From Burnout to Boss Mode: How to Stop Your Calendar from Running You

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Joshua Kornitsky: Hey, welcome back to High Velocity Radio. I’m your host, professional EOS implementer Joshua Kornitsky. And today I’ve got a guest with me that I’m really excited to have. I have Andrew Hartman. He is the founder of Time Boss, a training and coaching company that helps leaders and their teams get results from a place of peace, not stress. I’m very excited to learn more about that. What makes Andrew’s approach different is where it came from. Not a textbook, but 15 years of personal experience. He’s a speaker, a coach, and a soon to be author. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Andrew Hartman: Awesome. Thanks, Joshua. So glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Joshua Kornitsky: I’m really thrilled to learn more about what it is you, uh, teach what you espouse that that helps people work from a place of peace. It sounds, frankly, too good to be true. So I’m, I’m going to ask on that. But but first, I always like to start with, can you share kind of your origin story? How, how did we get to this point in, in your professional and personal life?

Andrew Hartman: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, I’ll take you back to the very beginning. I grew up in a great home, uh, had great parents. Uh, I was taught just like everyone to have a to do list. I was taught how to use a calendar, found myself in my late 20s in a role where I had way more to do than time to do it, and I was suddenly aware that I had no clue how to interact with time, and I was almost instantly overwhelmed. Um was doing my best care deeply about my contribution, cared about my work, wanted to do great work, also wanted to be a great husband, wanted to be a great dad. I just cared about a lot of things And probably, like a lot of people listening, I was pulled in a million directions from caring. I just, I just, I wanted to be good at all those things. And so said yes to way more than I had the time to make happen. And it started impacting everything, uh, impacted my relationships, you know, impacted my relationship with my wife or the time that we could connect. I just, I could be, you know, physically home on the couch trying to have a conversation with her, but emotionally everywhere else, thinking about the projects I had to manage, thinking about the email I had to get back to. Same with my kids, you know, playing trains on the ground with my son and just literally just counting down the seconds until bath time, bedtime so I could get back on my computer and make work happen that I felt so much pressure to make happen. So it had a significant impact on my relationships, especially my ability to be present. I just that overwhelm came from my ability to be present. And I think that’s what a lot of people experience.

Joshua Kornitsky: I wish I could tell you everything you’ve shared so far was alien to me. I really wish I could, Um, and unfortunately I can’t. So so what, um, what happened? Right. So you’re feeling the sense of being overwhelmed. There’s no shortage of folks who share that. What what clicked, what changed? What, what made you see the world through a different lens?

Andrew Hartman: Yeah. Well, I think what, what I experienced and what I’ve come to see in the research, you know, now that I’ve been doing this professionally, is I was in a, in a long brownout, um, where it was impacting my relationships, my health, it was impacting the results I wanted, you know, the very contribution I was trying to make that just started deteriorating as well. Because when we become cognitively overloaded, it just changes the way we make decisions. It changes the results that we get. We’re less collaborative, we seek less best practice. We stop delegating all these crazy things we do. So it’s really this, um, you know, this negative flywheel that that drives us into the ground. And for me, it ended in utter burnout. Uh, we had a massive I was in early stage software companies. I was a leader in those organizations. We had a massive product release. We were trying to get out. I was telling myself, we just got to get past this project. We just got to get past this project as if I might be a different person on the other side of that project. We shipped that project four days later. Client comes back with a massive change order and my brain just snapped. I broke fully burnt out. Wow. You know, burnout is your brain doing the math and saying, this is not working? We are done pushing this rock up the hill. And the challenging thing about burnout is your brain doesn’t know what to do. It just knows you can’t keep doing what you were doing.

Andrew Hartman: And so it subtracts all motivation from that activity. You effectively become allergic to stress in that environment. And it was a really, it was a tough situation. You know, I put everything at risk. I was the sole provider for my family at the time, put them at risk. I put my team at risk. I put our investors at risk. I put our clients at risk, everything at risk. And it was 100% my choice because I care deeply and I didn’t know how to respond to that caring. I just kept saying yes. So, you know, rock bottom for me, uh, I what a lot of people do when they burn out is they leave their job or they take significant time off. And I wasn’t in a position to do either of those things. And in fact, I really cared about my contribution. I cared about my impact. And so it was interesting. Joshua, I just made a very silly, uh, statement. I said, I’ve got to figure out a way to get results that I’m proud of. I want to contribute the way I want to contribute, but I have to figure out how to do it from a place of peace and not stress, because I knew what the stress was like, and I knew I couldn’t go back there. And so I truly I didn’t even know if that was possible, you know, 75, 76% ish of knowledge workers experience burnout. Now on an annual basis. I, I.

Joshua Kornitsky: Can, I can vouch for it. How about that?

Andrew Hartman: Yeah, I, I joke last week in a workshop I was leading, it’s like Christmas. It just comes around every year. Yeah. And so I truly, it was, it was almost naive on my part to think that an alternative way might be available. But I was a product person. I worked in early stage startups. I knew how to build things. I just made myself a customer. And I started iterating hundreds of iterations. Read every book you can probably think of on time management, just looking for ingredients of like, what portions of this are going to help me get the results that I want from a place of peace and not stress.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it sounds like you went into research mode.

Andrew Hartman: I, and I was experimental. I mean, it was an experiment. I was, I became the experiment. My brain, my, my stress, it was, I was a blunt object. I mean, I was not, I was not looking at the neuroscience of it. I just was trying to very practically solve this problem. And I wasn’t trying to build a framework called time boss. I just was trying to get out of my own way because again, I’d burnt out so bad. And I mean, just through brute force. Joshua, I solved it and really started to get incredible results from a place of peace, began running circles around people in terms of the impact I was making, forced my team to do it because I said, you guys have to operate this way. I we, I can’t, I can’t go back to where I came from. I need you to do this with me. And obviously I had authority over them so I, and I could make them do it. And they started experiencing incredible results from a place of peace and not stress.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you had them work harder and faster. And that did it.

Andrew Hartman: No, not harder, not harder and faster. No. Yeah. No, not at all.

Joshua Kornitsky: Just nose to the grindstone more.

Andrew Hartman: It’s and that’s and that’s what we’re told, you know.

Joshua Kornitsky: Of course it is. That’s why I’m joking with you because the. Yeah. Oh it doesn’t work. Work harder. Yeah.

Andrew Hartman: Well and it’s in our culture reinforces it. Right. You know we give out awards for hustle. Right. Um and we, and we respect that person that’s gonna put in that extra time and, and in our environments. I mean, for me, I was rewarded for that grind. I ended up a CEO of early stage software companies. We were incredibly successful and I was overwhelmed the entire time until I made a change.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and I interrupted you. So you got your team to to follow along with what you had discovered and I presume documented in some regard at that point, because it was still experiential and experimental as, as you said, um, is it and I’m not trying to oversimplify is, is it habits? Is it beliefs? Is it perspective? Is it all of those? Is it none of those?

Andrew Hartman: It’s a little it’s a little bit all those things. So it starts with a very fundamental idea that there’s only three types of things that we ever work on. And again, all this discovered via brute force. And it’s formed together now, but there’s only three types of things we ever work on. There’s recurring tasks, which are things that we’ve already said yes to, you know, we, we do it every day, every week, every month, every quarter, every year. And our world often operates on recurring tasks. Our businesses are typically built on recurring tasks. So we’ve already said yes to those things. And there’s one time tasks, things that we do one time and check off and we’re done. You know, we don’t go back to it. And then and that’s what we think most of our world is. We think of it as one time tasks and recurring tasks. And, and we would love to fill our calendar with those things because we think that’s what the work is. But there’s actually a third type of task I call the unknown task. It’s the thing that at 6 a.m., I didn’t know it was going to be my priority, but by 10 a.m., I am very aware that this urgent, important thing is now my priority. The fire and the fire and most people orient their world to the fire because the fire has hurt so bad in the past that they never want to feel that pain again. And so they’re just. And especially when we have more to do than time to do it.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure.

Andrew Hartman: Fires become very clarifying. When I when I have a menagerie of things I could work on, a fire is very clarifying that I should work on this right now.

Joshua Kornitsky: As the expression says, it’s a moth to a flame. You’re drawn to it. It. It suddenly, whether it is or isn’t, is a different subject matter, but it is now the glowing ember. It now requires your attention because we all believe the fire will spread if we don’t address it immediately. Everything else has to wait.

Andrew Hartman: Well, and some people, unfortunately, we become addicted to the fires because there’s there’s great again, there’s great clarity in the fire. We love clarity.

Joshua Kornitsky: We’re always a hero.

