74: The Five Essential Routines (Systems) Every Business Owner Needs For Better Work/Life Balance featuring Anna Dearmon Kornick

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Dolly Delong
Welcome to the Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast where I help entrepreneurs go from scattered to streamlined in their creative businesses. I’m your host, Dolly Delong, a wife, a mom, and a photographer turned systems educator. Join me every week as we have conversations centered around creating tactical workflows, and automations in your business. Now, let’s make some strategic workflow magic. Hello, and welcome back to the Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast. I am your systems and workflow-loving host and BFF Dolly Delong. And you aren’t most likely here because you are needing some systems and workflow tips in your life this week. So I have a new friend to introduce to you. Her name is Anna Dearmon Kornick, and she’s the host of It’s About Time Podcast, which by the way I’ve subscribed to and I absolutely love. I listen every week. And so today you’re going to learn some systems and workflow tips about routines because I believe this applies to pretty much every personality. I just want to say regardless of your personality type, I really do want you to tune in because Anna has a way of truly breaking down some time-saving tips in bite-sized ways on her podcast and I’m going to be honest, I listen to most of my education early in the morning when I’m feeding Jack, many of you who are OG listeners know this about me, and so I’m listening to her at four in the morning sometimes, and I’m tracking with what she’s putting down. So she’s really good about breaking down bite-sized pieces about time management, so I’m really, really excited to have her on the show. So Anna, do you mind introducing yourself?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Of course, Dolly. Thank you so so much for having me on the show, this is such a treat. I’m so excited that we get to chat. My name is Anna Dearmon Kornick, and I am a Time Management Coach, host of It’s About Time Podcast sharing stories and strategies to inspire better work-life and balance. And I’m so excited to add this one to the list but I think I can call myself an author now. My very first book Time Management Essentials is hitting shelves on June 20, which absolutely blows my mind that has been such a crazy experience. So time management coach, podcast host, and author. I live in Madisonville, Louisiana, which is an adorable small town about an hour above New Orleans and I have two little girls, Camilla and Elizabeth. They’re four and two and we call them Millie and Bitsy, they just blow my mind every day. Millie’s vocabulary for a four-year-old is out of this world, so having a conversation with her like blows my mind. And then Bitsy is just a little wild child and so much fun. And then my husband, Scott, and I, in addition to serving others through time management coaching, Scott and I own Studio Pizza Productions, which is a podcast YouTube in short form video editing production company. So that’s fairly new. We’ve been in business since the end of 2022 and we’re having a lot of fun with it.

Dolly Delong
Wow, you guys do a lot.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I mean, we do our best.

Dolly Delong
But that’s awesome. I mean, it’s a good thing. Of course, I’m gonna add a cheesy mom joke here, no pun intended, but it’s a good thing you are a time management coach. That’s awesome. I want to learn more about your second business. But I just want to say thank you so much for being here. And thank you so much for taking the time to I mean, taking the time to talk about time management and routines with my audience. And again, like I had joked around earlier before, but this does apply to anyone who is listening to this podcast, if you’re wondering, why do I need to listen in is this is just another time management tip? I’m probably gonna forget if you’re being cynical about this seriously listen in, because Anna does have a way of breaking down these concepts that seem unattainable, or you’ve heard them so much. But then you’re like, how do I apply this to my life? That’s why I’m really, really excited for you to be here. There’s a system and there’s a workflow for everything, even within your life, even your business. So I’m really excited to showcase this. And so like I say, in every episode, I tried to treat every episode like a mastermind. I want listeners to walk away with definite tips and strategies so that they can immediately start applying them to their business or life or both. So, Anna, I’m gonna let you take it away.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Awesome. Well, thank you. And before I dive into the nitty gritty of routines, it’s really important to let all of you know that yes, I am a Time Management Coach, but I was not born some kind of magical time management unicorn. I actually used to be a late friend in the group. You know, there’s one or two in every group you might be listening to right now and thinking, Oh, it’s me, I’m the late one, I was the one who my friends would say, oh, yeah, brunch is going to be at 9:00 when it was really at 10:30. Because they knew that I would end up being late. I very clearly remember a time when one of my friends very kindly, but with a little bit of tough love, called me out for consistently being late and not respecting timelines. And on top of that, I spent about 10 years in the 24/7 world of crisis communications and Government Affairs where literally every day was a disaster. Like it was my job to manage communications, through oil spills, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, and plant explosions. And like, you name it, and I have probably navigated a client through some kind of crisis situation. And I loved the work, I did, it meant so much to be able to take this gift that I have to stay calm under pressure, and to help others through these really tough, chaotic times. And really mean be that calm, be that strategic guiding light. But you know what can happen when we love our jobs a little bit too much? All of our boundaries can completely go out the window. And that was what had started to happen in my life, my boundaries were completely gone. My relationships were crumbling work-life balance. What even is that because I so strongly believed in being busy as a badge of honor, and in being in demand and needed by my clients and my work as a measure of my value and my work. And so I had a lot of work to do, personally, to step away from that lifestyle, to work through burnout to figure out what was next in order to step into being a Time Management Coach. So if you are listening, and you are thinking, time management doesn’t work for me, or I’m not good at time management, let me tell you that if I can do it, you can do it because I was a time management disaster, myself. And so always want to preface any time management discussion with that, yes, you can do it and one of the best places in your life to start getting your time management in check, if you are in search of that work-life balance is with routines. You know, I told you, I’m a toddler mom, who has a four-year-old and a two-year-old and one of the things I learned very early on after they were born was the importance of good routines. Our toddlers, our little ones, they need that predictability, they need that rhythm to their lives. They need to have that to feel safe and secure. Y’all we’re just grown-up toddlers, you realize that, right? Like, we are toddlers with jobs and click cars and mortgages and stuff like that, like

Dolly Delong
I 110% agree with that comment because I actually tell my husband on the daily I’m like, you know, like a grown-up who’s mad, is kind of like a toddler, like they either need to eat plenty to sleep, or they just need like little time to themselves. Literally, that’s what we do with our toddlers. And then once we feed Blaise or he takes a nap, or he has like just a few moments to himself to calm down. He’s great, and that’s what adults need.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I know, like, if we just remember that we’re just growing up toddlers really puts a lot into perspective. And so routines are just as important for my kiddos as they are for me. And over the years, I’ve found that there are five key routines that really help us show up as our best selves as business owners as parents, and just human beings. And those five routines are your morning routine, your evening routine. So those are typically the two that most people think of. Morning routine typically being in that top spot. You know, the morning routine gets a lot of attention, what’s the Miracle Morning, what’s the billionaire morning routine? So morning routine, your evening routine, your workday, your startup routine, your workday, your shutdown routine, and your weekly, weekly planning session. So it’s those five routines that really serve as the cornerstones in our days and our weeks that help us feel safe and secure, and more importantly, transition into different parts of our days. So I’m going to walk you through each one of those five routines, what each of those five routines are, and what they can look like, then we’ll dive into how you can reverse engineer what you want to do and what you need to do in your routines so that you create realistic routines that you actually have time for and want to follow through with.

Dolly Delong
I love it, let’s dive in.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
So first we’ll start with your morning routine. So, again, we all know this one, your morning routine is a series of steps that takes you from sleeping to starting your day, whatever starting your day looks like. I think of it as go time, your go time might be sitting down at your desk to start your workday, your go time might be walking out the door, or maybe it’s arriving at work, or it’s dropping your kids off at school. And that’s the beauty of it. We’re all going to have a different version of go time when it’s time for us to start our day because we’re all different. And that’s another reason why you can’t just copy and paste routines, especially morning routines because they need to be built in order to support you and take you from sleep to starting your day. So typically, a morning routine is going to have things in it that you need to do like taking a shower, brushing your teeth, getting your kids up, dressed out the door, eating breakfast, kind of jumpstarting your energy for the day, having one to five cups of coffee, whatever you know, your poison is and things that you want to do, like quiet time, meditation, prayer, personal development, exercise, and there is no perfect formula for a morning routine, there is no one right way to do it. The one right way is whatever’s right for you. So we’ll dive into a bit more about how to actually plan that out in just a bit. So it’s your morning routine that takes you from sleep to starting your day to your go time. Then at the other end of the day, we’ve got our evening routine. Now a lot of times when we think of an evening routine, we think about a 17-step skincare routine, reading before bed, or whatever that looks like for you. But an evening routine’s purpose is to help prepare your body for a solid night’s sleep. As adults, we need between seven and nine hours of quality sleep each night in order for our body to just conduct the basic processes of repairing our cells and keeping our immune system in working order, and preparing us for the next day. Sleep is one of the most underrated time management strategies there is because, without good sleep, you can’t be productive, you make more mistakes, and you are more prone to getting in accidents. I mean, sleep is everything. And there is more and more research that comes out every day about the importance of sleep to our health and to our longevity. So that evening routine is meant to prep you for that solid night’s sleep. So an evening routine could include things like a skincare routine, it could include having a set time that you turn off your screens, it could include taking a long hot bath like Arianna Huffington writes about in her book, The Sleep Revolution, you know, whatever it is, it’s a series of steps that helps you prepare for a good night’s sleep. Next up is our startup routine. Your startup routine is kind of like the morning routine for your workday. So your startup routine is a series of steps that helps you transition from not work brain to work brain, it basically helps you switch off and get in the zone, I say switch off your personal thoughts. I mean, let’s be honest, we’re always going to have personal thoughts all throughout the day. So we’re not trying to completely shut them off. But what we’re trying to do is what that startup routine is to get into a state of focus on our work. Because let’s be real multitasking is not real. And the more focus we can bring to our work, the more deeply we can be engaged in our work, the more effectively we can collaborate with others, and the more innovative we can be with our ideas. And so having a routine that could be as simple as sitting down at your desk, opening your laptop, opening your task management system, identifying your top three priorities for the day and writing them down, making sure that your glass of water is refilled and then go and when you do those steps in the same order every time it trains your brain to associate those physical activities with a mental state of being which then brings me to our workday shutdown routine. So our workday shutdown routine. Just like our workday startup routine is meant to help us transition our mindset shutdown takes you from work brain to not work brain. All right. And that workday shutdown routine is what enables you to step into your downtime, be present and attentive to your family, and leave work at work. Even if work is at your kitchen table or in your home office. You know more and more of us, our commute isn’t to an office, it’s to the kitchen table or it’s to our office in a spare bedroom or we’re a co-working space wherever that is and so that shutdown routine almost serves as your virtual commute. So again, it’s a series of steps that helps you close the loops in your day and head into your evening feeling complete, and let’s be real, we are not going to finish every single project on our plate in a day, the best things in life take time. I mean, I didn’t write a book and turn it in, in a day, it took months, you know? And so how do you shut off your brain when those projects are incomplete? Well, you do that by deciding, okay, I am done for the day, tomorrow, I will do X, Y, and Z, and making that a part of your shutdown routine really kind of tells your mind to be quiet for a little bit because you’re able to almost trick yourself into thinking that you finished this actually has a term, it’s called the Zeigarnik Effect. And, and it is basically the fact that our brains tend to prefer things that are unfinished, basically, like open loops, things that are constantly kind of cycling through our brains, like, Oh, I really need to follow up with that client, oh, I still need to check in with that client about getting a testimonial, oh, I really need to pay that bill. Oh, I really need to do this. And so unless we create some kind of stopping point or a place to hold those things that are in our brains, they’re just going to keep sight. So that shutdown routine is what helps you combat the Zeigarnik Effect and actually kind of trick your brain into thinking that you’re done for the day.

Dolly Delong
I am sitting here with my mouth open. Like Anna’s explaining the Zeigarnik Effect. And I’m like, what? This makes sense.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
And before I move on from the shutdown routine, I need to tell you a little bit about the weekly planning routine. I’ve got to mention Mr. Rogers.

Dolly Delong
Oh, Mr. Rogers, I have a feeling of knowing what you’re gonna say.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Whenever Mr. Rogers would come home to begin each episode of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, you probably remember that he would walk in, he would take off his outside jacket and he would put on a cozy cardigan, I almost want to cry thinking about it, he would take off his outside shoes, and he would put on his inside shoes. So what Mr. Rogers was doing, it was effectively a shutdown routine, he was performing a series of physical steps that helped him transition from outside in the neighborhood brain to being at home with his friends, you know, that he was talking to, for the TV, us, and the kids at home. And that’s the same thing that we can do with a shutdown routine, which is to perform a series of physical steps that creates a change in our mindset so that we can move into the next part of our day feeling different feeling complete.

Dolly Delong
A really good modern-day example of that would be Daniel Tiger because I watch a lot of Daniel Tiger, not for fun, not by myself but Daniel Tiger does that. I mean, it’s an extension of Mr. Rogers. He also does that as well at the beginning and at the end.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I did not know that. We don’t really watch Daniel Tiger. So I didn’t know that that was so cool.

Dolly Delong
I’m not gonna sing it because you all would be like cancel Dolly right now just because of her singing voice. But yeah, he goes through that routine. And my son, I don’t know if it’s his personality or not but he loves a good routine like we were saying earlier, how important it is to establish, some sort of healthy pattern for your toddlers to feel safe. I know he’s out of alignment when we do things that are not in routine. He gets confused like, why are we not doing this first? And so it’s so true.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Yeah. The grown-up version of that is being in the middle of the morning and looking around being like, wait, what am I supposed to do next? What was I just doing? And it’s because there’s not a specific flow to your morning or your evening, or whatever it is. So the last cornerstone key essential routine that I want to tell you about is your weekly planning routine, weekly planning session, weekly review, or weekly preview. This has a lot of different names. So call it whatever you want. It is a time that you set aside each week to get a bird’s eye view of the week ahead and to identify any potential obstacles, tough spots, or curveballs that might come your way. We can’t always predict everything but if we get that bird’s eye view, we can find our tough spots, come up with potential solutions, and catch communication breakdowns before they happen, because we’re able to solve problems before their problems and make decisions in advance to decide, okay, what are my top three priorities for the week? What do I want to make for dinner? How am I going to handle my daughter’s ballet pictures on Wednesday evening which is a different time than her normal ballet class? So that’s your opportunity to step into your week feeling calm and prepared. But weekly planning session is so easy to skip but they’re like an oil change. You know, you think about how I don’t have time to go get my oil changed. Well, what happens when you keep skipping an oil change? Your car locks up, freaks out and everything becomes a huge, big expensive mess. I’m not going to spend these 30 minutes planning my week because I don’t have time to do that, well you end up wasting hours of your week once you get into it with wasted time and bad decisions, don’t even get me started on bad decisions. I mean, hello, decision fatigue? If you have ever reached the end of your day and your head is spinning because you just either don’t know what to do, or you’re trying to decide, okay, I’m hungry, should I have an apple or should I have chocolate ice cream with syrup on top? Chances are at the end of the day, you’re going to choose the ice cream. Because the more decisions that we make during the course of the day, the worse we become at making decisions. And so we’re at our freshest at the beginning of the week, just like we’re at our freshest at the beginning of the morning. And so take that decision-making power and use it at the beginning of the week. A weekly planning session could include everything from, you know, planning your week, identifying your time blocks, planning your meals, putting in your grocery order, identifying who’s picking up which kids from school on which days, and you know how you’re going to navigate the week ahead so that once the week starts, you just go, you just make it happen.

Dolly Delong
So glad you shared that because my husband and I do something very similar. We call it, my husband is the one that like read about it online, he heard about it from some podcasts, and he’s like, we’re gonna incorporate this at the beginning of every Sunday. I’m like, okay, that sounds great. And he calls it the Weekly Marriage Check-In, it’s not that we’re checking in on our relationship, we’re checking in on all of this on his schedule, my schedule, and our son’s schedules, and we are mapping out the week. If you’re a listener, and you’re looking for ways to incorporate this into your marriage or relationships, my husband likes to start it off. It’s fun, he’s like, I will compliment you and all the things I have liked, he just starts off with compliments of what he’s noticed about me like my strengths in the last week. And then I’m like, I love this. And he’s like now it’s your turn to do this for me. And I’m like, you can keep them coming. So we start off with like, hey, this is what we noticed our strengths within each other. And then we go into our next thing is talking about the week ahead and how we can help each other. And then the next thing we talked about is, is there anything that we can do to improve our communication style. Do you have another way of looking at it is like, what issues do you have with normally I’m like, I can’t think of anything, I would recommend not doing this right before you go to bed. Because sometimes we don’t remember it, like right before we go to sleep, and I’m so tired. So we’ve been trying to do this. Yeah, right before bedtime before I get super sleepy. And so I’m usually like, I’m so sleepy, there’s nothing wrong with you. So you’re ready to grow that email list. But you’re a little stuck on ideas for lead magnets, am I right? I think we’ve all been there. So that’s why I created the perfect idea list with over 20 pages of lead magnet ideas. This list is perfect for entrepreneurs in the creative field, all the way to direct sales. So grab the Master Lead Magnet Idea List for free at the link in today’s show notes. What you’re just sharing is sometimes like we’ve done this with our marriage weekly checkup at the top of every Sunday.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I love that that’s such a cool way to look at it and prove that the concept can be applied not just to our businesses, and not just to us as individuals, but especially if you are in a marriage or in a relationship. It’s a team effort to make the week happen. It is a coordinated team effort. So we’ve talked through these five essential routines. And now you might be thinking, oh my gosh, Anna, all of these sound amazing. But how do I actually make it happen without just running in a bunch of circles or forgetting it or giving up? And so this is where we need to get really clear about what a routine needs to have, and what we want to have from that routine. So you know, if you’re driving right now and if you’re listening, I really encourage you to think about one of those five routines that you want to start. Maybe it’s your morning routine. Maybe you want to make your morning routine, better, and smoother, maybe you want to combat that Zeigarnik Effect that you just learned about and have a shutdown routine. So think about that one routine that you want to create, improve, and tweak. And the first thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to make a list of the things that we need to do. What are the things that you need to do during that routine in order for it to be successful? So big difference between needs and wants here because we’ll get to the wants in a second. Something that you need to do in a morning routine is brush your teeth, right? Something that when you think about a weekly planning session, something that you need to do for yourself and your family might be planning your meals for the week, that might be a need to do for you. So think about those things that you need to do. Another way to think about this is what is the bare minimum of this routine and for it to still like technically be a routine? So I kind of think about, imagine your morning routine. And imagine that you’ve woken up late, and you have to do the bare minimum to get you or you and your family out the door. What is that bare minimum? For me, it’s going to be brushing my teeth, throwing on some clothes, getting the girls dressed, getting the girl’s teeth brushed, putting bows in their hair, feeding them, packing their backpacks, and leaving. That is the absolute bare minimum morning routine. I want you to think about what does that bare minimum look like for you and these routines? Now we want to think about what do you want to do during this routine. If it’s a morning routine, do you want to do yoga? Do you want to meditate? Do you want to read your Bible? Or have prayer time? Do you want to go for a walk? What do you want to use to incorporate into that routine? If you’re thinking about your daily startup routine? Do you want to incorporate a gratitude practice? Do you want to meditate before you start your day? Shutdown routine, do you want to empty the trash in your office, you know, what is it that you want to do as a part of that routine? So once you’ve got your list of needs to do and want to do, we don’t want these need to dues and want to do is to mingle together, we want to make sure we keep them separate. So one thing that you can do, and if I could go back in time, I would have said grab a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle and put your need to use on one side and you want to use on the other. One of the biggest mistakes that we make when it comes to morning routines is we focus too much on the things that we want to do. And then we ended up missing or rushing through the things that we need to do. So once you’ve got that list, now we’re going to put it in order. So what is the order that you would like to do these things that you need to do and what to do? And we don’t just want to come up with some arbitrary order. We want to think about what order makes the most sense, based on the physical flow of my space. You know, one of the questions I get all the time is what order should I do the things in my morning routine or evening routine? Well, you want your morning routine to take you from your bed to your go time, to the door, or to your desk. So design the steps in your morning routine to gradually move you closer, don’t zigzag all over the house. You know, one of the biggest mistakes that we used to make is that we always put our girl’s shoes on by the back door, we have like a little mudroom setup, but without fail, everybody would be dressed we would be at the back door and there would be no socks, no socks. So then we would have to go all the way back to the other side of the house and get socks, okay, and it sounds silly. But when you’ve got a four-year-old and a two-year-old, and they’re being antsy and they’re at the back door, and it’s time to leave and you don’t have socks, everything gets totally disrupted. So we started incorporating it into the routine, whenever we get them dressed, I grabbed socks and put them in my pocket.

Dolly Delong
That is so smart.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
So they’re just there. They’re in the pocket of my robe or whatever I’m wearing. And so think about the flow. Same thing. Like if you are creating a weekly planning routine, it doesn’t make sense to first make your grocery order. And then look at the week ahead. You know, what if you have evening activities for three nights, and you just made a grocery list based on cooking some pretty time-intensive stuff? No, if you’ve got stuff going on three nights of the week, I really encourage you to get some takeout and do a crock pot meal, you know? Think about what makes sense in terms of time. Alright, so we’ve got our order, you know, we’ve written a number next to each thing. Now this is where we’re going to reverse engineer. So I want you to think about what is your go time for the mornings. What is your bedtime for evenings? What time do you want to start work? What time do you want to walk away from work? When do you want to end that routine? And so we’re gonna go to the last item in your numbered list and you know, you’re gonna have some numbers on the one side, some on the needs side and it’s okay, it’s going to be a little messy. If you want to rewrite it in order you can or you just put that go time and that end time by the very last thing on your list. Alright, so now we’re going to start estimating. We’re going to start thinking through how much time does each piece of this routine take me and we want to estimate a little bit more time than we initially think, you know, the planning fallacy tells us that we consistently underestimate how much time things take us. And when we know that that’s a thing, we can combat that by giving ourselves a little bit more extra time than we think that we need. Because in the end, that’s probably how it’s going to shake out. So we’re gonna work our way backward, estimating how much time we think each of these items on our list will take, each of these items on our routine agenda will take. And as we’re estimating we’re adding, okay, so it’s going to take me five minutes to get the girl’s shoes on, and I want to be out the door by eight o’clock. So I need to start putting their shoes on at 7:55, no later than 7:55. So that means we then need to finish breakfast by this time, and then we need to start breakfast at this time, and then we need to finish up Bose and brushing teeth at this time, and that helps you work your way backward. Then you do this for each item on your list in order. Once you’ve done this, this is where you have your start time, you have your routine start time, and you might be looking at your routine start time thinking, awesome, this is what time I need to wake up to start my routine. Or you might look at it and realize, oh, well, I need to wake up at 4 am. In order to do all of the things on my list. I need to start my workday shutdown routine at noon, in order to do all of these things. And so this is when it’s time to do some editing. What can you cut completely? And you’ll want to cut from the want list, look at that want list, what can I cut completely? What can I reduce? So maybe instead of doing yoga for an hour, you do yoga for 30 minutes, maybe instead of meditating for 15 minutes, you meditate for 10? Whatever it is, what can you reduce? And then what can you move to another part of the week, you know, I used to waste so much time standing in front of my girl’s closets in the morning, because my brain, I am not a morning person, my brain does not work. And I would stand in front of their closets trying to put outfits together and it just would not make sense. And so I stopped doing it in the morning. And so now a part of my weekly planning session is to check the weather and pull out all of their outfits for the week. So that reduces time spent doing something we would typically incorporate into our morning routine. So I would encourage you to think okay, what can I move to another part of the day so that this thing still gets done, but it’s just not a part of this set routine. So keep editing until you’ve got a realistic start time. All right, we’re almost done. Now that you’ve got your realistic itinerary and you’ve got your timestamps figured out, we’re going to make this visible. Okay, so this is where I love a clipboard. And it’s gonna sound so silly. But take this routine that you’ve just mapped out and stick it on a clipboard. It is so unfair to yourself to think that you are going to write up this routine that you have never done before and get it perfect on the first try. That’s not fair. Like, I can barely remember what I wore yesterday, I’m not gonna remember, like every single step and what time I’m supposed to hit these marks in order to get out the door. And you know, you think about sports teams, they practice running the plays before they run the play in real life. So grab your clipboard, and visualize yourself. Do the Michael Phelps routine of visualizing yourself walking through the morning routine. Imagine yourself going through the flow, Michael Phelps used to visualize himself taking every single step and stroke of a race day before the race even happened. So he had already won it in his mind. So we want to picture ourselves winning our routine before we actually start it.

Dolly Delong
I want to say that if you are listening in and you’re like, well, that sounds a bit woo-woo. Listen, I am not a big woo-woo person myself, I am very practical to the point. But I do this, I didn’t realize it was called something specifically but I actually visualize things before I act out a workflow or a system for myself and it goes by so much smoother because mentally I know what I’m expecting. And so I decided, maybe a year ago to do this test and see how it would pan out with my son. So I started talking about steps before we actually do the thing with my son so that he can start visualizing it. I don’t tell him like we’re gonna do a visual exercise because he’s like, what are you talking about Mom? So I just started talking through the steps with him and I have noticed in the past year that he does so much better with that and then once we start doing the routine, he’s fine because he knows what to expect next. If this works with my toddler, this can work. I’m gonna try this. I’ve started visualizing things, and it has helped me out so much even you all, you know, I have a three-month-old and I do this, and it helps me out so much, definitely.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I don’t consider myself to be a woo-woo person like I’m not trying to manifest the perfect morning.

