Interview – Matthew Cornell on Daily Time Management for Entrepreneurs

Recently, I had a rare opportunity to speak with a very unique productivity and time management thinker – Matthew Cornell. Matthew first caught my eye while searching around for productivity help when I stumbled upon his website and noticed his very unique web marketing approach.

On his website Matt offers two instant download guides that can help you take control of your day-to-day time management activities immediately. One of these I have downloaded and put into action myself — it’s called Where the !@#% Did My Day Go? and, as Matt describes it, this guide is the “ultimate guide to making every day a great workday.”

I did interview Matthew and tried to record it but due to some technical difficulties the audio turned out really rough. For this reason, I have transcribed our phone call below. Enjoy!

My Interview with Matthew Cornell

JC: There are so many time management philosophies and books out there. What makes your perspective unique?

MC: That’s a good question. The first focus that I start with is everybody does need a system, especially entrepreneurs who need business systems. My approach is a kind of bottom-up approach. The question is “Why are you doing this stuff?” Making sure you have a really solid workflow system and installing a system like that is a good first step for people, then looking at what goals you have.

JC: I like when you use the term system. I think systems are so important for building a business. McDonald’s is a great example of this. They don’t have great hamburgers, they have a great system. So if I can be the devil’s advocate for a minute… What about those times when the systems don’t work? What do you recommend?

MC: Yes, this is one approach I’ve been working on is treating everything in life as experiments… and it applies to systems as well. So if somebody adopts a method of managing themselves and it just falls apart, that’s REALLY useful information. This is where we ask what’s going on and look at what habits might be getting in the way. Also, we all have convergent and divergent periods. Convergent periods where everything comes together and divergent periods where everything seems to fall apart. So staying flexible is really important.

JC: That’s an excellent point. There are definitely times when everything is coming together and times when it seems like everything is falling apart.

MC: Yes, especially when you’re doing something new. It’s good to just give yourself a chance to have that time when things aren’t super clear because I think that’s when you pay your dues and learn from other people. And that reminds me of a book I really like, The War of Art. I love that book. I have found that book super encouraging for that type of thing.

JC: Great! I think that one of the topics I want to discuss with you because time management productivity is so important for people is the “P” word, procrastination. Especially for people who are in the early stages of starting a business, what do you recommend for dealing with procrastination?

MC: What I do with people is dig in and encourage people to ask, What am I doing here? Why am I procrastinating? So what I would recommend is look at those tasks and say “Where is the resistance?” So maybe the task is too big. So a classic solution is to break it down and work on it for 5 minutes. So it depends on the activity and the type of procrastination that’s going on.

JC: Right, so break it down and think about it in new ways because starting a business is such a big thing and you may never finish it.

MC: Yes, and a lot of your readers probably fall into the category of “Too Smart to Start,” have you heard of that?

JC: Yes, definitely!

MC: Right, breaking things down and making a small start is a good example of dealing with this.

JC: Right, the classic “Paralysis by Analysis.”

MC: That’s right, you just need to really break things down and look at the nature of the procrastination to understand it.

JC: Ok, so can you tell us about your guide, “Where the @!#% Did My Day Go?”

MC: Yeah, the reason I wrote this book is when you don’t have a really good system in place, you know sometimes I get to the end of the day and think what the heck happened? So the thing I’ve found is the classic idea of daily planning helps me to manage things. So I’ve updated it and I’ve added some little experiments you can do on daily planning, just to give you an example of how you can sit down early in the morning and figure out what you’re going to do in that day. I call it “getting a touchdown” when you get to the end of the and you’ve checked off the last thing, it feels really good.

JC: Right, definitely.

MC: So that’s why I wrote it. It’s just over 20 pages and it goes into great detail on how to do this practice. I find it tremendously helpful.

JC: Yes, especially if you’re working on a big project sometimes you get to the end of the day and you feel like you’ve barely taken a dent out of what you wanted to achieve. But some projects are so large, you simply can’t expect to do it all now.

MC: That’s right. It’s so easy to get to the end of the day and think “I didn’t get this done and I wanted to do that.” You know a great practice I find is for a week keep that daily list and then you can say, “Look, I’ve really done a lot.” And people do a lot, so this is a really good example.

JC: And with the nature of an Internet Business, for example, sometimes it’s just tough to get away. Do you have any advice for people on how to think more about relaxation? How do you address that in your time management philosophy?

MC: Oh, that’s a really good question. It comes down to balancing the really important work people have to do with living the rest of their lives. Making little boundaries might be useful. One approach would be to say, ok, I’m going to turn my Blackberry off at 6 o’clock and try for a couple of days to leave it off and see how that goes. And this is an approach I’m working on it’s called “Think. Try. Learn.” In other words, looking at everything as an experiment in life. This is just to see what happens when I do this. You can find out why you check the Blackberry. Maybe you’re bored or you feel like you need to keep up with things. So then you can figure out how to replace this with other activities. This is about looking at yourself as a whole person. Just playing with scheduling like exercising every day for 30 minutes. Just try it out and see what happens.

JC: So this is kind of like the idea of scheduling leisure time?

MC: Yes, there’s a book called The Now Habit that goes into that, almost like an anti-scheduling thing. Another thing you can do, if you have a spouse or a friend, is just hand them $50 and ask them to bring the Internet down.

JC: [LAUGHING] Yes, I’ve done something similar with some of my staff actually locking them out of email to discourage them from working on the weekends. It’s just so important to get away sometimes. This is like having someone else change your clocks.

MC: Yes, and that category of getting support from other people is really useful. The overall input, the number of tasks you manage, have to be less than or equal to what you’re capable of doing. Ideally, it should be less so you have plenty of space. But it’s hard for us to say no because we have so much we want to do.

JC: Yes, exactly.

MC: One thing we talked about earlier is the idea of the 80/20 principle, which I think has been made popular by the work of Tim Ferris and the Four Hour Work Week. Just asking yourself where am I spending energy that isn’t paying off? So looking carefully at what you’re spending time on and whether they pay off is very useful. It’s really important to look at what’s paying off. Or really saying, you know, I’ve been using Twitter for 2 years and I really haven’t gotten anything out of it.

JC: Imagine that. I really do think the 80/20 rule is the big take away from Tim’s book.

MC: Yes, and he makes the point also that it’s not all about how long your butt is in the chair that makes the difference. Have you ever had a day where you only worked 3 hours but you felt incredible? And have you ever had a day where you worked 10 hours and you got nothing done?

JC: Yes! Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time Matthew!

MC: Thanks, Jason.
Matthew Cornell is a Time Management and Productivity Expert who teaches people a simple time management method to manage the overwhelming volume of “stuff” inundating their lives in order to release and focus their natural talents. The result is typically a relaxed sense of control and a significant freeing up of energy and creativity.

His services include one-on-one workflow coaching, and group presentations and seminars on personal productivity. Visit www.MatthewCornell.org for more info.

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