There is one commodity every executive has exactly the same amount of—and never enough of. Time. Nothing is more precious, and nothing is in shorter supply. You can hire more people. Raise more capital. Add technology. Expand capacity. Find new customers. But you cannot create more hours in a day. There are only so many things you can accomplish, and ultimately, how you spend your time is a choice.
That may sound obvious. But for many C-suite leaders, it is one of the hardest choices to make. We know there are things only we can do. Set the strategy. Make the critical decisions. Build relationships that matter. Serve as the face of the company. Make the big deal. Develop the leaders who will carry the business forward. And yet, our days are filled with things other people need from us—customers, employees, suppliers, partners, boards and teams. There is always another question to answer, another problem to solve, another meeting to attend, another fire to put out. So we stay busy. And being busy can feel incredibly productive. But busy and productive are not the same thing.
The Difference Between Busy and Purposeful
Think about the difference between work that is structured around today’s output and the work of an executive responsible for tomorrow’s business. A warehouse employee may spend the day filling orders. A delivery driver may have a route and a certain number of packages to deliver. Both may encounter problems that require judgment and creative thinking—a missing product, a road closure, an incorrect address. Their work matters. But generally, the future of the company does not hinge on whether that particular person spent Tuesday solving a problem that could have been avoided or whether they delivered 42 packages instead of 40. For a CEO or other senior leader, it can be very different.
The decisions you make today can affect the company for years. The leader you develop—or fail to develop—can change the trajectory of the organization. The strategic opportunity you recognize—or overlook—can determine the next stage of growth. The customer relationship you personally cultivate can open a new market. The decision to address a systemic problem rather than repeatedly solve its symptoms can eliminate years of frustration. That is the difference between being busy and being purposeful. Busy work solves what is in front of you. Purposeful work improves what is ahead of you.
The Business Gravity of Time
In my work with business leaders, I often talk about business gravity—the things that hold a company back from moving toward its future and reaching new levels of performance and revenue. There are many forms of business gravity: success that breeds status quo thinking, outdated processes, the wrong people in key roles, unclear priorities, insufficient accountability, ineffective communication and decisions that are continually deferred. But one of the biggest is something executives often have more control over than they realize: Time.
Most executives will tell you that time management is one of their biggest challenges. They know they should spend more time working on the business and less time working in it. They may even set goals around it. And then the day happens.
The urgent customer issue wins.
The employee needs an answer.
The meeting runs long.
The report lands in the inbox.
A problem that should have been delegated gets escalated.
And suddenly the time you intended to spend thinking about strategy, developing your leadership team or solving a systemic issue has disappeared. The result is a painful tradeoff: success today at the expense of building the business for lasting success tomorrow. What if half a day could change the equation?
Consider what happens when you invest just half a day a month in becoming a better leader and building a stronger business. If you work 50 hours a week, that half-day represents less than 3% of your working time. Less than 3%. And what could that time accomplish? You could step outside the day-to-day and seek perspective on a critical decision. You could examine data you haven’t had time to really understand. You could work on your communication and leadership style. You could think about your culture. You could clarify priorities and expectations. You could challenge assumptions. You could learn from someone who has already faced the problem you’re facing. You could spend time thinking rather than reacting. Would you trade less than 3% of your time for decisions and leadership that improve the other 97%? I certainly would. So why don’t more executives do it? Because time spent on the future rarely screams the loudest today.
The Time Dilemma
There is a psychological trap in executive leadership: we tend to allocate our time according to what the day demands rather than what the business needs. Those are not always the same thing. The day demands a response to the customer. The business needs a strategy that prevents the same issue from happening again. The day demands that you solve an employee’s problem. The business needs leaders who can solve those problems without you. The day demands another meeting. The business needs you to determine whether that meeting should exist at all. The day demands an answer. The business may need you to ask a better question. This is where leaders can begin to close the time gap.
1. Establish clear priorities
You cannot protect time for what you have not decided is important. Be specific about the things that deserve your time—not simply a general list of things you hope to get around to. What decisions require you? What strategic priorities will move the business forward? What relationships matter most? What leadership capabilities need to be strengthened? What problems need to be solved permanently rather than repeatedly managed? Decide ahead of time. Otherwise, the urgent will consistently defeat the important.
2. Block the time—and guard it
If something matters, put it on the calendar. Then treat that time as if it matters. We often allow strategic thinking, leadership development or personal reflection to be the first things sacrificed when the calendar gets crowded because they don’t have an immediate deadline. Don’t. Protect that time the same way you would protect an important customer meeting. And don’t confuse having the time blocked with actually using it well. The purpose is not simply to create empty space. The purpose is to use that space purposefully.
3. Decide what you will stop doing—or delegate
This may be the hardest one. We tell ourselves, “I can’t delegate that.” I need to be in that meeting. I need to read that report. I need to be involved in that decision. But we prove ourselves wrong when circumstances force us to.
Years ago, before remote work and Zoom were part of everyday business, my daughter was hospitalized for several weeks. I went into the office each day, picked up my mail and handled the work I truly needed to handle—but I skipped a lot of meetings. I sent my thoughts when necessary and read the results afterward. And I learned a tremendous lesson: I had been attending a lot of meetings I didn’t need to attend. That experience changed the way I thought about meetings. It also made me question other parts of my work. How many reports do you read that never lead to an action? How many meetings could someone else attend? How many decisions are being escalated to you simply because everyone is accustomed to asking you? How much of your day is spent doing things that are necessary but could be made simpler?
And today, we have another powerful tool: AI. Tools such as ChatGPT can help leaders summarize information, organize thinking, analyze data, draft communications, research questions, generate alternatives and turn hours of administrative work into minutes. The point isn’t to replace judgment. In fact, it is the opposite. AI can help you spend less time on the work that consumes your attention so you can spend more time on the work that requires your judgment. The executive’s greatest value isn’t in doing everything. It is in making the decisions, creating the clarity and building the environment that allows everyone else to do their best work.
4. Audit your time
Every once in a while, compare the time you actually spent with the time you intended to spend. Don’t judge it. Learn from it. Where did your time go? What did you plan to accomplish? What actually happened? Why? Were you pulled into something legitimately important—or simply something urgent? Did someone need you, or have they become accustomed to having you? Did you spend time on a problem that should have been solved at the source? Did you allow something important to be pushed aside because it didn’t have a deadline? Your calendar tells a story. Make sure it is telling the story of the leader—and the business—you intend to build.
5. Hold yourself accountable for the whole picture
Finally, remember that leadership isn’t confined to the office. A strong business requires a strong leader, and a strong leader has more than one dimension. Health. Relationships. Family. Business. Mind. Body. Soul. They all affect one another. You cannot indefinitely sacrifice everything outside of work and expect it not to eventually affect the quality of your decisions inside of work. Being purposeful means being intentional about the whole life you are building—not simply the company.
You are not the most important person in the organization One of the biggest shifts a leader can make is recognizing that your job is not to be the person who solves the most problems. Your job is to make the organization better at solving problems. Your job is to create clear strategy and priorities so people know where they are going. Your job is to give people the tools, information and resources they need to do their jobs well. Your job is to develop leaders who can make good decisions without waiting for you. Your job is to create a culture where people are encouraged to think, challenge, innovate and add value—not simply execute instructions. In other words, your job is to create leverage. And that brings us back to a principle I have written about before: The quality of your business is only as good as the quality of your decisions. The quality of your decisions is influenced by the quality of your thinking. And the quality of your thinking requires something no executive can buy, borrow or create more of: time.
So perhaps the question isn’t, “How can I get more done?” Perhaps it is: “What deserves my time?” What only I can do? What will move the business forward rather than simply keep it moving? What am I doing because it is truly important—and what am I doing because the day asked me to? And what could I stop doing so I can spend more time creating the future instead of managing the present? Because the goal isn’t to become better at being busy. The goal is to become more purposeful with the time you have. You have the same 24 hours as every other leader. The difference is what you choose to do with them.
This post was written by Margaret Reynolds (with AI assist)
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