Are You Spending Time on the Right Things?
It's Thursday afternoon. You've been in meetings since 8 AM, your inbox has 47 unread emails, and a team member is waiting outside your office with a "quick question." Your calendar looks impressive. Back-to-back meetings that keep you “busy”, but deep down, you know the truth. You're busy as hell, but you struggle to identify a single meaningful thing you've actually moved forward this week.
If you're in a leadership role, this probably sounds familiar. Your calendar is full, but your impact doesn't match your effort. You're responding to emails, jumping into meetings, putting out fires, yet you end each week wondering what you really accomplished.
This is the most common challenge I see in my coaching practice: leaders who are overwhelmed, stretched thin, and honestly do not see the path forward to growth.
But you can't lead effectively if you don't first own your time.
That's why I created the Time Usage Analysis tool, a 👉 FREE RESOURCE to help you figure out where your time is actually going and how to get back in control of it.
Why Time Management Is Really About Leadership
Time management isn't some personal productivity thing you can hack with the right app. It's a core leadership competency. When you have no idea where your time goes, you can't be strategic. You can't coach your team. You can't drive meaningful progress.
Instead, you're stuck in reactive mode: constantly responding to whatever screams loudest instead of focusing on what matters.
Even brilliant leaders fall into this trap. Not because they're incompetent, but because they've never stopped to look at their actual time patterns. That's where change starts.
Start With Brutal Honesty
Before you can fix how you spend your time, you need to see what's really happening. Not just what's on your calendar, but how you're spending your attention and energy all week long.
We love to tell ourselves that being busy equals being productive. But busyness is often just elaborate procrastination. The real question is: Do the things eating up your day align with what your role needs to be successful?
The most effective leaders I work with regularly pause and ask themselves: What's driving real impact? What's pulling me off course? What needs to change? That awareness becomes the foundation for everything else.
The Patterns That Keep You Stuck
Here's what usually happens when leaders do this analysis: They discover they're spending way too much time on reactive, low-value work. Stuff that feels urgent but doesn't move the needle.
Instead of coaching your team, planning ahead, or executing strategy, you're solving problems and answering questions that other people could handle. You've become the bottleneck in your own organization.
This cycle will kill your effectiveness and burn you out.
Take a 60-Second Reality Check
Try this right now. Think about last week and ask yourself:
What's one thing I spent time on that someone else could have done?
What important work got pushed aside because of "urgent" interruptions?
When did I have time to think strategically?
You Can't Be Strategic If You're Drowning in Details
The leaders who use this tool often have a moment of clarity. They realize they've been running on autopilot, checking things off lists but not actually leading at the level they want to.
That awareness is powerful, but it is just the first step. What comes next is even better:
Delegation strategies to free up capacity.
Time blocking your calendar to protect high-priority work.
Critical conversations with your team about what really requires your involvement.
This isn't about working more hours. It's about leading better with the time you have.
What Happens When You Get This Wrong
When you spend time on the wrong things, everybody loses. Your team doesn't get the guidance they need. Strategic work gets pushed aside. You burn out from working hard on stuff that doesn't matter.
Meanwhile, the work that only you can do: Setting direction, developing people, making key decisions gets squeezed into whatever time is left over. Which is usually none.
Ready to Take Back Control?
My FREE Time Usage Analysis tool is for leaders who want to stop drowning in busy work and start leading with clarity.
Here's what you get:
A clear worksheet to map where your time actually goes (spoiler: it's probably not where you think)
A quadrant-based framework to understand your workload and figure out what should be eliminated, delegated, or prioritized
Reflection questions to help you take meaningful action based on what you discover
This isn't another productivity hack. It's a way to align your time with the impact you want to make.
And don’t forget to Like 👍 and Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more leadership tips and tools you can apply right away.