Andrew Hartman: Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s it’s I mean, why wouldn’t I want to be a fireman? I’m always a hero. I mean, all the stuff you hired me for, I don’t ever get to do, but. But every time there’s a fire, you can count on me to be the first guy there.

Andrew Hartman: Yeah, it’s. I mean, it really does have, like, this dopamine dopamine cycle that just gratifies people. And a lot of people get stuck there professionally. And to your point, like, yes, they are productive, but they’re not working on the things that are actually going to make a difference in the business. And so what I discovered is I just those three things like our entire world. I mean, truly, you know, we could sit here and work through it together, but this is what we do in workshops with teams. We help them understand it’s just those three things. And if and if once you can see that it’s it’s like putting on a new lens of how you look at the world, it simplifies what feels so chaotic and so complex that’s coming at us. And so if we can think that way, if we can, if we can operate that, there are only three tasks. The next the next layer of time bosses, there’s just three tools. And each of those tasks, those type of tasks goes to a specific tool. And so it just was a simple, a simple way of looking at the world. And often what we do as knowledge workers is we spread our context everywhere. We’ve got calendars, we’ve got to do lists, we’ve got post-it notes, we’ve got whiteboards, we’ve got browser tabs. We’ve never closed. We’ve got all the things that we’re thinking about in our head and, and it just overwhelms us.

Andrew Hartman: It is a, it does not respect the way, you know, whether you think we were created or we evolved this way doesn’t matter. Our brain operates a very specific way, and it’s intended to be present to one thing at a time and make decisions about the thing that it’s being present to. That’s what it’s intended to do. But we end up treating it like a storage device jam, packing it with so many things, not giving it clarity in terms of how our tools work. And it puts us in this reactive kind of distressed state, very low on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, where we’re just trying to survive. We’re just trying to keep things moving. And it, you know, truly makes the room feel like it’s on fire all the time. And if the room’s on fire, I either need to put that fire out or I need to run. Those are my only options right there. No. Yeah. You can’t sit still. There’s no. I’m going to sit down, sit down and work on the most important thing for my business, because I feel this chaos in the back of my head, yanking me everywhere else. And so what we what we try to do with time Boston is just simplify it. And this is again, it wasn’t time, boss, at the time when I was solving it for myself.

Joshua Kornitsky: It was just the solution to your problem.

Andrew Hartman: I had identified that there were there were three tools that were critical.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, you.

Andrew Hartman: Have good.

Joshua Kornitsky: Uh, just you touched on something that, that, that hit a nerve for me as a, as a lifelong technologist, because I’ve been in it from a sales perspective, from an operational perspective, from a software development perspective, as a chief technology officer, all different roles, and I can tell you that that one of the traps you just kind of mentioned but kept moving is we are all looking for the, the golden application that will solve all of this. And, and don’t you know, AI is that application where I can just vomit all my problems and it’ll prioritize them for me with absolutely no contact, no context or understanding, but we, we have come to a place of dependency on technology that we think one more app, one more SaaS technology, one more AI tool, and this will all be solved for me, right? And in, in every morning I’ll wake up with a plan that’ll tell me exactly what I need to do. And it just that’s just not how life works.

Andrew Hartman: It’s not how life works. Yeah, they actually AI calendaring has seen tremendous abandonment because of what you said. It lacks context. And also there’s a there is an agency that we as humans love. I mean, our brains are just wired this way. It’s called the Ikea effect. I love the things that I create. It’s the reason why we all accepted crappy college furniture in our dorms because we built them. And so we felt this ownership in them. And so our priorities in our calendar, we, we value taking ownership and we value like literally burning the calories to decide what should I work on and what should I not work on? And we are much more likely to commit to it when we run that process. If we outsource that to an AI and it throws a bunch of stuff on our calendar, and at 8:00 we show up and we’re like, well, I don’t really want to do that. Or I’m like, these are actually the more important things we just set up, abandoning the plan and doing it our own way anyways.

Joshua Kornitsky: Which is a struggle for everybody to prioritize that day because it, again, it still speaks to what you identified. The three major things that occupy your day, right? Are not necessarily connected to your calendar.

Andrew Hartman: Now. And that’s what’s critical. You know, this this idea of time box where the name came from is this idea that I must have times where I am the boss, like I am making decisions to set my future self up to be successful. Excuse me. And then there are other times where I’m, where I’m the employee, where I simply need to make the plan happen. And so time boss, you know, we talked about the three tasks. I shared that there’s three tools and then there are two habits. There’s habits that drive it. There’s a weekly planning process where you literally assume that time, boss time, and you’re saying, what does my future self need to be successful? How much capacity do they have? What activities have all the things that could compete for my time? What activities are actually aligned with my goals and values? How do I ensure I’m I’m making room for buffer and time box. We call it whirlwind time. How do I, how do I literally budget for the crazy. The things I can’t predict? Sure. And then and then what do I do with all the things that don’t fit, that are, that are going to cause me stress, fear and anxiety all week long if I don’t deal with them, you know, how do I make the room stop feeling on fire? And so it’s this really powerful weekly planning process that forces you to deal with your finiteness as a human being and forces you to align your calendar to your goals and values.

Andrew Hartman: And again, like we were just sharing, what you’re doing is you are anchoring then your intention in those activities. These are not flippant things that got tossed on your calendar. Sure. These are the things that are aligned to your goals and values that represent the world that you want to exist, that now appear as calendar appointments on your calendar in the very same way as if the president of the United States was showing up to to meet with you on your calendar. That’s what we begin to treat them like because they are so critical. And I joke that, you know, you pick your president, it doesn’t have to be the current president, whatever president you want. It could be Abraham Lincoln, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. But it changes your orientation to that work. When you do the work to make decisions about what’s going to go on your calendar, it’s it’s an intention anchor that locks you in. And so it’s.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so I’m sorry. I get excited as I hear you explain the concepts and I. And I don’t mean to interrupt, I apologize. Um, how how do you hold yourself accountable to that planning? Because a planning meeting is a great planning meeting. And as an EOS implementer, I do them on a quarterly basis with my clients. But what I can’t do is force them to adhere to it, other than to show them the wisdom of doing so produces the outcomes they want.

Andrew Hartman: Right? Yeah. So there’s, there’s a bunch of strategies there. And I often joke that the final boss of getting what you want is you, you know, it’s we in our own way often. So a couple things, couple things happen when you operate this way. One is, so let’s say I run a weekly planning meeting that time last time, and I create a plan that’s realistic. It’s, you know, it’s not pretend. Hope is not a strategy. It’s actually grounded in reality. It’s very specific. I have a clear sense of what I’m trying to get done. I’ve. I’ve budgeted for the unknown tasks, meaning I’ve got reasonable buffer in my calendar knowing I can’t control all of my time. I’ve dealt with the items that don’t fit so. So I’d be either deferred them or delegated, or I’ve deleted them literally so that this next seven days I don’t have to worry about them. I’m safe. So a couple things happened there. One is this is where peace becomes the way that you operate, because now you feel like you actually have room to work. You don’t feel like a guillotine is hanging over the top of your neck. And when people feel that way, they’re much more likely to stay committed to their plan. They’re much more likely to divert if they feel like the room is on fire, that’s when we go sideways. So that’s one. Simply having a realistic plan increases the likelihood that we follow through. The other thing we do so we implement with teams. And one of the primary things we do is the last step of writing a weekly planning meeting is this commit step where I actually share my plan with my whoever I report into or my coworkers.

Joshua Kornitsky: There’s your accountability right there. Yeah.

Andrew Hartman: And there’s, there’s two things that happen when when you do that, Joshua. The first is you are twice as likely to, uh, do what you said you’re going to do if someone else, uh, if you’ve shared that plan with someone else and they’re likely to hold you accountable to it. So your team, your coworkers, you know, my wife is my business partner. I share my plan with her. We’re twice as likely to follow through if someone else is aware of our plan. The other thing that helps us to commit is often, especially when people first get started with this weekly planning meeting process, they’re not sure if they’re choosing the right things or, you know, up until now, their weekly planning is this fun little secret that they’ve kept themselves. When you show someone else, you get realistic feedback. You know, Kelly and my wife might say to me, Andrew, you have way too many priorities next week. That’s not realistic. Like you are, you are trying to pay pay with a credit card, not in cash. Right? Or she or she might say, hey, I saw you deferred. That one that we’ve talked about is actually our number one priority. Or it’s a rock in iOS that we know we need to be working on. Is there something that you’ve prioritized that maybe we need needed to prioritize so you can work on that critical item again. Whatever feedback I get, it increases my conviction to follow through because now I’m settling into, okay, this is a realistic plan. It’s aligned to the goals and values that I have. And another rational human being is now aware of my goals and values and is likely to ask me about it. And I and I care about how I show up to other people. So I’m much more likely to follow through.

Joshua Kornitsky: At a very high level. That makes very clear sense to me because it does as as you you intimated with regards to EOS, it, it aligns beautifully with what EOS, um, teaches our clients to understand about accountability. And as, as my mentor and boss used to say, learning how to separate the, the critical few from the meaningless many, often there is that challenge that in those early days of getting people okay with letting go of things that they believe they Need to get done, but they don’t actually have to get done. Absolutely. And when when you distill it down and ask people to prioritize based on here is how much time you have available, you know, you’ve got to make some difficult choices about where your priorities lay. And while I’m not sure that that aligns completely with your approach to things, what might what my question to you is, is, is who is is time? Boss, do you consider it a methodology? Do you consider it an educational path? All something else? How how do you describe the principles that you’re sharing?

Andrew Hartman: Yeah. So we describe it as, as a framework that a learnable framework that’s simple and repeatable. And so what we’re doing again, you know, I shared it, it’s three tasks, three tools, two habits, and it’s all focused on this idea of your high sustainable pace. What is the maximum impact you can have that you can sustain Operating from a place of peace, freedom and clarity, not stress, fear and anxiety. So we teach it. We help people set up those three simple tools. And to your point earlier, Joshua, it’s not new tools. It’s tools they already have. So if they’re in the outlook environment, it’s their outlook calendar. It’s a Microsoft to do list. Very simple, simple tools. If they’re in the Google environment, it’s Google Calendar, Google tasks, you know, we customize it based off the company to the team.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure.

Andrew Hartman: But again, it’s once you’re set up and running, it’s a set of habits. It’s an approach to time that allows them to get the results that they want with that experience of life that they actually want operating at their highest sustainable pace. That’s how we think about it.

Joshua Kornitsky: So is this for senior leaders? Is this for mid-level managers or is this for anybody in any organization?

Andrew Hartman: Yeah. So we primarily work with senior leaders and managers. That’s kind of manager level up. That’s who we work with. But really it’s for any knowledge worker, meaning I get paid for the decisions I make and the information I move right. And who has authority over their time? Meaning if I work a 40 hour work week or a 50 hour work week, however many hours I work, I have authority of around what I do with that time, and I’m responsible to get results with that time. Those individuals are the most stressed out individuals in the history of the world because their entire day is trade offs. The entire day is there might be something else I could do that would be greater value than the thing I’m doing right now. Or something can catch on fire and I have to evaluate real time. Should I keep working on what I’m working on, or do I work on this new thing that just walked through my door? Incredibly stressful. This is why knowledge workers burned out. Three out of four knowledge workers burn out once a year. It’s just we don’t have mental models for how to think about infinity. And all of us as knowledge workers are well said. Our to do lists are infinite. They are.

Joshua Kornitsky: And and ever refreshing.

Andrew Hartman: Ever refreshing. The average person has 121 items on their implicit or explicit to do list all the time. Doesn’t matter how many they check off. It doesn’t matter how hard you work today, your to do list will still be infinite at the end of the day today. And if you don’t have a way to think about that and approach that, burnout is almost automatic in that environment.

Joshua Kornitsky: Yeah, I mean, it, it’s it’s built in. Yeah, it really is. So when you work with teams of, of senior leaders or senior managers, is it an ongoing process? Um, you know, are you working with them to continue to build these skills? Because we both know that one and dones never a good recipe for someone to retain something.

Andrew Hartman: No, they don’t work. It’s called the forgetting curve. You, you walk out the door and forget 90% of what you learned in that session.

Joshua Kornitsky: I have a beautiful graph on that. I’ll send you.

Andrew Hartman: Yeah, it’s it’s so critical. So yeah, so we have three phases. We have an education phase, which is just training. You know, it’s in a half day. You learn the entire time loss framework, you get everything set up, get your tools set up and configured, and we walk through the habits together, the weekly planning meeting habit and the daily review meeting habit. And then so that’s the education phase. Uh, implementation phase is where we help people install those habits and we help them work through the roadblocks because all of us have roadblocks. We have lived, we’ve lived into our habits related to time, some of us for decades out of survival, uh, you know, either to survive or to thrive, maybe they’ve been really helpful for us or they’ve helped us be very successful, but they’ve still left us very overwhelmed. It just takes work to, to change those habits and shift those perspectives. So, uh, that’s an eight week process. We do it through group coaching where we’re helping people week over, week over week, implement one more piece of the framework and, and really just remove any roadblocks, roadblocks that prevent them from changing. And most people get it in four weeks. And then we’re, we’re really just solidifying on the back half of that engagement and then ongoing. So we have education implementation and then transformation. How do you, once you transform the way you work? Right. And it truly is transformational. So when people implement time boss, 95% experience more peace, less overwhelm, and then that piece becomes the engine of progress.

Andrew Hartman: They see a 43% jump in productivity on average. Perceptively, they feel like they get five hours back in their week, all while experiencing less stress. It truly it’s incredible because it’s just the way our brains were architected. So I’ll say one quick thing, Joshua, back to you. So the so once people get that from implementation, they are very interested in keeping it. And so the third phase of time box, we call it transformation really, really is all about how do I sustain these gains? And I, I, I call it weeding the garden. You we are just time boss as an organization is just outside accountability to come back in and, and help them maintain that way of operating and often actually tied to the a quarterly goal setting process, like in like an iOS 90 day meeting or a quarterly meeting where they, they’ve now received all this, these new priorities, these new things that they’re focused on, often in the form of rocks. How do I integrate that into what feels like an already full schedule? That’s where timing boss is just a really powerful methodology to help them treat their time like a cash budget that they need to thoughtfully allocate, you know, figure out what stays on their calendar, figure out what they need to delegate. And so we help companies do that ongoing and that transformation process.

Joshua Kornitsky: And is this coaching available to individuals or only at this time through through working through your, the organization that you’re a part of?

Andrew Hartman: Yeah. Great question. So we primarily work with teams that we do quarterly offer group coaching for individuals. So that’s a six week process. We call it master your week. The next one is launching here in July. July 13th.

Joshua Kornitsky: Somebody I know would like to get some information about that. But where would they get that information?

Andrew Hartman: So it’s available on our website, time.us. If you look under the individual section you’ll see master your week. And yeah. And if and if anyone’s curious about it, they should just grab time with someone from our team. We’d be happy to help them understand what might be a good fit. We have other offerings for individuals. Master week is the one that I. I suggest it’s the one where you’re working directly with me or another time boss coach, where it really gets into your particular world and your particular roadblocks and helps you take the next step.

Joshua Kornitsky: So as first, let me compliment you on, on accomplishing something through very hard work that demonstrates the simplicity, uh, the value of simplicity at its highest level. Because you said that there are three principles, three tools and two habits. Is that it? Yeah, yeah. Three tasks, three.

Andrew Hartman: Tasks three. Three tasks that connect to three. Tools that are run by two habits.

Joshua Kornitsky: It doesn’t get too much simpler than that. And, and I know from my perspective that the simpler we make things, the easier they are to adopt. And, and while I’m sure that discipline is involved to get them to stick. Just like any change in, in habits, it seems to me like you’re not asking for a 37 step process spread across 19 months, because those are the things that often fail just under their own weight.

Andrew Hartman: Right? Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, can you share any of the successes that you’ve experienced since time boss has come into, into being? Um, just maybe a story or two of, of folks that, that you’ve seen it make a big difference for yourself, obviously included.

Andrew Hartman: Yeah. I mean, for me, it’s transformational. You know, I, I am about to go on a week long fishing trip with my son. I spent a week with my daughter in an RV two months ago for her final senior projects, and all while running this growing business that I’m passionate and I believe in. And it wasn’t because there wasn’t things to do. There were 100% were. You know, I operate with an infinite to do list even now because sure, I’m a business owner and I’m a trainer and coach and all these things, and I it allows me to continue to get incredible results, contribute at a level that I want to contribute and get the life that I want, not through any magic. It’s just because it’s a simple system that I trust that frees me up to be fully present to whatever’s in front of me. That’s the gift. So, you know, I certainly I experienced the benefit ongoing. I eat my own dog food every single day, every single week. So I’m a big believer, uh, you know, in terms of individuals, we’ve had, um, we’ve had a software team that installed Time Boss. They saw a 100% jump in their productivity over the course of eight weeks.

Joshua Kornitsky: 100%.

