Everyone gets the same amount of time every day - no matter what the size of your business, every CEO gets the exact same amount of time every day yet it can often feel like there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done that we need to do. 

As a CEO one of our most precious resources is our time and if you’re looking for long term growth and success it’s vital that you learn how to master the time you have. 

So today I am sharing with you 3 ways you can start mastering your time to feel accomplished.

1. Figure out your prime hours and guard them!

This has been an absolute game changer for me in my business. I often found myself with several projects that I wanted to get done within my business yet never had the time for. I wasn’t procrastinating over them but I found my days being really full with client work, emails etc and by the end of the day I had no capacity to tackle these projects for myself.

So I decided to restructure my day. I sat down and figured out when did I feel my best and my most productive? For most of us this will be in the morning within an hour or so of getting up but you may be a person who feels more energized later in the day. Whatever the time, notice when you feel at your best and block those hours (typically 3-5 hours) out in your schedule. 

These are your prime hours and they are not to be wasted! Do not tell your team about these hours, simply create a meeting in your calendar for 2-3 hours a day in your prime hours with yourself. 

Don’t let anything else get scheduled at that time and instead make sure that you do the most important activities for yourself, your company within this time. Those 5% of tasks that you know will push the needle forward on your business but you never get round to doing. 

Not only will you be more focused but it will take you less time to accomplish your goals as you will be working at a time when you feel energized.  You will finally be making the time to start progressing on your goals. This in turn will boost you for the rest of the day and keep you motivated. 

Adopting this technique alone transformed my business! Once I started blocking out my morning hours I was able to complete 4 projects within 3 days! It blew my mind…I didn’t feel as if my time was being hijacked any more by emails and other people’s demands. 

Even if you feel like 2-3 hours isn’t possible at the moment, I encourage you to block out 1 hour in your prime hours every day and start there. Just get ready to be amazed at the amount of progress you can make in that time!

2. Don’t check your emails all the time

How often have you found yourself starting your day with emails and then before you know it the morning has passed and you feel behind on all the things you wanted to accomplish during the day?

I know for me that email would be the biggest disrupter of my prime hours. In fact sometimes it would seem that I would be stuck in them all day long. 

So my second tip is to switch off notifications and have set times when you check emails and alerts etc. I suggest only checking your email every 90 minutes at the most. 

For every interruption that you have, whether it’s a text message, an email or somebody walking in your office that costs you 20 minutes of time because your flow and concentration is broken. I know often we can think, oh I will answer now, it will only take me a minute but it really does cost you more than that minute to reply.

3. Schedule afternoon meetings

As part of the prime hours tending to be earlier in the day you don’t want to be scheduling meetings during those times so it’s important to schedule meetings for later in the day when you still have energy and are still able to focus but don’t have to concentrate on something that’s more critical. 

Typically I like to schedule meetings mid afternoon before four o’clock (as this tends to be the time that we all start to switch off and don’t really have capacity for anything other than answering emails and wrapping up our daily tasks). This way you’re also not taking up your teams’ most productive hours as well so they will be better able to focus during the day on their most important tasks to hand and help you move the needle forward on your company goals. 

The most important thing to remember when it comes to time management is to be aware of your distractions and do your best to minimize them. Don’t let them hijack your most productive time and your most valuable asset as a CEO. If you don’t protect your time then nobody else will.

Need support around highlighting your biggest distractions and how to better manage them? Time management is one of the three skills I help 7 & 8 figure CEO’s master in order to reach their next level of success. To find out more about the support I offer email me at [email protected] 

Watch my YouTube Video on this topic: