Time management for leaders is about control rather than efficiency. Reaction mode is what eats a week: arriving, asking what has to happen now, and moving to the next thing without preparing or reflecting. The fix is auditing where the hours actually go, then deciding in advance what gets them.
I have been running my own schedule for years now. I set the times I want to do things. I create the space to make calls and to let people call me. I love it, and I never knew how good it would be to control how and where I spend my time.
I still let it get away from me. I squeeze a call in between two calls. I book back-to-back client calls. I schedule something over lunch with Ms. Suzanne. Then I wonder why my sleep is bad, why I feel anxious about everything getting done, and why I keep forgetting things.
It is because I lost control and fell back into reaction mode. Here is how I climb back out, and the one tool that does most of the work.
What does reaction mode actually cost you?
It costs you the ability to tell whether the day mattered.
When I am in reaction mode, that is all I am doing. Reacting. Not anticipating, not preparing. The problem is that reaction mode puts you half a step from fight or flight, because you show up and go.
I see it in myself and I see it in clients. They are not in control of their time, so they arrive and ask what do I have to do now. No preparation, no setup. Arrive and go.
At the end of the day you are exhausted and you cannot remember a thing you did. You got a lot done. Whether you got the things done that mattered, you have no idea, because you jumped from one meeting to the next call to the next action with nothing in between.
Preparation and reflection are the two things reaction mode deletes first, and they are the two that decide whether the other eight hours were worth anything.
Who decides what is important?
You do, and most of the anxiety comes from forgetting that.
There is always a long list as a business owner, entrepreneur, friend, father and husband. If I do everything I say I want to do plus everything I need to do, there is not enough time in the day. The irony is that the more I do, the more there is to do.
That thing you said you wanted to build. The quick garage project that should take an hour. The follow-up with the guy from last week who wanted more information. The lunch date with Ms. Suzanne. The books I am reading. The more I think about them, the more anxious I get. The more anxious I get, the more frustrated I get, and the less I enjoy what I am actually doing.
Until I decide, no, that is enough. I will choose what is done, how it is done, and when it is done.
Yes, there are deadlines and there are experts who say to follow up within a certain window, and there are people who tell you to do the important thing first. The truth is that I decide what is important at the time I do it. I can tell myself a story that one thing outranks another, and I am still the one deciding. If I choose to chisel a piece of log into an ashtray instead of reading a business book or making a phone call, then I am doing what is important to me.
There are external consequences and rewards for what we choose. Neither means anything unless you decide it does. If I miss a deadline, internal or external, I am choosing the consequences of that miss. If I am reasonable with myself about what I expect, I cannot get frustrated about something I have not done.
How do you find out where your time actually goes?
Run the analysis instead of guessing, because your memory of the week is not evidence.
There is a tool I learned on staff called manpower analysis, and I had the frustrating job of taking part in several of them at NORTHCOM and SOCEUR. It frustrated all of us because it meant tracking time the way a lawyer tracks billable hours, in six-minute increments. Coffee, project one, project two, checking email, all of it.
The purpose was to verify that the headquarters had the manning to do its assigned missions. That data went to the Joint Chiefs, who took it to Congress to argue for more people. It was not busywork.
I teach it to clients now and I run it on myself as an azimuth check. As an entrepreneur I drift off the main effort if I am not checking.
- Log a week in six-minute blocks. Everything. Coffee, email, the call that ran long, the thing you did instead of the thing you planned.
- Total it by activity. Not by category, by actual activity.
- Compare the total to what it felt like. This is the whole point.
- Ask why the gap exists. If a project feels like twenty hours and the log says five, you have learned something real: you do not like doing it. That is why it occupies so much space.
- Decide whether you should be doing it at all, or whether it goes to someone on your team. Usually it goes.
- Look at next week's commitments with the same eyes before it starts.
- Repeat it a couple of times a year, not weekly. This is a diagnostic, not a habit.
My calendar does not lie. When I see that an activity is three hours a week, I have to sit with why it feels like it is eating my life. Is it something I have to do? Is it something I said I wanted to do? That second question catches more than the first.
If the honest answer is that someone else should own it, that is a handoff problem, and how to delegate is the other half of this page.
Why do leaders chase rabbits?
Because the thing that makes someone an entrepreneur is the same thing that wrecks their week.
I read somewhere that the biggest obstacle to an entrepreneur's success is being an entrepreneur, and I can vouch for it. A real entrepreneur sees a problem or an idea and wants to dive in and fix it or learn more. On the 10x Your Team podcast we call these rabbit holes, from the old line that if you chase two rabbits you catch neither.
If rabbits are not your thing, call it shiny object syndrome. Chasing the latest thing rather than the greatest thing. If you get pulled off course every time you read a headline about a new piece of kit or a new piece of software, you are being pulled away from what the business actually needs.
