently committed. I have an addiction to social media,” or whatever, and, hey, maybe we do.
But it’s not like, “Through my fault, my own grievous fault, I’m bad and evil.” It’s just that, “No, this design isn’t quite fitting. It’s not quite working.” And I like to think about it sort of like when you’re organizing a space, if an item does not fit on a shelf, it’s not because the item is bad or the shelf is bad. It’s just that these shapes and sizes of these things are not compatible with each other. There’s no value judgment. It just means that shelf is not the ideal place for this item and we have to figure out where is a better fitting place.
And, likewise, with some of this tiny habit stuff or these systems, I likewise feel that satisfaction just as it is, at least I find it, and I’m not that organized of a person, it is delightful when you have an item that fits perfectly into a place.
So, too, I think about that when you’ve got a real great lock for an activity and a schedule. It’s, like, “Oh, this matches my groove and my mode and my flow and my energy and the time available. Like, this activity matches this space in my calendar, oh, so just right and it feels delightful.” But the flip side, I’m thinking also about David Allen, Getting Things Done, and he’s been on the show, and I think he’s phenomenal.
But he will mention, and I think it’s kind of a tough reality that the mind-like-water mental clarity amazing space is primarily achieved when, in fact, you have completely absolved your brain from the task of remembering things. And so, if you do not have a system that you sufficiently trust and have sufficiently downloaded all of the stuff from your brain into that system, then you will not experience the peace and freedom that comes from exercising the Getting Things Done, GTD system.
So, it’s a little bit tricky because it’s almost like, “If you’re not doing it perfectly, you’re not reaping the benefits.” And yet, I think it’s semi-true that there are tremendous diminishing returns from being able to completely trust your system and having all contents downloaded out of your brain than being able to 92% trust your system and have 92% of the contents downloaded out of your brain.
But at the same time, it’s not like a shame-on-me value judgment thing. The answer is more of a, “Okay, how could I tweak my system to get that lingering 8% out of there and experience all the wonders that can be enjoyed?” What’s your hot take on all this distinguishing, Anna?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Well, I’ll never forget, I was listening to an episode of Beyond the To-Do List podcast. Love that one. And David Allen himself said that he does not follow GTD 100% all the time. And hearing him say that felt like such a wave of relief washed over me because, to that point, I was struggling because I’d implemented a lot of what was in GTD, and it was before I’d become fully confident in taking what worked and leaving what didn’t.
And it almost felt like permission to customize it to the way that it worked for my life. And I’ve had so many clients come to me feeling like failures because they were unable to use another system 100% copy and pasted. And so, I aim, instead of for, “Hey, let’s go all in on whatever this is.” Let’s not focus on all or nothing behavior, or all or nothing implementation. Let’s look at all or something. What’s the good, better, best?
You know, like you said, the 92%. What if I trusted 92%, and I have 92% of my things downloaded? Sure, there’s still that 8% there, but, like, is it even worth it to struggle and push to get that remaining 8% out of your head when 92% is really freaking good? That’s nice. That’s awesome. And so, like, let’s celebrate getting really far, and let’s celebrate the progress, and let’s be really happy with how far we’ve come instead of how we’re not doing it perfectly.
Pete Mockaitis
All right, sounds good. Well, Anna, let’s hear about some of your favorite things. Could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Oh, my favorite quote of all time is “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” by Albert Einstein.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
So, actually, I think that instead of jumping straight to something that a scientist has done, I just want to give a shout out to Laura Vanderkam and the work that she has done with collecting time studies and what she has learned about the way that women, professionals, people actually spend their time during the course of a week.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
The One Thing.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. And a favorite tool?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
I can’t live without Asana.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Every Sunday evening, I like to refill all of my supplements while doing a face mask. And I like to pair those, like do some habit stacking, habit pairing, and it’s such a really nice way to take care of myself heading into the week. You should try it.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And a key nugget you share that really connects and resonates with folks; they quote it back to you often?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
It’s that time management doesn’t start on the pages of our planners. It starts by getting to the heart of what matters most.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah, so I would love for you to head over to check out my podcast. It’s called It’s About Time. It’s a podcast about work, life, and balance, with new episodes that go live every single Monday. You can find it in your favorite podcast app. So, that’s where I would love to keep in touch with you.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah. So, if you’re looking to be awesome at your job, my challenge to you is to think about what do you want your life to look like five years from now? What’s that vision that you have for your life, and not just at the job description level? What do you want your house to look like, your relationships, your family, your fitness, your wellbeing, what’s going on inside of your head? All of that is what adds up to create your vision. And when you’re clear on your vision, every single decision you make about how to manage your time becomes so much easier.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Anna, thank you. This is fun. I wish you many beautiful days.
Anna Dearmon Kornick
Thank you, Pete. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you having me.