Did you know that, on average, CEOs spend 62.5 hours a week doing work-related activities. However, studies revealed that 80% of CEOs’ time is devoted to business and management practices that only account for 20% of the company’s long-term value.

As an entrepreneur or a business owner, your most powerful resource is your time. To avoid wasting this valuable resource that you have, you need to eliminate these biggest time wasters for CEOs:

Unnecessary Meetings. Meetings are an essential part of the decision-making process for the business to move forward. However, 56 million ineffective meetings happen every single day in the United States alone. With that said, how do you want your time table valuable without risking attending unnecessary meetings?

BEST CASE SCENARIO: A highly effective organization has meetings where all the staff are responsible and bring the CEO the agenda of topics to be covered. All the CEO is responsible for is to bring their discernment capabilities.

WHAT MOST COMPANIES DO: The CEO comes to every meeting thinking they need to solve all issues, they need to choose the direction, they need to come up with all the ideas. When the CEO feels the need to lead every initiative the company will stay small. In that case, you are underutilizing your staff. And managing your meetings ineffectively. Don’t you want a  more interactive team in your company?

First step: STOP GOT A MINUTE MEETINGS. If someone comes to you and says, “hey, gotta minute?” Then a got a minute meeting breaks out and all the time that is supposed to be spent proactively working turns into reactive to the needs of your staff. Be clear and intentional about the time you spend with your team. Give them a place where they can list off all the topics you need to cover in your weekly meeting and discuss the list THEN.

Helpful Tip: Having a clear agenda communicated to all can turn a one-hour meeting into a 15-20-minute meeting. Make the agenda’s clear before every meeting.

Unnecessary Emails: Email can be the death of good time management. Studies show that just re-reading emails without taking action on them has the equivalent of wasting AN ENTIRE WEEK worth of vacation time. The first step to mastering your time is the “Touch it Once” Rule. If you touch it, take action. You can simply reply to the email stating that it is too much information in one email and to bring it up at your weekly meeting.

CRUCIAL TIP: To avoid excess time wasted on email, always make sure you and your staff are trained to make the subject line of every email very clear to cover the topic that is in the email. If the subject in the email goes from talking about one topic like accounting, then it shifts to the latest refund request. Typically people will forget to change the subject line when the subject matter of an email changes.

Then SO MUCH TIME is wasted trying to go back through your emails to find that topic if the subject line wasn’t changed. Don’t drown your self in reading emails that can make your day less productive.

Helpful Tip: Turn off your email notifications right now. Studies have shown that when your attention is side tracked your brain goes from fully focused to a much smaller capacity causing you to operate as if you had the equivolent of 4hours of sleep. So every time you get pinged with a notification it is taking away your brain capacity to focus on the task at hand. Your productivity significantly decreases when your attention is sidetracked with a message.

Setting standards on email best practices is essential when managing a team. Additionally, it is equally important to have specific times when you must train your team to follow your best practices. So that everyone is highly productive in their day, avoiding the “Notification Syndrome” that throws off your focus. Instead, allot two 30-60 minute times in your scheduled day where you can focus on your email responses.

IT interruptions (System Intrusion). Research has revealed to us the second biggest worry for CEOs this year is actually cybersecurity.  This was somewhat surprising to us. Nonetheless, we have become a society that depends upon technology. When properly handled, technology within an organization can create an exponential efficiency no competitor can match. Hence, we see companies less than five years old selling for eight and nine figures because the power of technology today is infinite.

However, when misused, tragedy can strike with loss of data or cyber-attacks cause Goliaths to fall. On a smaller scale in day-to-day operations, system intrusion or system failure increases the completion time of tasks, leading to delays on projects. This is a subset of interruption at work that is caused by technology. This can either be a system property issue that arises when the system you’re utilizing for work completion has features that fit poorly with the task you’re doing. Or deficiency in system resources such as breakdowns or glitches caused by upgrades or failed upgrades.

Nowadays, any CEO, business, or company has become reliant on technology. It becomes a great tool to help you accomplish your business goals when done correctly.

In Conclusion

Being a CEO is an all-consuming role. There is always more to do. There are always more decisions to make. The cliché that 24 hours is not enough is indeed true for you. Eliminating those mentioned above, the most significant time wasters can help you free up some time. A time you may use to do other important business or personal activities. Nobody can buy four more hours in a day; what you can do for your time to make it more effective is to delegate tasks and responsibilities. More so, you can set a timetable plan for your activities.

Take Action

Let go of the time wasters that run down your clock. Be more productive and focus on what matters the most. We want that for you.

If you want to become more organized about your time and increase your company’s sales, let’s talk! Schedule a no-obligation 7 minute breakthrough call where we focus on one key area to grow your company today! Pick your time here: