Chaos and Time Management Strategies with Anna Dearmon Kornick
Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. This is Dane Groeneveld, CEO of Huddl3 Group. And I'm pleased to welcome Anna Dearmon Kornick, who's joining us today, and she's a time management coach, so I'm sure there's going to be a lot of our listeners that have a lot to take away from today's discussion. Welcome, Anna.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Thank you so much, Dane. Really excited to be here to spend time with you.
Dane Groeneveld: Likewise. Maybe we could start by learning a little bit more about you. What's your backstory? How did you come to this role in life as a time management coach?
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Sure. It's so funny. Time management coach is not exactly one of those preschool type professions that you imagine on career day, when everyone dresses up in their firefighter outfit or their " I want to be a policeman or a teacher." Time management coach usually isn't one of those professions that's included. And, you know what? Maybe it should be. Maybe that's what I'll send my three year old to school as this year. But, before I dive into how I ended up being a time management coach, me right now, I'm mom of two little girls, Camilla and Elizabeth, three and a half and almost two.
Dane Groeneveld: Wow.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: So our house is wild. My husband, Scott, works with me in our coaching business. My podcast, It's About Time, a podcast about work life and balance would not exist without his help as an editor and all things production manager. So really, a team effort. And when I'm not working with others on their time management, you can find me desperately trying to touch my toes in a yoga class or volunteering in my community. So, those are just a few things that I like to do outside of work. But, to be honest, I love my work, and I'm really fortunate that that's the case for me now, because it certainly was not always my reality, loving my work. So, today-
Dane Groeneveld: It's-
Anna Dearmon Kornick: No, go ahead.
Dane Groeneveld: Sadly, it's a unique thing to have people that absolutely love their work, that they wake up in the morning and they're just excited to get going. I'm hoping that in the Future of Teamwork, we're going to be able to create that for a lot more people in all sorts of roles right across society.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yes, definitely. And, it takes getting to know yourself and really taking your unique collection of experiences, and seeing where that takes you to a degree, because there's really only so much of our careers that we can meticulously plan, which I'm sure, coming from a time management coach, that you would assume is all about planning to a T. Maybe that's a little counterintuitive. But, I guess to give you a picture of where I got started. My first job right out of college was click- clacking around in high heels and pencil skirts in the marble halls of Congress, as the scheduler to a brand new United States congressman. Now, not only was he a new congressman, but he was the first Vietnamese congressman elected in the history of Congress of the United States. And so, that made his position and his persona very unique. So I think you can imagine, he was very in demand. My inbox, as his scheduler, which, as the name sounds, my entire job was spent organizing his calendar, minute by minute, from the time he woke up in the morning, until he went to sleep on the sofa of his office in the Capitol. Not even kidding. And so, I had to, very quickly, very early in my career, not only figure out time management for myself, a young professional, but I was managing a calendar for someone who somehow had to be everywhere at once. My email inbox on a daily basis was an avalanche of meeting requests from the constituents from back home in New Orleans, to lobbyists that wanted to meet on the latest piece of legislation, to people from all over the world who wanted his time, not to mention dinner invitations and speaking invitations and receptions and events and committee meetings and votes on the Floor, the whole reason why they're there in the first place. And so, I loved it. It was fast- paced. I learned so much during my short time in DC. But, I'm a Louisiana girl. So I, right now, live about an hour outside of New Orleans. I grew up in North Louisiana, and just have always had access to some of the best food in the world. And I just couldn't get boiled crawfish or crawfish etouffee or shrimp creole, or all of those good Louisiana foods, much less like I missed my family. I missed my grandmother's mayhaw jelly and the fact that I couldn't just pop over and see them whenever I wanted. So I moved back to Louisiana, where I then kicked off a 10- year career in the 24/ 7 world of crisis, communications and government affairs. So this is where things really started to get kind of wild. Every day was some type of order to be made out of chaos, some crisis that needed managing- oil spills, hurricanes, plant explosions, floods and droughts, both sides of the spectrum, non- profit embezzlement schemes, universities on the brink of financial collapse, you name it. And I've probably escorted someone down a back freight elevator into a side alley in order to avoid TV cameras waiting outside.
