Time Management

Own your time or it will own you

Over the course of my career, I have mentored many professionals who aspired to leadership roles. Around the time I was launching a pharmacy school, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy introduced its Leadership Fellowship. In the program’s second year, I volunteered to participate alongside a junior faculty member - someone who would later go on to become a dean. Over the next thirteen years, twelve more individuals followed a similar path.

As a mentor, I was expected to meet regularly with each fellow, involve them in leadership discussions, and assign projects designed to build their leadership capacity. In our first meeting, I always asked the same question: What is your most pressing challenge?

I expected answers about gaining insight into leadership behavior, building confidence in decision-making, or navigating organizational culture. Instead, every fellow gave the same response: managing time.

I would begin by sharing my own experience, trying to manage time as a founding dean in a complex and demanding environment. It is never easy—but it may be the most valuable skill a leader can develop. What follows are the observations I shared with those fellows, along with a few I have added since leaving academia.

Success is Dealing with Trivia

For leaders, the calendar isn’t just a schedule - it’s contested ground. Every hour gets claimed by strategy sessions, unexpected issues, routine updates, and the occasional email chain that refuses to die. Effective leaders don’t ignore these demands - they develop strategies for handling them. They put systems in place, prioritize with intention, delegate thoughtfully, and guard their time for deep thinking as if it were their most valuable resource - because it is. They recognize that time isn’t just something to spend; it’s the foundation of meaningful impact. Here’s the quiet truth most high performers eventually discover: Success is dealing with trivia.

It’s not the grand vision that usually derails leaders. It’s the small stuff. The microscopic decisions, the low-stakes emails, the quick meetings that multiply like rabbits, the trivia that quietly eats your focus, fragments your day, and leaves you wondering why you’re exhausted yet feel like you accomplished nothing meaningful.

In this post, we’ll unpack why trivia feels so urgent, how elite leaders reclaim their time without becoming bottlenecks, and practical frameworks to turn dealing with trivia from a drain into a deliberate strength.

Because at the end of the day, your legacy won’t be built in the spotlight moments. It will be forged in how skillfully you handled the thousands of small things that tried to steal your attention along the way.

Leadership trap – time mismanagement

Most large surveys and studies find that top CEOs see time as their scarcest resource, feel chronically stretched, and believe they still invest in true strategic work despite heavy efforts to manage their calendars.

A 2013 McKinsey survey found that only 9% of executives were highly satisfied with how they allocated their time. While McKinsey has not replicated this exact survey, subsequent research - most notably its CEO time-allocation study - confirms the underlying problem persists, with leaders spending the majority of their time in meetings that are often misaligned with strategic priorities. The endless meetings that I attended in higher education typically began late without an agenda, meandered through various topics, and ended without actionable items. I will share in a subsequent Substack post the rules that I developed for my leadership team titled, On the Conduct of Meetings.

A Harvard Business School study, conducted by Porter and Nohria in 2018, of 27 large‑company CEOs, shadowed the participants 24/7 for 3 months. They found that the CEOs worked about 62.5 hours per week, averaged 9.7 hours per weekday plus weekend work, and spent roughly 72% of work time in meetings. In that study, CEOs concluded that managing time was one of the greatest challenges that leaders faced and that their schedule visibly signaled their leadership priorities to the organization.

If everyone knows that they are struggling to make better use of their time, how do you restructure your daily activities to accomplish more and leave each day feeling positive about those accomplishments? What follows are nine (9) strategies that most leaders can easily adopt, either in part or in total, that will address chronic time mismanagement.

Step 1. Stillness and meditation

I used to wake before dawn to plan my day and review emails that had arrived after I retired. I was always fearful that I would begin the day without adequate preparation; as a result, I fulfilled my prediction. I was not composed and adequately prepared when the day began, and I struggled almost as soon as I entered my office to keep up. Lack of composure was the symptom that I decided to address, and the solution was to reserve the first two (2) hours for two important tasks: prayer and meditation. A recent McKinsey Quarterly article, The AI Antidote, explores the importance of meditation in our current high-stress environment. I recommend that you read it if you would like to develop a deeper insight into the importance of meditation.

The day doesn’t start with email; it starts with quiet attention to your emotional needs.

• Take 3–10 minutes to sit quietly and breathe.

• Notice the swirl of thoughts about today and let them pass without chasing them.

• Choose one intention for how you want to show up: calm, decisive, supportive, creative.

I learned that meditation isn’t a luxury; it’s how you reclaim your mind before the world starts making withdrawals from it. You’re preparing the instrument you use to decide how your time will be used. Prayer recognizes that you have a greater power than even you sometimes realize, and it comes from God, however you define him. How you relate to him will not occur without intentionally making space for prayer in your daily life.

Step 2.

The core insight: success is dealing with trivia

Next, step back and look at the whole terrain, the entirety of the day that is facing you.

• Scan your calendar: meetings, deadlines, commitments.

• Check your task list and the status of ongoing projects.

• Note any constraints or obstacles that will need to be addressed and who should handle the issue.

Ask yourself, after carefully reviewing the upcoming day, what do I, as the leader of this organization, need to accomplish that no one else can do? Leaders don’t do everything; they do the things only they can do.

Step 3.

Identify the vital three

Now identify three vital tasks that must be done today.

Phrase them as clear results, not vague intentions. Examples may include

• Finalize the annual budget for review with the Executive Committee

• Author a professionally written memorandum of a proposed collaborative opportunity for the President and their leadership team.

• Draft the introduction for the upcoming accreditation self-study.

Step 4.

Reclaim your mornings (or when you are most productive)

Most evidence suggests that for the majority of people (including most leaders), peak cognitive acuity is highest early in the day and then declines steadily over the rest of the day, especially late morning.

What the research shows

• Lab studies on reasoning and short‑term memory find people perform logic and memory tasks fastest and most accurately from about 8 a.m. to around 2 p.m., with performance dropping off afterward.

• A review of time‑of‑day and cognition concludes that cognitive performance typically peaks during a narrow window in the first half of the day and then declines as the day goes on.

• Order your daily blocks to allocate mornings to the three (3) key tasks that you listed earlier.

Step 5.

Estimate time, delegate, and block your day

I got into a habit of estimating the amount of time I would need for each key task and then deciding where that time would come from. Some would come from delegating research and first draft preparation to individuals on my leadership team with personal knowledge of the area and responsibility for advising me on the approach I should take. We would collaborate on the final draft.

• How long will this really take if I focus?

• What resources do I need (data, people, decisions, space, tools)?

• What would be a potential obstacle, and how can I overcome it early?

Step 6.

Focus

Now translate priorities into time.

• Reserve calendar blocks for your three key tasks, as if they were meetings with your future self. My graduate school mentor, Mickey Smith, would always reserve the first two hours he was in the office to write. He was a prolific writer and authored an amazing array of textbooks, peer-reviewed articles, and general interest books. He did it using the first two hours when he was most productive and when no one would disturb him.

• Notice that I have not mentioned reading emails. I instructed my administrative assistant to review my emails when she arrived in the morning and respond to those for which she had knowledge or responsibility. She would also seek clarification and schedule meetings without first asking for my permission. We had an understanding that she was to have access to my emails and calendar and, within acceptable limits, she was free to respond to them in a way that was proper. The ones that were a high priority for which she felt I needed input would be brought to my attention personally when we had our daily strategy sessions at 11:30 each morning.

Time blocking is how leaders protect their attention. The sad reality is that the more you are interrupted, the less you accomplish.

Research has shown that whenever a leader is interrupted, it takes twenty-three minutes for them to regain their focus and move forward with whatever they were doing before they were interrupted. This increases stress and forces them into hurried decision-making. The authors of the study concluded that the leaders in their study made up for the interruption, but the time came at the expense of quality work. Blocking time means no interruptions, if you want to accomplish the set priorities.

Up until this point, you have been working within the two-hour block you reserved for yourself. You have meditated, prayed, organized your day, and decided on priorities. Now is the time to begin implementing the plan.

Step 7.

Start the Day

• Begin with the first important block, even if just for 10–15 minutes.

• Resist the urge to warm up with email or low-value tasks. I used to find myself using my time and resources to properly label file folders until my assistant pointed out that whenever she saw me sorting and filing, it was avoidance behavior. She would step in and forcefully take away the task, so I was forced back to the priority I had been avoiding.

• Momentum beats perfection. A leader who consistently starts the day with meaningful work gets more of the right things done across weeks and months.

Step 8. Reserve the less productive time of the day for less demanding tasks

• Push lower‑stakes, routine, and administrative work into mid‑ to late‑afternoon, when attention and accuracy naturally decline. This includes responding to emails, returning phone calls, or conducting meetings.

• Try this approach for three weeks and let me know if it makes a difference in measurable ways, less stress, greater productivity, or an increased sense of control in an often-chaotic environment.

Step 9.

Evening reflection and self-acknowledgement

At the end of the day, take 5 minutes to reflect:

• Did I make progress on my three (3) priorities?

• What derailed me, and how can I protect my time better tomorrow?

• What’s one win I want to acknowledge? This is important. Leaders sometimes take for granted that their efforts are often unrecognized, and they often are. My observation for my leadership mentees is that if you do your job well, people will assume it was easy and take success for granted. Sometimes, the only reward you will receive is to pat yourself on the back at the end of a long and grueling day.

I am reminded of the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14–30). In this familiar passage, Jesus relates the story of a servant who made wise use of the resources that were provided to them. In response, the master who had shared the resources with the servant observed Well done, good and faithful servant. If you make wise use of the resources provided to you, in this case, time, you may confidently make that observation at the end of a hectic but productive day.

Once you’ve restructured your days with these habits, the next level is building support systems that prevent trivia from piling up in your head in the first place.

Power tools for dealing with trivia.

When I first began trying to manage my time more effectively, I kept a small stack of 3 x 5 ruled cards in my shirt pocket. When I thought of an idea, saw a trend that I wanted to explore more extensively, or was struck by something someone said or related in a story, I wrote the essential details down on the card and shoved it back into my pocket. Later in the day or sometimes at the end of the week, I would try to decipher my handwriting and remember why I made the notation. Sometimes I was successful, but many times the importance of the observation or snippet of a conversation was lost in time. I discarded the card, and the thought that went into it went into the waste basket. I am sure that many important ideas disappeared when the trash was emptied. We have all had the experience of covering every surface of our workstation or office wall with Post-it Notes.

Later, recognizing the limitations of index cards and Post-it Notes, I moved on to keeping a journal. The first one was leather-bound and contained 150 pages. I became obsessive about recording meetings, telephone conversations, and many of my projects had their origins within those pages. When I retired, I moved to a 300-page journal that often had additional pages inserted at the end of the year. Each journal started on July 1, and the last entry was recorded on June 30^th. I chose those dates because they aligned with the fiscal year of most organizations with which I was associated. Each was labeled, and when I left academia, I had accumulated 23 bound journals. I impressed on each of my mentees that taking notes, even in the midst of meetings, was a critical aspect of capturing both the content and the meaning expressed by the participants. They became the repository of all the ideas that were often recognized and then discarded because they did not take root.

I now use a combination of voice recognition for ease of interaction with several very capable artificial intelligence chatbots that not only remember the past ideas but can organize them in very enlightening ways that facilitate writing and development of new conceptual frameworks.

About the time I began using this powerful combination, I came across an article by Chris Bailey, the author of a general productivity podcast. The article, The Productivity Benefits of Capturing Ideas (9/15/22). made several important observations.

1. Our heads are for having ideas, not holding them. One of his podcast guests, David Allen, was talking about our limited mental bandwidth. Now, before you rush to conclusions about mental capacity, let me make an important distinction. Intelligent individuals have lots of ideas. Many are worthwhile, but only if they are recorded and remembered at a time and place where you can make sense of them through reflection and research.

2. Some of the things you try to keep in your head include.

· Stuff you are waiting on – reports, return phone calls, calendared events.

· Ideas you want to examine more deeply – the things you conjure up during your morning mediation for example.

· Distractions – these are the events that intrude into your conscious state and must be triaged as you move through the day.

· Important ideas and insights that also occur at odd moments throughout the day and for which you try to make a mental note. If you are engaged in the knowledge industry (e.g., higher education or health care) you are flooded with important insights that are worthy of exploration, if you can only retain a record of the concept until you have time and capacity to explore it in more detail. This is where technology can help.

3. Here are three (3) methods that I have used that greatly increase my capacity to offload useless information and capture important ideas.

· Always have a notepad close at hand. Jotting down brief notes to yourself can serve as a reminder after you complete the task at hand. Just don’t raise it to an artform. Post It notes are often ridiculed for their ubiquitous nature, but they too have a valuable place in our organizational environment. I keep my journal close at hand for more detailed observations or to sketch out an idea.

· Voice recognition is an important adjunct to the desktop environment. I prop up my iPhone next to my keyboard and interact with it often. I can ask Siri for the spelling of a technical term, and, if I need background on the correct usage of the term, she obligingly gives me more detail that I sometimes need, but I don’t have to take my eyes off my screen to capture the essence of what she provided. Voice recognition becomes even more powerful when it is used to dictate ideas, request literature searches or simply to take note of a passing idea. Voice recognition technology has become one of the most powerful tools for frictionless idea capture and cognitive offloading in our increasingly idea-driven world. Instead of pausing to type, hunt for a notepad, or risk losing a fleeting thought while fumbling with apps, you can simply speak your ideas aloud - raw, unfiltered, and in real time. This dramatically lowers the barrier to recording insights, whether you’re driving, walking the dog, or lying awake at 3 a.m. By outsourcing the mechanical act of writing to your voice, you free up mental bandwidth for deeper thinking, pattern recognition, and creativity. What once required deliberate effort now happens effortlessly, turning your brain from a leaky bucket of half-remembered ideas into a more reliable engine of thought. In a world drowning in information but starving for original thinking, voice recognition isn’t just convenient - it’s a genuine cognitive multiplier.

· When you have an idea or are sharing your thoughts with others via email, always send a copy to yourself. You can always check your sent mail, but I find it is easier to remember the context and even the individuals who you shared the idea with if you simply include yourself as one of the recipients.

It is also important when you are reading a technical paper or opinion paper to copy and paste key concepts into an email. Remember to include the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) so you can find the source material and permit accurate attribution.

For many leaders, time management is no longer about squeezing more into the day- it’s about making better decisions about where attention goes. Tools like Siri, ChatGPT, or Otter.ai allow ideas to be captured instantly, meetings to be summarized automatically, and priorities to be clarified in real time. The real advantage isn’t efficiency alone, but perspective: AI can identify patterns in how time is spent, helping leaders shift from reactive schedules to intentional focus. In an environment where demands are constant and interruptions inevitable, those who learn to delegate not just to people - but to intelligent systems - gain a decisive edge.

We are in a new information age where best intentions and a sharp mind are not sufficient to extract essential information from the deluge that we face daily. If you are to function effectively as a leader, you must develop new and effective strategies for managing your most valuable resource – time.