How to Prioritize Your Time as CEO

How to Prioritize Your Time as CEO

By: Jeff Tennyson

They often say, “It’s lonely at the top,” but I don’t agree with that. 

Being a CEO is incredibly social. You’re constantly invited to events, speaking engagements, and interviews. Your team always has questions they need answered. Everyone wants to be around you and wants a piece of your time.

What’s lonely is the decision-making process, and how to prioritize that time.

Time management—the practice of optimizing your workday to be more productive—is one of the hardest parts of a CEO’s role because it’s never done. You’re juggling high-stakes and high-pressure tasks all the time, from every part of the company.

That’s probably why it’s one of the biggest complaints we hear from our clients: There isn’t enough time to do all of the tasks they want to get done in a day.

Your calendar is the key to your productivity

You’ll always have competing priorities as a CEO. What you need is a system to manage them.

There isn’t one be-all, end-all system that works for everyone. Personally, I’ve tried many different ways to organize my calendar over the years, and the only thing that truly works for me is hiring an incredible executive assistant and going old-school with a handwritten book.

If you’re struggling to manage your time, start with your calendar. It’s the best way to check yourself when you think you’re focusing on what matters—there’s nothing more humbling than looking at the calendar and realizing, wow, your day gets eaten by distractions.

It happens to all of us—myself included. In this post, we’ll talk through how to find the system that works for you.

1. You’re the boss of your emails

If you don’t manage your asynchronous communication, it will manage you.

I know that if I’m not careful, I can accidentally spend an hour or two sorting through emails each day—and most of the time, I’m just deleting them. That’s a total waste of my energy and doesn’t help my team. Instead:

Remove yourself from emails or Slack threads that can be handled by your team or your assistant.

Create filtering rules for incoming messages so that the important stuff makes it to your inbox and the other items can hang out until you’re ready to read them.

Let your team know that you don’t need to be cc’d on every email thread. If something needs your direct decision, then they can include you.

As CEO, you’re constantly communicating with your team. It’s important to set expectations with them on how (and where) to reach you. For example, I told my leadership team at Lima Capital that anytime they cc me, that I take that as meant for information only and I will not respond. If they need a response, then they have to let me know directly or put me above the cc line.

2. Focus on what matters

As CEO, you should be focusing on the key priorities that are going to drive results for the upcoming year to three years. Are the things you’re doing today going to make an impact on the key initiatives you have to accomplish to make those goals happen?

You can’t make progress if you don’t know where you’re going. That’s why at CEO Coaching International, we recommend making HOTS: Huge Outrageous Targets, each year. Without these to guide you, you’ll end up playing whack-a-mole with your priorities. For your HOTs:

Choose one that feels difficult but is possible to achieve. Just enough to light a fire under your team so you can reach higher.

Then, break that goal down into smaller sections. The bigger the goal, the more people that will be involved. Note each team and delineate clear responsibilities for each KPI that adds up to the final outcome. (For example, marketing leads, sales revenue, and reduced support tickets.)

And make a plan to hit those numbers from the bottom up.

It’s your job to ensure the environment of your business allows for those activities to get done by your team. If you’re not focused on the biggest initiatives, you should be working to make sure other people can get them done.

3. Find your strengths

Every CEO has aspects of the role where they can drop into flow—and blind spots. The number one question you should ask yourself is, ‘What am I best at? Where can I add the most value to my business team?’ When you look at your calendar, also look to see where you’re spending time outside of those areas. What can you do instead with those items taking time away from being the best you can be?

I am a big fan of Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time framework—prioritizing not just what moves the needle, but what you personally are best at with those goals. Think about what’s on your calendar from the past month. Rank it from 1-3 based on what activities you’re good at and whether or not they help you achieve your goals.

1s should stay on your calendar.

2s should be evaluated with your leadership team or a coach. Do you need to be the one doing them?

Any 3s should be delegated or dismissed.

I see a lot of CEOs wasting time jumping in, doing individual contributor work, or work of another leader, because they can. You may have gotten your start as a software engineer, but you shouldn’t be anywhere near that code. Or if you grew up in the sales organization, you may be tempted to ride-along a few sales calls. Resist that temptation—your job as CEO is to think BIGGER.

Take back your calendar with CEO Coaching International

Part of why I love coaching at CEO Coaching International is that I was in my clients’ shoes not too long ago—in fact, I hired Mark and his team as my own coach. I know exactly what it’s like to feel like finding time to get things done is what’s keeping you from winning BIG.

At CEO Coaching International, we’re all about coaching extraordinary growth. We’re here to create leverage by building a growth mindset across the entire company, often coaching the entire management suite to keep them aligned, accountable, and future-focused.

If any of these struggles sound familiar to you, take a read through our time management eBook, 10 Steps to Master CEO Time Management, which you can download here. I’d be happy to chat with your team about these techniques and more, bringing my decades of executive experience to help you build systems, inspire your teams, and drive results. Schedule a call >

About CEO Coaching International

CEO Coaching International works with CEOs and their leadership teams to achieve extraordinary results quarter after quarter, year after year. Known globally for its success in coaching growth-focused entrepreneurs to meaningful exits, the firm has coached more than 1,500+ CEOs and entrepreneurs across 100+ industries and 60 countries. Its coaches—former CEOs, presidents, and executives—have led businesses ranging from startups to over $10 billion, driving double-digit sales and profit growth, many culminating in eight, nine, or ten-figure exits.

Companies that have worked with CEO Coaching International for two years or more have achieved an average revenue CAGR of 25.9%, nearly 3X the U.S. average, and an average EBITDA CAGR of 39.2%, more than 4X the national benchmark.

Discover how coaching can transform your leadership journey at ceocoachinginternational.com.

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