Dolly Delong
Stuff hits the fan y’all.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I find that whenever you mentally walkthrough, you can realize, oh, wait, that step doesn’t make sense there. Oh, wait, I’m gonna have to run back across the house and grab socks, if I don’t grab them at that point, you know what I mean? So whenever you are ready to kick off your morning routine, just have your clipboard with you and just walk through each step of the way. That way, you’ve got your reference, you’ve got this visible, and you’ve got something to keep yourself on track and if you realize along the way, oh, wow, this is completely unrealistic, I can’t blow dry my hair in two minutes. What was I thinking? Oh, you can, you can make little notes on your page on your clipboard and tweak it. As much as we would love for routines or time management strategies or even systems and workflows to be set it and forget it, nothing is truly set it and forget it because we evolve as people, life changes, our kids get older, and the way that we incorporate them into our routine changes. You know, clients change, businesses change, and we need to tweak those routines and tweak those workflows as we grow our business and we grow our teams. And so as much as I love that idea of set it and forget it and a lot of times, you know, a good system, you can for a while.

Dolly Delong
You’re right, you’re right, there are tweaks that need to be made as life evolves and as we evolve.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I’m adding a new member to my team right now, and I’m having to go through and tweak workflows and Asana things in order to make sure that everything’s working properly. So if you can banish the idea that you’re only going to have to do this once, whenever you make changes as things evolve, it’s going to be a lot easier on your mindset to embrace that change. It’s not changing because you did something wrong, changing with life changes, things change. And that’s okay, that’s good. That means you’re growing.

Dolly Delong
I love this so much. This is like, seriously, this is it’s so encouraging for me and this is literally like a mastermind and I hope you all are taking notes because Anna is dropping the gold right now. So I have so after the clipboard and you yourself visualizing yourself, because I know I had like interrupted your flow state. What were you gonna add anything to it? Or is that the end?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Really, the next step is just to execute an edit, walk through the routine and change it when you need to make changes. And just know that that’s always going to be a part of the process.

Dolly Delong
I’m going to call it eb and flow. And this has been amazing, and of course, like for those of you who are listening and want to take notes, I’ve added all of these notes in the show notes so that while you’re listening, you can go in and check it out, and just like hone in on one routine, like don’t, don’t start off with all five unless I mean, unless you’re a go-getter. You’re like, I know I can do all five.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I would pick one and get a win on that one, and then take what you learn from that one and build on it.

Dolly Delong
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I know that there will be a listener like I can do all five. And that’s why I’m like, maybe like just one or two, but definitely one, and I’m actually going to start trying to incorporate the shutdown routine because I don’t have that. It’s hard because like I love working so much. I love working. I love what I do, and so sometimes it’s really hard for me to transition from work and then going and then I work from home, so I was like literally walk up the steps I’m in the kitchen. And it’s hard for me to do that transition and not take my, I need to like shut down my emotions and my excitement from work and then be present for my husband and for my son’s, just like anything in life, so this is a good reminder to me to start assessing my workday shutdown routine. I love it.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Keep me posted, and let me know how it goes.

Dolly Delong
I will, I will. You can kick me in the butt, you have my permission. Okay, Anna you’ve shared so much information, can you share just how a person can find you, how a person can work with you, and just like connect with you in general?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
So I would love for you to tune in to It’s About Time, my podcast about work-life balance. Wherever you listen to podcasts, I have new episodes that drop every single Monday. So tune in, and come find me on Instagram, love me some Instagram as Dolly knows. And I also have a surprise for y’all. So if you have loved our conversation today about routines, I have put together a guide for y’all called How to Design Routines That Stick and it will walk you through all five of the routines that we talked about today, you’ll see some simple routines, you’ll get some step by step for designing your own routines, and you can actually grab that at AnnaDKornick.com/Magic.