Andrew Hartman: 100%. It was a massive wow. Perceptively, they felt like they got ten hours back a week. Their CEO, their senior leader, felt like he got 20 hours back in his week simply from eliminating noise that he was allowing to persist where he just had not pressed through to figure out, how do I align my calendar to my goals and values? How do I deal with the things that don’t fit? He just they just did the work. And so again, just incredibly compelling results. We’ve seen, um, we’ve seen teams that were on the verge of burnout, tremendous overwhelm come back in their reviews and say, I finally got my nights and weekends back. Wow. Wow. While maintaining or increasing their results. And again, it’s not it’s not magic at a, at a very basic level, it’s what I said earlier. We treat our brain like a storage device and we. And we tolerate so much stress, we don’t realize that stress is a signal. Distress in particular. Distress is a signal that something is sideways and something is off, that we’ve exceeded our capacity to hold the things in front of us. And so if we simply honor the way that our brain is architected and build systems that we trust to hold the items that help us represent in the very same way that a cash budget helps us represent that we have enough money, right? A system that we trust represents that we have enough time. And when we have enough time, a different person shows up. And I feel so thrilled to give that to individual leaders and teams day after day, week after week, with time boss.

Joshua Kornitsky: And, and as someone who often my clients, you know, EOS is a journey. And when, when a client embarks on that journey, like weight loss, like weight lifting, there are not immediate evident results.

Andrew Hartman: That’s right.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, because you need time for, for the habits to make a change. Right. But you said something really important. There is no magic here. You just have to kind of stay the course for a bit. And it does sound like compared to something like iOS, which, which is over its full, um, implementation can take up to two years. It depends on the team. It sounds like working with Time Boss has a pretty fast acceleration arc because the I, I presume it’s pretty self-evident once you get started and with your support and coaching to keep them on track. It it’s got to make life easier and, and, uh, without splitting, uh, concepts. I’m just curious because I immediately think of our Ides process, identify, discuss and solve and so often my clients get lost in the prioritization, right? Um, and that going back to what my, my mentor always said, that critical few versus meaningless many without asking you to give away the House. I presume there are part of what you’re going to teach them is to understand what matters versus what can wait or be put off or not dealt with.

Andrew Hartman: Correct. Yeah, yeah. So that time, lost time is so critical. You know, that weekly planning meeting I shared, I often tell knowledge workers, it’s going to be the hardest hour of your week because it’s the hour where you deal with your finiteness. You, you have to deal with all the trade offs. It is a it is a funnel that drives you through your limited capacity and makes you make powerful decisions about what you say yes to and what you say no to. And so, you know, when an individual leader does this, it can be more challenging when when you do this as a team, it is so powerful because a couple forces are at play. One is that we all want to win together. And so particularly when you have a leader with leaders that report into that leader where they can do a little bit of a round robin around like, hey, I’m feeling pressure. Like, you know, I’m maxed out on my time, but I’ve got these other priorities over here. How should I navigate that for a senior leader to come in and say yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, and help someone get clarity? What they’ve done is they have now freed that person up to focus. They have helped them see there is enough time this week for the critical items, and we’re going to safely defer these for a week, or we’re going to move these from you over to Sarah over there, who actually has some capacity this week, and she can help you with those.

Joshua Kornitsky: The things that I missed was that that planning is done collectively. That’s a game changer.

Andrew Hartman: Uh, so it, it depends on the organization. So part of our work is figuring out what is the right clustering for this. Right. And so I mean, incredibly powerful, you know, let’s say you and I, Joshua, were going to start a workout program and, and I’m going to do it on my own and show up at 6 a.m. That’s option one. Or I’m going to do it with you at 6 a.m. that’s option two. I am so much more likely to follow through on option two. Now, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to be doing the same sets together, doing everything together, but we’re going to be at the gym at the same time. And the, the fact that we are aware that each other at the gym at the same time increases the likelihood that I show up. Now, I might have a moment when I’m in the gym where I need you to spot me, or you need help with something, and then we can. And then we’re right there to help each other. And that’s how time based planning can work. Let’s all show up. Let’s plan this thing out. Oh, I hit friction. I’m out of capacity. Anyone have four hours? I need I need help with this report, or I need to think through this, or someone needs to work with this client on this particular issue. Oh, yeah, I’ve got time. Let me help you with that. Because again, especially in healthy environments where we want to win together, my guess is in those environments like you’re in, typically those teams want to win together and it’s almost.

Joshua Kornitsky: In every successful deployment. Absolutely. But the, the light that that you are inadvertently shining that I picked up on. And it’s because I see this so often in in my past career, as well as with my clients, where oftentimes you have that, that key individual, the, the carrier of the water, the individual who for whom everybody knows, oh, just go ask this person because they’ll take care of it. And that person is, is the red. They have past red line months ago, right? They are overstressed, they are overworked, they are overburdened, but they don’t know how to say no. And there’s no awareness because six different people are asking for 20 minutes of time when they only have 20 minutes available.

Andrew Hartman: Right?

Joshua Kornitsky: So I imagine that that this process very much helps alleviate the stress for them, because others become aware of the fact that that you simply cannot continue to put things in the bag. The bag is full.

Andrew Hartman: Yeah, it’s we call it time empathy. I’m just I’ve become very aware that Joshua has priorities just like me. And, and there’s only so much time. And so we’re, we’re much more likely a framework or a way that we talk about this with teams is asking the question, how do I get this need met with the least disruption possible? And when you begin to operate with the framework as a team, you know, one is we are all aligning our calendars every single week to our goals and values. So the most important work is going to get done. The other is we are all thoughtfully planning in that whirlwind time or that buffer time into our calendar. So I know if I need Joshua, I know Joshua has allocated time to be available for urgent and important requests that are going to come in. So it’s, it’s I’m not just going to interrupt Joshua. I’m going to say, hey, Joshua, what time do they work for us to connect for 20 minutes? I have a thing I need to chat about. And then you have the opportunity to tell me, hey, my whirlwind time is at three. Or hey, I’m not available today. Tomorrow at 2 p.m., I’ll have my whirlwind time. I’d be happy to connect with you then. But again, it creates this very simple ways of operating together as a team where we are aligning our calendars to the most important work, and we’re making sure that everyone’s needs get met.

Joshua Kornitsky: I, I can’t tell you how exciting this is to hear about and to know that time boss is available because I, I definitely know some folks that can benefit from it. Um, last question. And unless there’s any point that we didn’t want to that we didn’t hit on that you want to touch on. Um, but if, if you were speaking today to, to anybody that, that’s hearing all of this who’s like, yes, this is me, this is me. Uh, what’s some advice you can give them other than obviously investigating time boss.us? Uh, and again, we’ll share that link in any other links that you want to share. And I know you do some public speaking. We’ll put your LinkedIn up so that people know how to get in touch. Um, but what, what guidance or advice would you offer to somebody who’s, who’s got the, the, the needle buried right now?

Andrew Hartman: Yeah. I think if step one, if for someone listening where they like this and they just want to get started, I think the number one thing that people can do to start taking back control of their time is to separate out reactive time and focus time. And for a lot of us, we just treat all day as reactive. You know, we show up before our feet hit the floor in the morning, we’re checking our email, checking our teams, and we’re essentially reacting. We’re looking for what are the fires out there that I may need to handle or who needs me and my encouragement to you if you’re listening, just to start, I would say give your first hour of the day to the hardest thing on your to do list before you look at your email, before you look at teams, maybe even before you go to the office, go to Starbucks instead of going into the office or wherever you choose to work, but separate out some focused time where you can make a really hard thing happen, and then the rest of the day, open yourself up to the crazy, but what you need to see is you actually do have some authority over your time. It’s not completely out of your control. You can take back control of your time, and your brain needs that freedom to focus. It needs permission to sit still and look at one thing at a time and attack it. Knowing the rest of your day, you’re going to be reactive, but as if you want to begin to experience what it’s like to experience a little bit more peace in your work day, I would encourage you to just reclaim one hour first thing in the morning, and then let the rest of your day run the way it is now, and just see what happens with that hour. And I think you might see a glimmer of what might be possible if you took full control of your time and truly became that time boss in your world.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s great advice and I have to tell you, so I’ll hit you with all the questions. I interrupted you, I threw new concepts at you. You have proven that you can absolutely run your life from a place of peace because you didn’t get shaken one time. So my compliments to you, Andrew. It’s been a true pleasure. Um, my guest today is Andrew Hartman. He’s the founder of Time Boss. He’s a speaker, a coach, and soon to be author. And I can’t wait to read that book. And today, he demonstrated how all of his learning and experience has really helped him come to a place where he and his team can teach others to lead from a place of peace, rather than a place of pressure. It’s been a genuine pleasure. Thank you. Andrew.

Andrew Hartman: Awesome. Thanks so much, Joshua. Great to be with you. I really appreciate it.

Joshua Kornitsky: My pleasure. My name is Joshua Kornitsky. I am a professional implementer of the entrepreneurial operating system and your host here on High Velocity Radio. Thank you for joining us. We’ll see you next time.