See where your week actually goes
Situation: Sam feels buried in day-to-day operations and never gets to the work that grows the company.
Example conversation with a made-up company.
Before we start, here's how this works. A CEO's calendar is a strategy document: what you actually do, and how often, shows what the business is really optimizing for, whether or not you meant it to. …
You don't need to connect a calendar or be precise to the hour. You tell me what happened, and I'll do the sorting.
Walk me through the last 3 weeks. Roughly how did you spend your working hours? Don't overthink it. A mix of categories, typical blocks, and what surprised you is enough to start.
…
| Category | % Time | Time-of-Day | Variance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warehouse firefighting (late trucks, short picks, sick cover) | 31% | 7-10am, most days | Slot is fixed, content is spiky |
| … | |||
| Growing the business | 1% | Nowhere (about 2 hours in 3 weeks) | Effectively absent |
…
3 MOVES
DELEGATE
Warehouse morning triage (7-10am) → Ravi owns it, and calls you only for anything that will make a customer miss a delivery today.
…
ELIMINATE
Personal approval of discounts over 5% → Remove entirely. Replace it with a written margin floor: reps can discount freely above it, and only requests below it come to you.
…
DECIDE-WHEN
Growth work → Block two 90-minute sessions a week, Tuesday and Thursday 8:00-9:30, starting this Thursday, in the slot Ravi takes over. …
SIGNAL
In 30 days, your calendar shows at least 7 of the 8 growth blocks actually held, and you've been at the warehouse before 10am no more than one morning a week.
What changed: About 1% of Sam's week was going to growth. Now he knows what to hand off and what to drop, and has a 30-day check on whether it worked.
Try it: Sam typed "Audit my time." (skill: time-audit)