Dolly Delong
That is also in the shownotes for you guys, so you can easily access it right away. Anna, can you talk more about your new book that’s coming out?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. I would love to so Time Management Essentials from McGraw Hill is hitting shelves on June 20th and that absolutely blows my mind that I am an author and have a book. It’s one of those dreams that I’ve had for a very long time. And it wasn’t just a dream to see a book with my name on it on a shelf. Instead, what I really wanted to create was the book I wish I had had, whenever I was going through my period of burnout and exploration and trying to figure out what was next for me and in my life after I walked away from my 10-year career in crisis communications. And I dove into every time management, productivity, business, and entrepreneurship book that I can get my hands on. And the thing that frustrated me so much is that you had to read this book on habits, and this book on planning your week, and this book to understand this part of the puzzle and this part to understand rest, and this book to understand, and it was so many different, like what order do you put this in and it was so much and I said like there has to be an easier way. You should not have to read 37 different time management books or productivity books in order to figure out a system that works for you. So that’s what this is. This walks you through a vision and values-based time management like I am not about time management for the sake of just doing more stuff. I’m all about time management that starts with heart, that gets to the route of what matters most because what’s the point if the way that you are spending your time doesn’t connect to your bigger vision for the future and to what matters most to you and your core values. And so this book walks you through casting your vision, and defining your core values, I talk you through different ways to prioritize because priorities can be such a fuzzy thing sometimes, how to prioritize, how to set up those five essential routines with a weekly planning session, how to create your ideal week. And then we take it a step further and go beyond the essentials by diving into how to deal with all that mental clutter. We have so much taking up space in our minds how to deal with mental clutter, how to make the most of your energy, how to rest and recharge and get that good sleep, and how to take breaks and create seasons of rest. And how to focus, how to actually fight off distractions in order to, to kind of put it all together and get things done. But not just things to get the right things done. So I’m so excited, I’ve put so much time and love and stories into this book, and I just I can’t wait for it to be real and hold it and touch it.

Dolly Delong
Okay, so when we were chatting about this, before we started, oh through email, you told me that June 20th, is is it time management?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
It’s world productivity day.

Dolly Delong
World productivity day. I mean, come on.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
That’s a total coincidence.

Dolly Delong
I love that. I love that so much for you. I’m so excited for you. So where can people, I’ll have in the show notes but where can people sign up for like, I don’t know, what’s it called? Like a waitlist?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Sure. So it’s actually already available for preorder on Amazon. But if you head to AnnaDKornick.com/book, it’ll take you straight there, I’m really excited. In May is when we’ll really start kicking things off with pre-orders, there will be some really special bonuses and surprises for those of you who pre-order. So if you do preorder, be on the lookout, because I will have some surprises in store for you and really excited to share this, and I hope that it is a way to take time management and make it more understandable, more accessible, and you know, less scary.

Dolly Delong
I do have a question, maybe you haven’t done this yet? Is there going to be an audio version?

Anna Dearmon Kornick
There will be an audio version?

Dolly Delong
Not a planned question. I am genuinely so excited, this one is a stage surprise.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
Okay, so there will be an audio version. But I am not reading the audio version. I’m actually not sure, so the book Time Management Essentials, it’s actually a part of a series from McGraw Hill called Business Essentials. So other books in the series include communication essentials, coaching essentials, presentation essentials, and sales essentials is also launching on June 20. So they have the same reader for the entire series so that there’s continuity, but I did I tried so hard. I was like, but I have experience talking into a mic.

Dolly Delong
I was like because I mean, I’m not trying to make your head all big but your podcast presence voice is very proud. You probably put in a lot of time and a lot of practice. I can keep up and stay engaged, and I like it. I’m like, you should do the audio version. But I realize there are probably publishing rules and all of that, I don’t know anything about publishing.

Anna Dearmon Kornick
I know, I wish I could. The next one. I’ll read the audio version of the next book, should say when there is a next book?

Dolly Delong
Yes, a part two. So that is so exciting. Well, Anna, thank you so much for taking the time. I know we’re almost at like the one-hour mark. I learned so much and I know my listeners have learned so much. So if you are listening in can you please shoot Anna a DM I need to say it really all in one sentence, do not shoot Anna but please let her know how this has helped impact either your life or your business, or both, and what routine you’re going to start implementing right away and like I shared with you all like I’m going to start working on my end of day routine and she’s going to keep hold me accountable to that. So I’m really really excited to see how that’s gonna go. And Anna, thank you again, so much for being on the podcast. For those of you who are listening, everything is going to be in the show notes and as always, I hope you all states streamlined and magical you amazing muggle you. I will talk to you all next week for another Systems and Workflow-related podcast, so y’all have a wonderful week. Thank you so much for listening to the Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at systemsandworkflowmagic.com/podcast. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. Be sure to screenshot this episode, share it with your stories, and tag me at @DollyDelongEducation over on Instagram. Until next time, go make some strategic workflow magic!