Further Resources

Time Management for Leaders: Why Most Leadership Advice Gets It Backwards

Seventeen years ago, I watched our company's most "efficient" manager miss his daughter's birthday party because he was reorganising his colour-coded calendar system for the third time that week. That's when I realised most time management advice for leaders is absolute rubbish.

Here's the thing everyone gets wrong about time management in leadership roles: it's not about managing your time better. It's about managing other people's expectations of your time. And frankly, most leaders are terrible at this because they're still thinking like individual contributors.

The Productivity Paradox That's Killing Australian Leaders

I've worked with over 200 executives across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, and 73% of them tell me the same story. They've got every app, every system, every methodology. GTD, Pomodoro, time-blocking, you name it. Yet they're working longer hours than ever and feeling less accomplished.

The problem isn't their systems. The problem is they're trying to optimise the wrong thing.

Most time management advice treats leaders like they're still individual workers. But leadership isn't about doing more tasks efficiently - it's about enabling others to do their tasks efficiently while you focus on the decisions only you can make.

This is controversial, but I genuinely believe that leaders who spend more than 30% of their day on "productivity" are probably not leading effectively. They're task-managing. Big difference.

What Actually Works (And What I Wish Someone Had Told Me)

Let me share what I've learned the hard way:

Stop scheduling every minute. I know, I know. Every productivity guru will tell you to time-block everything. But here's what they don't mention - leaders need buffer time for the unexpected. And trust me, there's always something unexpected.

In 2019, I had a client - fantastic bloke running a mid-sized construction company in Perth - who scheduled his days down to 15-minute blocks. Looked impressive on paper. In reality, one delayed supplier call would throw off his entire week. He was constantly stressed, constantly behind, constantly apologising to his team.

The solution? We built in 25% buffer time to his schedule. Time management training suddenly became practical rather than theoretical.

Delegate the planning, not just the doing. This one's a game-changer that most leaders miss entirely. Don't just hand off tasks - hand off the responsibility for figuring out how those tasks should be done.

I worked with a logistics manager in Adelaide who was micromanaging every delivery route. Spent hours each morning planning optimal paths for his drivers. Smart guy, probably saved the company 12% on fuel costs. But he was burning out fast and his team felt infantilised.

We shifted his approach. Instead of planning routes, he started setting outcome targets and letting his drivers figure out the how. Productivity increased, his stress decreased, and his team started coming up with innovations he never would have thought of.

The Email Trap (And Why Your Inbox Isn't Your Job)

Here's where I'm going to lose some of you, but hear me out: if you're checking email more than four times a day, you're probably not doing your job as a leader.

Email is reactive. Leadership is proactive. The two don't mix well.

I've seen too many good leaders turn themselves into glorified customer service representatives because they feel obligated to respond to every email within an hour. That's not responsiveness - that's anxiety masquerading as professionalism.

The companies that get this right - and I'm thinking of businesses like Atlassian and Canva - they've created cultures where email isn't the primary communication method for urgent issues. They use project management tools, they have clear escalation procedures, they distinguish between "need to know" and "nice to know" information.

Set expectations early and stick to them. I tell my clients to include something like this in their email signature: "I check email at 9am, 1pm, and 4pm. For urgent matters, call my mobile or speak to my assistant."

Does this ruffle feathers initially? Sometimes. But it trains people to think before they hit send, and it protects your ability to focus on strategic work.

The Meeting Epidemic (And Three Rules That Actually Work)

Let's talk about meetings. Oh, meetings. The productivity killer that everyone complains about but nobody seems able to fix.

I've got three non-negotiable rules that I've implemented with every leadership team I've worked with:

Rule 1: No agenda, no meeting. Period. And not one of those wishy-washy "discuss quarterly targets" agendas. I mean specific outcomes, specific decisions that need to be made, specific action items that will result.

Rule 2: Default meeting length is 25 minutes, not 30. This forces people to be concise and gives everyone a 5-minute buffer between meetings. You'd be amazed how much more focused conversations become when people know they have a hard stop.

Rule 3: Standing meetings get reviewed every quarter. Half the regular meetings in most organisations exist because they existed last week. That's not a good enough reason.

I worked with a tech startup in Sydney that was burning through 40% of their leadership team's time in meetings. We implemented these rules and cut their meeting time by 60% within two months. Revenue actually increased that quarter because leaders were finally able to focus on growth activities instead of status updates.

The Dangerous Myth of Work-Life Balance

This might upset some people, but I think "work-life balance" is a harmful concept for leaders, especially in the startup and scale-up phase of a business.

Balance implies equal weight. But leadership isn't a 9-to-5 job, and pretending it is sets unrealistic expectations. Some weeks you'll work 60 hours because that's what the business needs. Other weeks you'll work 25 hours because you've built systems that allow it.

What leaders need isn't balance - it's intentionality.

I prefer the concept of "time seasons." There are seasons for intense focus on business building, and seasons for recharging and relationship building. Trying to do both simultaneously usually means you do neither particularly well.

The most effective leaders I know are incredibly intentional about their time seasons. They'll go hard for 6-8 weeks, then take a proper break. Not a "checking emails from the beach" break - a real one.

Technology: Your Best Friend or Worst Enemy

Here's something that might surprise you: the best time management tool for leaders is often a pen and paper.

I know that sounds ridiculously old-fashioned in 2025, but stick with me. Digital tools are fantastic for collaboration and automation, but they're terrible for thinking.

When you're trying to solve a complex problem or make a strategic decision, the last thing you need is notifications popping up every thirty seconds. I keep a simple notebook for strategic thinking time, and I've never regretted it.

That said, there are some digital tools that genuinely transform how leaders manage their time. Emotional intelligence training has shown us that self-awareness is crucial for effective time management, and there are apps that can help with this.

For task management, I'm personally biased toward simple systems. I've seen too many leaders spend more time managing their productivity system than actually being productive. If you need a training course to use your time management app, it's probably too complicated.

The Australian Context: What Works Down Under

There's something unique about Australian business culture that affects how time management works here. We're generally more direct than our American counterparts, but we also value relationships and informal communication more than, say, German business culture.

This creates interesting challenges for time management. The "quick chat" that turns into a 45-minute conversation. The coffee meeting that's ostensibly about one project but covers twelve different topics. The Friday afternoon drinks that somehow become a strategy session.

I've learned to work with this rather than against it. Some of the best business decisions I've been part of happened during these "inefficient" conversations. The trick is being selective about which ones you participate in.

You can't attend every coffee meeting, but you should attend the right ones.

What I Got Wrong (And What Most Experts Still Get Wrong)

Early in my consulting career, I was obsessed with efficiency. I thought good time management meant eliminating all "wasted" time. I was wrong.

Leaders need unstructured time. They need space for serendipitous conversations, for thinking through complex problems, for just observing what's happening in their organisation.

The best leaders I know deliberately schedule "empty" time in their calendars. Not for specific tasks, but for whatever emerges as most important that day.

This drives project managers crazy, but it's essential for effective leadership. You can't schedule innovation. You can't time-block strategic insights. You can't calendar emotional intelligence.

The Real Secret (That Nobody Wants to Hear)

Here's the uncomfortable truth about time management for leaders: most time management problems are actually decision-making problems.

Leaders who struggle with time management usually struggle with prioritisation. And prioritisation is just decision-making in disguise.

You know what you should be working on. The challenge isn't finding a better system to track it - it's having the courage to say no to everything else.

This is where most time management advice falls apart. It focuses on the mechanics of scheduling rather than the psychology of decision-making. It's like trying to fix a relationship problem with better communication techniques while ignoring the underlying trust issues.

Getting Started: Three Things You Can Do This Week

If you've read this far, you're probably looking for something practical you can implement immediately. Here are three things that work:

This week, track your time in 30-minute blocks. Not to optimise it yet, just to see where it actually goes. Most leaders are shocked by the results. They think they're spending their time on strategic work, but they're actually spending it on email and interruptions.

Pick one recurring meeting and cancel it. Don't reschedule it, don't replace it with something else. Just cancel it and see what happens. I guarantee the world won't end, and you might discover it wasn't as essential as you thought.

Choose three things that only you can do in your role. Everything else should be delegated, automated, or eliminated. This is harder than it sounds because most leaders have control issues, but it's essential for scaling your impact.

The Bottom Line

Time management for leaders isn't about cramming more activities into your day. It's about creating space for the work that matters most.

The leaders who get this right aren't necessarily the most organised or the most efficient. They're the ones who are clear about their priorities and ruthless about protecting them.

Everything else is just productivity theatre.

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