Dane Groeneveld: Oh my gosh.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: That was-
Dane Groeneveld: Stressful.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah. I mean, it stresses me out just thinking about it, and to imagine that that's what life was like on a regular basis. Sure, it was exciting. Sure, it was fun to come up with strategies in the heat of the moment to help figure out how we could unravel this mess. But along the way, maybe you could say that I enjoyed it a little bit too much, or I was spending just a little bit too much time. Work life balance, not a thing. My boundaries, no, non- existent. My health, as a result, not in a good place. And my relationships, you could say, were on the brink of their own kind of crisis. And, there I was, the crisis, the chaos that now needed to be managed. And so, like I said, I found myself missing really important life milestones for friends and family. I missed a really important birthday for my stepdad. I missed baby showers. I missed friends' birthdays. I was constantly walking out of rooms to take phone calls with other people. And, after one too many mornings of crying in the stairwell, on the way up to my windowless office, I just decided that something had to give. On my lunch break, I filed an LLC. Did not know what I was going to do with it, or what kind of business I was going to create, but I knew there had to be some way to combine that weird time management experience that I've gotten, really paying attention to those universal breadcrumbs, you could say, that time management with my love for communications and creating order out of crisis, to somehow help others dig themselves out of that dark place of burnout that I had landed, or help them avoid it altogether. It took me a few years of trial and error, trying a lot of different things to see what stuck, what made sense, what felt right. And so, now, I'm a time management coach. I still remember the day I stood in my office and said, " I'm a time management coach. I don't know if this is a real thing, but I am going to find a way to make it happen." And, thousands of speaking audience attendees later and dozens of clients, hundreds of people served, I am a time management coach helping others stop feel overwhelmed and start spending time on what matters most.
Dane Groeneveld: That's awesome. And it's cool. There was an article that I was glancing across the other day, and it was talking about how we can be shaped by the world we're living in. And then it was trying to empower the individual to say, " Well, take those experiences and start to shape the world that you want to live in." So, that sounds very much like the journey you made. You were kind of living in chaos that your world was chaos too. And then you said, " Hang on, I'm really good at managing this chaos. I'm going to shape it into a better way of being, for myself and for my customers."
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Definitely. I knew there had to be a better way. And so, I struck out in search of that. And now I'm here to share it.
Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. So first customer, early days, you're exploring how you become a time management coach, or first customers, what did an engagement look like? How would you jump in and start to assess where you could help?
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yes. Oh, that's such a fun question. I still remember my very first client who reached out to me on Instagram. It had been a few days into me saying, " Okay, I'm just going to put it out there. I'm going to say I am a time management coach." And she reached out and said, " How do I work with you?" And, I said, " What's the best email for you? I'll send you a message." And then I had to come up with, " Okay, what is this package going to look like? How are we actually going to structure this?" And so, what was fantastic is that, starting with her, and really understanding what her vision for the future looked like, continues to be the exact same way that I start with all of my clients moving forward. I think I was onto something then, just intuitively, how can you help someone spend their time better, and, if they have not clearly articulated, what they want their life to look like? I have, over time, found that time management does not start on the pages of your calendar. It starts with heart. It starts with what matters most to you first, understanding your vision for the future, articulating your core values that already live in you, and using that vision and values to shape how you spend your time to make that a reality.
Dane Groeneveld: That's smart. And I think, if it's driven by that sort of vision value statement, then it's something that it's easy to reinforce rather than that latest fad of how I block out two hours every Tuesday for deep thinking time.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Exactly. Exactly. What's the why behind it? What are you going to use that deep thinking time for?
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's really cool. And so, you go through this exercise, this discovery, this kind of vision of value setting. And, are there particular themes that you see with your customers on where they really start to want for more, or whether it's time or exposure to certain relationships or activities?
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yes. So, almost always, whenever someone gets to the heart of what it is that matters most, almost always, it boils down to people, and spending time, spending quality time, with people in their lives. Very rarely, if ever, have I worked with a client who was solely goal- focused or achievement- focused. Nearly everyone who has worked with me wants to manage their time well, so they can have that quality time with other people, whether it's family, friends, kids, whoever.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. That's cool. And, what's the mix? Is it always businesses and business owners, sometimes family members? What type of people are generally looking for help with time management coaching?
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah. So, I would say that the type of person who seeks out time management coaching runs the full spectrum. But, the type of person that I tend to work with most often is the female professional, professional or business owner, who also has kids. There are so many different demands placed on that type of individual's time, in addition to the responsibilities on their to- do list and then their job description and taking care of their family. So often, female business owners who have families also shoulder a pretty heavy mental and emotional load that just requires so much time that goes unaccounted for. And so they wonder, " Where is all my time going?", when they typically are the sole person in a family unit who is buying birthday presents for the upcoming birthday party, or planning the Thanksgiving seating chart, whatever it is. Planning the Christmas decorations, it typically falls on the woman in the family.
Dane Groeneveld: It does.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: And so, very often, those are my clients who come to me and are just looking for, " How do I manage it all and still feel like I am giving my best self in all of these areas?" But I've worked with all types of people.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. It's interesting that a mental, emotional and physical task workload on women in the household. My wife will often get upset with me because she is like a master planner, so she's well ahead of birthdays, Christmases, you name it. She's got it all organized in the book. And I'm the guy who turns up the morning of the birthday and says, " Uh oh," and I'll run down and grab stuff and make it happen. And sometimes I pull it off sometimes. And when I do pull it off, she's like, " That's not fair. You can't just come in and spend half an hour and wing it and pull off the kids' birthday where I've spent weeks planning it all out." But it is, it's a lot of work, not just in the tasks, but in the planning. And, I actually think, in the last couple of years with COVID in particular, the anxiety, the stress associated with the planning and the uncertainty is probably been more profound for a lot of those working professional moms as well.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: I agree with you. And I also think that especially in families where both parents have worked from home in the same space, that, for the first time ever, a lot of that invisible load has become more visible, more front and center. Because, when two are sharing that office and that work space, they can actually see, for the most part, what's happening.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago. One of the speakers, Heather McGowan, was talking about the sheer number of hours that women are doing in and around the home. So if you've got a professional that's a mom or a carer for an elderly parent or whatever it might be, it can be up to 90 hours of work and planning time a week. So that's more than two full- time jobs before they start their daily paid job.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yes. Yes.
Dane Groeneveld: So your planning therefore is not just how to be more efficient at work. It's that holistic work life integration.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Definitely. And that's one of the things that I love about being a time management coach. I am not a personal life coach. I am not a career coach, and I am not solely an executive coach. All of those things connect and blend together. There have been times that I have worked with an individual who is experiencing stress and overwhelm at work, and then we get to the root of the issue being a lack of dependable childcare at home. Or, I work with someone who is overwhelmed about regular home maintenance and is getting calls from the HOA because they're not staying on top of their home maintenance. And we find out that it's because he is in too many unnecessary meetings at work that is pushing his work into the evening hours. And so it's all connected. And so you have to have a holistic approach, because we're not just work people and we're not just life people. We're whole people.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. That home maintenance one's a good example, so is physical health. It's easy to slip out of good practices, eating and exercising, when the work or the pressure of managing the house just keeps stacking up.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Exactly. And that physical health maintenance, that's exactly the type of activity that so many of us put last. Or we tell ourselves, " If I have time to go for a run after work today, I'll go." Or, " If I have time, if there's time left over, then I'll get in a quick workout." But, 9 times out of 10, there's not time left over.
Dane Groeneveld: One of my mentors and coaches, Dr. Rick Eigenbrod, he's actually from New Orleans, he's from your neck of the woods.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: All right.
Dane Groeneveld: He's a great guy. And, when he was doing some early coaching with me, he said, " Hey, Dane, what's the one thing that you and only you can do?" And so I came up with some textbook answers like, "Oh, I can make division really clear and explain it to my team and my customers, or whatever it might be." And he was like, " Nope. No, it's way easier than that." And, I said, " Okay, Rick, I give up. What is it?" And Rick's like, " The one thing that you and only you can do is look after yourself. And if you're not looking after yourself, you're not going to be a good leader, husband, father, whatever it might be." And I was like, " Oh, yeah." Why do we overlook the obvious?
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Absolutely. It's funny that you mentioned that. One of my early mentors talked to me about the importance of being hydrated. Here's my giant water bottle. Talked to me about the importance of staying hydrated, because the more dehydrated that we get during our day, the poorer decisions we make, and our health just gradually declines. And if you just drink water, you can combat a lot of that and stay sharp and stay healthy.
Dane Groeneveld: Oh, it's huge. Actually, we had a health coach that came and spoke to one of my Vistage groups a few years ago. He talked about water, sleep, reducing sugar because of the inflammation effects of sugar, anti- fragility, which was interesting. So, he talks about, there's a Norwegian study that talks about getting in a sauna five days a week for half an hour. So I now have a sauna on my deck.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: That's on the wishlist.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. It's real. Sunlighten do great saunas, by the way. I got that one. And it's an infrared, it heats up. It's very comfortable. But, all of these things. And there was a fifth one. Water... Oh, exercise. So water, sleep, no sugar, anti- fragility and good exercise. And he said those five things dramatically improve your performance as a human, whether that's at work or at home.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Definitely.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. It's very cool. So, you get in there with these customers. You start doing the vision setting, the value setting, really starting to look at goals. When it comes to now executing and following up, how much of it is that reinforcement, that check in? I'm intrigued by how that works because that's normally where I drop the ball.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yes. So, of course, that accountability is huge, and following through. What is it they say that, if you write down your goals, that you're something like 43% more likely to achieve those goals. But if you have an accountability partner, and you check in at regular intervals, which is exactly what I do with my time management coaching clients, that catapults your likelihood of achieving that goal to either 95% or 97%. Either way, that's almost a hundred.
Dane Groeneveld: That's huge. Yeah.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: And knowing that it is so close to that bullseye of 100%, why wouldn't we all have an accountability partner, or a coach, or someone that we check in regularly? Because that's it. That's how you make things happen.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah. It creates that little bit of peer pressure as well. "I said I'd do it, so I'm going to do it."
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Absolutely. You know that someone is going to check in with you on your progress. And even if you're hustling to get it done in the last hour before you know that scheduled check- in is going to take place, that's still progress that you may not have made otherwise. So, for us, that looks like every other week. I meet with my one- on- one clients for a full hour. And we dive into whatever, after we celebrate wins, of course, we dive into whatever our intention is for the week. At the very end of our time together, we confirm what those action items are. And then, the in between week, that's our accountability week. So they know that they will hear from me within one week, checking in on that progress. And, it's knowing, " Hey, I'm going to hear from Anna. I need to have something to share with her that results in some type of progress forward."
Dane Groeneveld: I like that. And, as you think about technology, I've got a couple of technology questions for you. The first one is, are you seeing any tools that are helping with assessing the landscape for vision values or setting goals or actually organizing your activities? Are there any tools out there that you are relying on with your customers more often than not?
Anna Dearmon Kornick: You know what? We go old- fashioned. I find so often that... And I'll tell you, I have test- driven a handful of those habit enforcement apps and goal setting workbooks and things like that. But what I have found is that, the actual tool can either cause a distraction, or it becomes more about the tool than following through with the goals and making progress. And then if the tool becomes cumbersome or overwhelming, or is, in any way, not intuitive, then that can cause you to, instead of just abandoning the tool, abandoning the goals.
Dane Groeneveld: The whole practice.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: I wish I could tell you that I have found this amazing app or tool, but I think what it really comes down to is understanding what your preference is, in terms of how you like to track things. Are you a digital person? Use a Google Doc. It doesn't have to be complicated. Are you a tactile person? Keep a notebook. One of the very first things that I do with my clients is, I have them take the Myers- Briggs Type Indicator. And I believe you talked with Amy Landry about-
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, she loves it.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: She and I, we met at the same Myers- Briggs certification workshop. So I use the Myers- Briggs with my time management coaching clients, because it helps me understand, how do they make decisions, and what type of information do they need to make decisions? And that helps me understand, is this person going to be a checklist- oriented individual, or does it make more sense for them to have a mind map or write a narrative that explains what their goal is? It also helps me understand their orientation to the world around them. Are they someone who has a preference for closure and completion, or are they someone who has a preference for that open- endedness exploration, open- ended exploration? Because time management, like most things in life, is not one size fits all. What works for me probably won't work for you. And, that Myers- Briggs almost gives us a shortcut to understanding what is going to work for someone. And so we get to skip the line when it comes to a lot of the trial and error of figuring out which strategies or tools are going to work instead of others.
Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. So you've almost got a bit of a patent playbook there. You can say, " Oh, you are this type, therefore, this is likely to be most successful for you."
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yes.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. What would be a good example for those people who aren't that familiar with the Myers- Briggs assessment if you sort of determined a type of person and a tool that works?
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Sure. I think one of the best examples, so the Myers- Briggs is four different pairs of preferences. And, one of those pairs describes how you prefer to take in information. And that is, do you have a preference for sensing or a preference for intuition? Someone with a sensing preference prefers the facts, " Give me the facts and just the facts," things that they can see, touch, smell, taste and hear. Concrete. Someone with a preference for intuition, on the other hand, really likes to spend time thinking through the possibilities and the abstract and the ideas. They are someone who can easily jump to a conclusion or see what's not there. They connect the dots. And so, I know, from my time working with people with different preferences, that if you have a preference for that S, for that sensing, chances are, a checklist is going to work out for you because you want to see the exact step by step, in order instructions that you need to follow, which works out really well for routines and workflows and other habit formation. Because if someone with that preference for S follows that step by step, they're good. But on the other hand, someone with that preference for intuition, let's say, they are creating a routine, they need to start, or it would be helpful for them to start with a brainstorm session. " Okay. What are all of the things you could do as a part of your morning routine?" So someone with that intuition, I'll ask them, " What are the things that you must do? And then what are the things that you could do?" Because that allows them to think of all of the different possibilities. And then, we bring it back to what's realistic. " Okay, let's reign it in. Let's think about how much time you actually have, and let's reverse engineer to create a realistic routine." So we've got two different ways of thinking, and we've got to apply a strategy that makes sense. If I were to ask someone with a preference for S to brainstorm, they would say, " How? Okay. Well, brainstorm. Give me the steps for brainstorming." It's really great to have that as a background whenever I begin working with someone.
Dane Groeneveld: That's cool. And actually, that reminds me of some of the stuff that Amy and I were talking about when we spoke, which was the platinum rule about treating others how they would expect to be treated, not how you would expect to be treated. And that's a perfect example. I think about my wife, Claire, and I, she's definitely an S, and I'm definitely an I. And I'm always trying to get her to brainstorm and she's like, "Uh-huh, uh- huh." But she's actually got pretty smart at managing me into, " Hey, we've got this list of things to do and I want to talk about what you've got to do today, so we can work out which parts we can actually achieve."
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Exactly. Not all the things you want to do today.
Dane Groeneveld: No.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: But the things that you have to do today.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, absolutely. And this thing's true in business. Again, I'm a big brainstorm guy, and sometimes, I'll bring people into the room and I think it just causes a bit of confusion, because they're really wanting to see a list of the things that we could do and stack rank them or should-
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yes. Or, they may want to jump too quickly into, how are we going to do all of that, when you're just thinking of the possibilities?
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. That's a great way to look at it. So, that leads me onto my second technology question, which was, I read the blog attached to one of your recent podcasts on sort of that digital detox, particularly around just getting off social media, giving yourself a chance to reset. We talked about technology, not necessarily being part of the solution in organizing yourself, but in actually freeing yourself from the noise. It sounds like technology is part of the problem that we need to solve for.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: You're exactly right. We have such an amazing opportunity in our pockets, in the form of our phones. At our fingertips is anything we could ever want to know or learn or see. And then there's also Instagram, or there's social media, or there are new sites that are built in a way that continue to give us those feel good hits of dopamine every time that we see something new or novel. And so if you've ever spent time on your phone and thought, " Oh, what's wrong with me? I can't stop. Where did the time go?", it's not... I mean, it is you, but it's not just you. It's the way that these apps are made. And, spending too much time taking in negative news can affect the way that we feel. I mean, I'm sure I don't have to tell any of you that. It affects the way that we feel. And, taking in social media, whether it causes you to engage in that comparison game of looking at everyone else's highlights and comparing your low points to their highlights, which is completely unrealistic, that can cause you to feel bad. It can cause you to be distracted from your true priorities in your life or in your business. " Oh, so and so just ran a marathon. Should I run a marathon?" Or, " So and so is hiring in their business. Should I be hiring? Is that what I need to do?" And so it can really cause us to be distracted and head off in directions that actually don't align with our vision or our values. And so it can be really helpful, from time to time, to just be very careful about what you're taking in. And, in that episode, which was, I believe, episode 143-
Dane Groeneveld: Yes.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: I called it an information diet. And I definitely didn't come up with the phrase information diet. In Tim Ferriss' 4- Hour Workweek, he talked about going on an information diet in order to be more productive. But I am an advocate of information diet for your mental health, for your positivity, for the way that you feel. If there are certain things that make you feel bad, take a break from them. Maybe that looks like snoozing or muting certain accounts. Maybe it looks like putting a limit on how much time you spend looking at social media. When it comes down to it, even though we may tell ourselves that we are gathering inspiration by checking social media, or that we are being more well- rounded by staying on top of current events, really and truly, that is more likely to dampen our creativity, than something like free writing, or staring out the window, or going for a drive without listening to any music or a podcast. It's in those moments that we experience true creativity. And if we're not giving ourselves that quiet and forcing ourselves to be alone with our thoughts, we're not going to have those moments of illumination where we make connections and come up with new ideas.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. No, I think... I like the way you frame it around mental health, but also around that opportunity for creativity. One of my other mentors, Linda Hughes, she used to always say, " There's a reason that some of your best thoughts come to you when you are in the shower in the morning, or when you are driving without a podcast or the music on," because you need the quiet. It's interesting, there was a book I listened to the other day when I was driving, which maybe I shouldn't have. I'm scanning too much. But the book was called Dedicated, and it talked about this concept of infinite browsing mode. It tells the story of, you get home, you're tired at the end of the day from work, you sit on the couch, you get the remote, you turn on Netflix, and now, you're going to spend half an hour looking at all of the options for things to watch. Whereas, when I was growing up as a kid and there were only four or five channels on television, you knew at seven o'clock, it was the ABC News. And you go into the pattern of sitting down as a family and watching the ABC News because it was the only thing to do. And there was a healthiness and there was a goodness in some of those dedicated routines. It says the same about social relationships. Now we're scanning saying, " Well, who do I most want to hang out with based on what they're doing on Facebook or Instagram on Saturday night?", rather than, " It's really good for us to catch up with Carrie and Doug every Thursday for our book club," and just have that routine and allow yourself to build some value in that dedicated time with each other, which to me was really meaningful. I was like, " Wow, I definitely feel like we're missing that," where it's too easy to scan through and determine what is the best thing you could do at any one time, and therefore, you never plan the important things.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Right. Exactly. And most of the best things in life... Sure, spontaneity is fantastic. Some of the most amazing experiences can happen when you decide at the last minute to just hop in the car and take a road trip. We did that once in college. A group of us decided, 10 o'clock at night, there's a place called Hot Coffee, Mississippi. We drove to Hot Coffee, Mississippi, one of the best experiences in life. But you can't do that with Disney World. You can't do that with an amazing European trip. You can't do that with expanding something in your business or renovating something in your home. Most of those things take planning and they take time. And so, that instant gratification that we crave really has the potential to take away the sweetness of some just really fulfilling experiences.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Absolutely. And I wonder then, as you go into the work with your customers, how often are you seeing, as you start to build this muscle memory for, again, setting the vision, the values, some of the goals, driving that accountability, driving that routine, how often do you see them take that and, particularly these customers in leadership roles, start to deploy some similar elements into their organizations, into their team?
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Definitely. One of my favorite examples of seeing someone who I've worked with begin to deploy these strategies within their team is that... So, in addition to working with my clients to clarify their vision, articulate their values, set their priorities and set goals, we use what I call the HEART method. And, HEART stands for habits, energy, attention, recharge and time. And that energy piece is one that is often skipped over in favor of time blocking, or how can I cut out distractions. But energy is really understanding what your unique and natural energy pattern is during the course of the day, and then using that energy flow to map out how you spend your time.
Dane Groeneveld: Yes.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Now, when you work across a large team, clearly, you are going to have a lot of different energy chronotypes on your team. An energy chronotype is just what your unique pattern is. My favorite chronotype description is from Daniel Pink's book, When, and he talks about the morning lark, The night owl, the two that we typically think of. But then there's also the third bird. So your morning lark is the person who typically comes alive early in the morning, has an afternoon slump, and then has a second wind in the early afternoon. Your night owl experiences the reverse. They start their day in that rebound. Then they have the afternoon slump. And then, they come alive in the evenings. Now the third bird is a lot like a morning lark, in that they have their best energy peak mid- morning. Again, afternoon slump, evening rebound. And so, when I talked with this client, who was the chief development officer for an international non- profit, about this energy flow, when she said, " With the standing meetings that we have on our team, it is highly likely that there are some members on my team who never get focus time during their peak hours." And so, that inspired her to talk with her team, and understand when they experienced their energy peaks and valleys, and they reorganized their standing meeting schedule, in order to make sure that everyone has at least one power day, where they have their peak energy time coincides with their available focus time.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I love that. And actually, we spoke to Dan Pink recently. He spoke at a conference we sponsored, and we asked that exact question on the chronotype from the book, When. We said, " What happens when you've got people across multiple timezones and you're going to be landing in someone's rougher part of the day?" And he said, " Don't have standing meetings on one time every week. Move them around a little bit so that everyone can have an opportunity." Like you say, I think it's so smart. But it's so easy to fall into the trap of, " We'll do this at 11 Central every Tuesday."
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Right?
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. And now that we've got remote workers and global workers, we're entering a whole new realm on that front.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Definitely. But that brings... We were talking about tools earlier, and I think that the opportunity that we have now, through asynchronous communication tools, is just... To me, that is the solution to too many meetings. I'm a huge fan of Loom, which is screen recording, also a camera program. I record Loom videos all the time, for my team, for my clients, to quickly explain something. So Loom may not be considered a traditional productivity tool, but for me, it absolutely is.
Dane Groeneveld: I think, not only productivity, but innovation. I think the asynchronous tools are proving that they allow people to come in and digest the information and make their contributions at their best time of day, or once they've had the right time to go and do their research. So it's far more inclusive to be using those tools and to let people come in, on their terms, and be a part of it.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yes. Recently, I was working with a company and they wanted to kick off a new community champions program. And we need to get information and input from leaders from all across the company because the champions program touches every single area. And so instead of scheduling a series of very expensive meetings, when you consider the value of each of these individual's time, I hosted what we called an asynchronous listening tour, where, after recording a Loom video explaining what we were hoping to achieve, I invited them to either respond with their own Loom video, or answer questions in a Google Form survey. And so, like you said, it met people where they were. If they felt more comfortable, verbally processing, because we had several individuals with a preference for extroversion on the team. And then those who had a preference for extroversion and really writing their thoughts to communicate, they loved the form option. And we were able to move this project along so much quicker, because it allowed people to respond on their own terms, in the way that was best for them.
Dane Groeneveld: Oh, absolutely. I think it's really cool. I'm hoping to use it a lot more in our businesses, but I'm also hoping to see it become a more common part of the customer vendor continuum as well. Because often, a lot of those relationships that are cross- organizational boundaries, they tend to be squeezed into too little time and too little information, so you're not really getting a lot out of it. So it is a very powerful way to organize across teams, not just within teams or within individuals.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Definitely.
Dane Groeneveld: Very cool. And, on HEART, I missed the A. So you said habits, energy and then the A was?
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Attention.
Dane Groeneveld: Attention. Uh- oh. I failed on that one. And then recharge and time. Tell me a little bit more about recharge, because that one really captures my interest.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yes. Well, it almost goes back to that conversation we had earlier about how we are the only ones who can take care of ourselves. And, when I think about recharge, I chose that word very intentionally, because more than just rest recharges us. I think of recharge in terms of rest, recreation and relationships.
Dane Groeneveld: Oh wow.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Rest obviously being getting enough sleep at night. We need seven to nine hours of sleep. We need to take breaks throughout our day. And we need to have seasons of rest. We can't always be in grow- grow- grow mode. We need seasons that are slower or else we will burn out. Recreation. We absolutely must, not just should, but we absolutely must do things for fun's sake, for the sake of just having fun, for the sake of play. Because, it's in those moments of play and exploration that we have those creative connections that form. Lin- Manuel Miranda has said that his best ideas come when he's sitting on the floor playing trucks with his kids.
Dane Groeneveld: That's cool.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Because it's when you're playing that you're able to just kind of relax and see what happens. So, if you are listening and you are thinking, " I don't have time for hobbies," you don't have time to not have a hobby. You have to have something that helps contribute to that form of relaxation and creativity. And then finally, relationships, those intentional relationships that fill our cup. There are two different, you could say, buckets of relationships that we have, those with people who are close to us that we see often and you could call those low maintenance relationships to a degree. When we're in the office, it's our coworkers, the person in the cubicle next door. It's our close family. It's the people that we see often but can take those relationships for granted if we don't watch out. And then there are those people that we love having a relationship with them but it takes a lot of effort. Maybe they live two timezones away. Maybe they also have toddlers and have a busy schedule. And so, you have to approach these two different buckets of relationships with different types of intention. Again, it's not one size fits all. Maybe that looks like scheduling an intentional phone date with your friend who lives a few states over every few months. Or it's having intentional conversations over dinner with your spouse, instead of just kind of zoning out-
Dane Groeneveld: Zoning out, yeah.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yeah. And so, when I'm working with my clients, I really encourage them to identify, " Okay. What are the relationships that you want to cultivate in this season?" Because just like we can't work on every single goal at the same time, we can't cultivate all the friendships and all the relationships. And so I encourage them to go really deep in just a few and really decide, " Okay. Now that you've decided that these are the relationships you want to cultivate, what are the actions you're going to take to follow through? Because we've got to connect it to action in order to make that happen."
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I love that. That's a really good way to look at relationship and scheduling a phone check. I've got a lot of very close friends and family in Australia, so naturally, you don't run into moments of downtime where it's convenient to talk to each other because of the timezone. So that's a tip I'll take away for sure.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Yes.
Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Well, that's really cool. Well, we've had a great conversation, has flown by, Anna. I've learned a lot. There were some really big takeaways there. I really felt that the stat that you shared on having an accountability partner, not just writing it down, but having someone you check in with and getting you up into the 90 percentile range for actual execution, that's huge for anyone approaching time management. I really liked the way that you described the information diet and the importance of slowing that down, giving yourself some time, some quietness to be creative. Naturally, the wider sort of framework of setting goals and values off your vision is really important too. And then, the asynchronous communication that you talked about there. It's a theme that keeps popping up. It's something that I still think is very new to a lot of people in their home lives and their community lives and their professional lives. But that's clearly something we should all be spending more time looking at. So, lots of cool stuff. And then the HEART acronym, I'm going to probably follow up with you to think more on how myself and the team start to bring that into some of our daily work too.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: That sounds great. That sounds great. I'd love to talk with you about it.
Dane Groeneveld: Very cool. And for our listeners, if anyone wants to follow up with you and learn more about doing work with you and the team, what's the best way for them to find you, Anna?
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Sure. Well, I would invite you to tune in to my podcast, It's About Time, wherever you listen to podcasts. I have new episodes that drop every single Monday, on a different topic relating to work, life or balance.
Dane Groeneveld: Awesome.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: And then, if you are on Instagram or LinkedIn, I would love to connect with you there. You can find me. My name is Anna Dearmon Kornick, and you search for me. I'm sure you'll find me.
Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. Well, thanks again for your time today, Anna. I really appreciate you sharing your area of passion and expertise with us.
Anna Dearmon Kornick: Well, thank you so much for having me. It has been my pleasure.
Dane Groeneveld: Thanks, Anna.
DESCRIPTION
Anna Dearmon Kornic stops by The Future of Teamwork to talk about her experience as a time management coach, and how she helps people reclaim time for the things that matter most to them. Along with host and HUDDL3 Group CEO Dane Groeneveld, Anna explores holistic approaches to time management, as well as understanding what means the most to people. During the conversation Anna discusses strategies for combatting the most distracting elements of modern life in favor of intentional tracking and habit reinforcement.