It is true that when you are the CEO of a company, you have to dedicate a lot of time to many projects, many meetings, many events that can cause your time management to be very saturated. It is necessary that the time management of a business leader is very well managed. That is why we will give you some tips that you can follow to have a better management of your time.

Let’s not forget that the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) is the person who has more responsibility over a company, this means that, thanks to his decision making and the good management he has over a company, this will be more or less successful.

In a more informal way, the CEO is the boss of the bosses, therefore, we must clarify that a CEO does not work alone, usually working together with the Operations, Marketing, Finance, etc.. Therefore, the assignment of these positions should be very well thought out, since this can help you save time, because, although you have people who are responsible for each area of the company, if they have a poor management of their work, they will have to intervene a lot in them, causing your valuable time to be reduced even more than it normally is for the CEO of a company.

That said, we will now present you with some tips to better optimize your time:

1. 1. Prioritize your meeting time, or don’t even attend meetings that are not so important.

When you are the CEO of a company, it is normal that you have many meetings scheduled, so many that sometimes you don’t even know what the meeting you are about to attend is about.

Therefore, a vital tip to better optimize your time is to decide a time limit per meeting, obviously we know that there will be meetings that will need more time to present cases, ideas, debates, etc. But, when we talk about those routine meetings, having the time calculated is fundamental so that you can better organize your time.

For example, did you know that the founder of Virgin Group, Richard Branson, only spends between 5 and 10 minutes per meeting? Well, this is a fact, the entrepreneur states that a lot of time is wasted in meetings, because people get distracted and diverted from the topic, causing the meeting time to extend and wasting valuable time of the day. For this reason, Richard Branson affirms that it is rare for a meeting where the points are clearly stated on a particular topic to last more than 10 minutes.

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2. 2. Hire a personal assistant

Always, when we have a lot of responsibilities, scheduling interviews, answering emails, calls, or scheduling different events that have to do with the company, it can be a bit overwhelming, since you don’t have that much time to do all these activities.

Now, by having a personal assistant to take care of doing all these jobs, your time will be incredibly better optimized. It is rare that the great CEOs of the world do not have personal assistants, as this is vital for good time management.

A personal assistant also frees your mind from tasks, so you can perform better in your other activities. You also have the possibility to choose the working methodology of your assistant, as it can be face-to-face or virtual, we recommend you to study the pros and cons of each modality for a personal assistant so you can choose the option that best suits you.

3. 3. Plan your day

A big mistake that some people who don’t have a lot of time make is not planning their day. When you have so many responsibilities, the worst thing you can do is to plan your day as events occur. You need to plan your entire day, not only in the work environment, but also in the personal one, whether it is planning the time you wake up, the amount of time you sleep, the time you dedicate to breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc., the time it takes you to perform the most important activities at work, and everything that takes up time in your day.

We know that planning a day and having it happen 100% as planned is very difficult, however, by having your day planned, you will know which are the most important activities you will have to do, and if an unplanned event occurs, you will be able to reduce the time of an activity, or simply reschedule it.

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4. 4. Delegate tasks that do not need your full attention

One of the best tips we can give you to be a successful CEO is to delegate those tasks that are not important to you. There are always events that may not need your full attention, or that are simply not important to you. This is why delegating will always be one of the best ways to optimize your time.

Having a highly qualified team in your company can save you headaches, since you will be able to have each person perform a specific activity and you will only have to delegate. In the meantime, you can put your attention on another activity of the company that requires more attention, or on different businesses that you are doing or planning.

The expert in innovation and social impact, Angel Bonet, establishes a rule for managing urgent and important day-to-day events. In this rule he specifies that:

• If an activity is both urgent and important, then action should be taken.

• If an activity is urgent but not important, then it should be delegated.

• If an activity is not urgent but is important, it should be planned.

• If an activity is neither urgent nor important, it should be postponed..

5. 5. Prioritize your work time

Working longer does not mean having better productivity. Occasionally when we dedicate less time to a job, it forces us to have a better productivity in less time, this is why, Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel in his book High Output Management, states that his day ends at 6:30 pm at the latest. Andy explains that this is because by limiting his working hours, it forces him to do more activities in less time.

Andy also explains that there are always more things to do, that new activities are always coming up, so, he does not get saturated with work and when he is tired, it means that his work day is over. You have to keep in mind that rest is essential when it comes to doing your work successfully, if you don’t rest, you are exhausted, and if you are exhausted and tired, your productivity is reduced significantly. This is why we recommend that you prioritize your productivity hours and your rest hours.

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6. 6. Do one activity at a time

It is common to try to do many tasks at the same time, whenever we have so many activities to complete throughout the day, sometimes we try to do several at once to save time, however, this usually means the opposite.

By doing many activities at the same time the only thing we cause is that we do not pay enough attention to the tasks we are doing, this is why we recommend you to do one task at a time. If you dedicate all your attention to an activity, you will most likely finish it faster than when we do not.

7. 7. Trust your team

Trusting your team is essential to manage your time very well. This is because you take away the anxiety of not knowing if your team is doing a good job or not. Keep in mind that your team is working because they have gone through a selection process, this means that they are qualified to perform the work they are doing, so you must fully trust them and know that they will do their job satisfactorily.

We say this because it is normal that the pressure of running a company can lead to generate some kind of distrust, therefore, controlling emotions is very important if you want to manage your time, and not only that, it is also important if you want your company to be successful.

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8. 8. Study the activities you don’t know how to do

When we have an activity within our company that we do not know very well how it works or how to manage it, we usually tend to put a lot of people to do the job, so it can take us a lot of time between meetings to assign the right people to perform that activity. By knowing very well how the activity works, you will have no problem in knowing who to choose to do the activity, you will be better oriented and you will be able to save a lot of time. For this reason, another tip that you can take advantage of is to take different courses that nurture your performance in your company.

Conclusion

We know that sometimes it is difficult to find ways to save time in order to have a good CEO management. Therefore, we hope that the tips we have provided will help you to achieve that goal that can be difficult to achieve. We invite you to continue reading our blog articles so that you can learn about important and current issues related to the business world.