So how do you know what the important thing is? You put in the time to build a plan. A plan is the reference for how you spend your day and how your team spends theirs. It is the only way to hold yourself accountable for doing what you said you would do, and you cannot do what you said you would do if you never established what that was.
Stop chasing rabbits all over the yard. Pick one and go after it.
How do you choose between what needs doing and what matters?
By checking which one is your fuel and which one is a chore that came with the territory.
My to-do list and my honey-do list are infinite. I get this overwhelming urge to shut everything down and focus on them. Stop meeting people, cancel the calls, skip the family visit, put it all on hold until the list is clear. I cannot do that, and more to the point I do not want to, because the people in my life matter more than tasks hanging on a list.
Is it more important to thatch and mulch the pine needles in my yard than to take my grandsons to a truck show? That one is easy. Here is a harder one.
I take three to seven introductory calls most weeks. New people who might be a fit for Tribe and Purpose, or who are just worth knowing. Should I stop those to get five hours back? Five hours would clear the pine needles. These people are not a direct revenue stream, and the probability that any one of them becomes one sits around twenty five percent. Seems like a fair trade.
It is not, and here is why. Clearing the pine needles does not solve the infinite list, because the list is infinite. I could stop growing the business altogether and just sustain what we have, and have all the time I want for the list. That does not work either, because I love what I do and I am not passionate about pine needle removal.
The yard will look nicer and be less prone to fire. That is a chore of owning a home in the trees. My fuel is creating a legacy of leaders. I cannot let a long list of things that need doing stop me from pursuing my purpose.
The hard choice is staying focused on what is important rather than what needs to be done. If you are not clear which is which, that is a purpose question before it is a calendar question, and it is covered in purpose driven leadership.
Why does this keep happening even when you know better?
Because it is instinct, and instinct does not care what you know.
Time management comes up so often in my own head that I feel like I should have solved it. I cannot, because it is human nature. We all want to conserve energy by taking the easy path. That is a survival instinct, and because we want the easy path we are easily pulled off the hard one.
The irony is that chasing what might be easier usually takes longer. I have taken those shortcuts in the woods and in life, and I still chase the next assurance that something will get me there faster. There is always a chance it will work. There is also a chance a tree falls on me, and that does not stop me walking in the woods.
Time gone is gone forever. I know it, I talk about it, I teach it, and human nature still comes back around and I hear myself say sure, I will set up a call. Sure, I will try your gadget. Then I look at my goals for the week and wonder whether they will ever happen.
Expect the pull. Build the schedule assuming you will feel it, rather than assuming you will out-discipline it.
One more thing about Mondays
Some people dread Mondays. Some of them live with a Scary Sunday, dreading the day so much that they ruin the day before it.
If Monday is a day you dread every week, look at what you are allowing into your life that produces the dread. If you get through Monday, is Tuesday better? If Tuesday is not, what does Wednesday hold? There is a pattern, and it has nothing to do with Monday.
Monday is no different from Wednesday or Saturday. It ends in a Y. You decide what the day is about. No Roman is to blame for the day being dreary. Stop blaming your choices on a calendar.
Where to start
Log one week in six-minute blocks. It is tedious and it will change what you do in the second week.
Then pick the single activity with the biggest gap between how long it takes and how long it feels, and decide whether you own it or someone else does.
The CEO Jumpstart is the fastest version of this work if you want it done in a compressed window with someone across the table, and the Green Beret Leadership Program builds it into the leaders under you so their weeks stop landing on your calendar.
Do this work with other men doing it too
The Steel Men Tribe is a brotherhood of men who hold each other to the standard they set for themselves.
See the Steel Men TribeFrequently asked questions
What is reaction mode and why does it hurt a leader?
Reaction mode means arriving, asking what has to happen now, and moving to the next thing with no preparation and no reflection. It puts you half a step from fight or flight. At the end of the day you are exhausted and cannot say whether any of it mattered, because preparation and reflection are the first two things it deletes.
How do you find out where your time is actually going?
Log a week in six-minute blocks, total it by activity, then compare the totals to how long each one felt. The gap is the useful part. A project that feels like twenty hours and logs five is usually one you do not like doing, which is a different problem from a time problem.
How does a leader decide what is important?
You decide, and remembering that removes most of the anxiety. There are external consequences to any choice, and none of them mean anything until you decide they do. If you are reasonable about what you expect of yourself, missing something you chose to miss stops being a crisis.
What is shiny object syndrome and how do you stop it?
It is chasing the latest thing rather than the greatest thing, and it is the flip side of the curiosity that makes someone an entrepreneur. The only reliable defense is a written plan that says how you and your team spend the day, because you cannot hold yourself to what you never defined.
How do you choose between what needs doing and what matters?
Ask which one is your fuel and which one is a chore that came with the territory. Clearing the chores never empties the list, because the list is infinite. The hard choice is staying on what is important rather than what is merely outstanding.