How the Best CEOs Get the Most Out of Every Day

http://firstround.com/article/70-of-Time-Could-Be-Used-Better-How-the-Best-CEOs-Get-the-Most-Out-of-Every-Day

by gatsby • 12 years ago

93 38 12 years ago

birken• 12 years ago

I hate articles that start out with lies. The average tech CEO does not work 11.5 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. There might be a few tech CEOs who work that long, but I am guessing for most of them it isn't a sustainable workload.

I actually think the tips here are fine, but the premise that all successful people in silicon valley work ungodly amounts per week are inaccurate. I know many very successful people who work 40-50 very efficient hours a week.

Also, one last comment...

Demonstrate the 80/20 rule in everything you do. This means spending 80% of your time on the work that moves the needle, and only 20% on the smaller stuff.

Generally in this context, the 80/20 rule is used to mean that you get 80% of the benefit with 20% of the effort, it isn't a rule about how to divide up your time. IE in the time management context, it would mean you get 80% of the progress you create in 20% of your time spent working. The key is figuring out what you are doing in that 20%.

jtbigwoo• 12 years ago

> The average tech CEO does not work 11.5 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. There might be a few tech CEOs who work that long, but I am guessing for most of them it isn't a sustainable workload.

Articles often get to this by counting stuff that you and I would consider not-work time. I read an article about a banking CEO who claimed to work 65+ hours per week. His daily schedule went from 6:00 am to 7:00 pm each weekday. That included taking calls as he commutes for an hour, a breakfast meeting, an hour at the gym with a couple VP's, and an hour networking at lunch. His actual desk-and-meeting time was about 9 hours.

It's still a large time commitment, but it's not that different from what the rest of us do.

aaronapple2• 12 years ago

Similarly, very hard to measure the amount of time that we spend actively thinking about our work outside of the office. My first job was in investment banking, where I was physically in the office or meetings far more than my bosses; when I was outside of the office (what little time that was), I was rarely thinking about my job. It was clear, however, that the best mid-level and senior men/women were thinking about their clients and brainstorming even while they might not technically be working.

ry0ohki• 12 years ago

I used to think I was not the "80 hour a week" kind of person, because I typically only sit at my desk from 7-5, Monday-Friday. But once you start counting the time you check and respond to emails (which I do constantly), take calls outside of hours, have meetings with people outside of working hours, etc... it's really not hard to imagine 11.5 hour days being average.

asharpe2• 12 years ago

Anyone else find the last hour of their evening is taken up by emails/cleaning up their last tasks. Since my first son was born, I have tried to get out of the office earlier, only to find I do MORE work at home after he goes to bed ...

31reasons2• 12 years ago

We should never judge someone's productivity by how many hours of "work" they do. Especially not for CEOs. They have all the resources at their finger tips to delegate and automate the tasks. If they are busy frantically responding to emails there is something wrong with their approach.

gavinpc• 12 years ago

Warning, if you have cookies blocked, this will hang the page, at least Firefox. That's a new one.

unclebucknasty5• 12 years ago

I think the best CEOs generally get the most out of their time by spending the first 8 hours or so of each day reading about what other CEOs do.

Or, maybe each has his/her own style that works for him/her.

I viscerally hate these articles.

lbr3• 12 years ago

Bill is incredibly smart. And provides interesting advice.

It's amazing to me that you can learn nothing from the article. Or that you think CEOs shouldn't take the time to learn from other CEOs.

unclebucknasty5• 12 years ago

I didn't even read Bill's article. My comment is not a commentary on the person, but the "feel" of articles like these.

There are certainly CEOs that I admire and I'm not advocating that we stick our heads in the sand. But, good grief, how many articles, books, blog posts, talks, etc. about "what successful people do" do we really need?

I hate the fallacies they promote: a.) you are too stupid to figure out how to succeed, and b.) you should therefore worship others to the point that you mimic them as a path to success, and c.) that (by implication) if you are not succeeding, then it's because you haven't studied and imitated others enough.

BTW, it's another fallacy that if we just all go out and do X, then we can succeed too. It's ridiculous, really. A little advice is fine, but there is this culture that we all need to swim in the same direction, following the anointed few who have figured it all out when we could not. Go to the mountaintop to confer with Tim Ferriss or Jason Fried, and all will be well. Well, maybe they got lucky. Maybe if they'd studied what the reader did every day, they'd be 12 times more successful.

It's so stifling, condescending, and flat-out unworkable. It is also potentially demoralizing to founders who are working hard to gain traction. Insidiously enough, this, even while it appears to be inspirational.

If you were thinking and working hard every day at the incredibly complex and difficult task of lifting a startup off the ground, and you read one of these types of articles a day, you would run in circles and fall into a deep depression. Meanwhile, the actual extent to which the cacaphony of such advice will move the needle for such a founder is miniscule.

How about this? Think and work as hard and as smart as you find you need to. Listen to your own instinct and use your judgment, even in taking advice from others (including mine). You have what you need to succeed. Screw the people who keep trying to "help" you by implying that you are deficient; whether in books they are selling, facile articles with linkbait titles, or otherwise.

TomAnthony• 12 years ago

As an aside - can anyone comment on the 7 minute workout [1] linked to in the article?

[1] http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-mi...

aaronapple2• 12 years ago

There is no such thing as a 7-minute workout that will completely get you in shape. This is a great set of exercises that, if performed twice with a short break in between and at the level they suggest, will leave you totally wiped and feeling like you received a great workout. When I'm in a good workout rhythm, 4 days a week (2x running, 2x amended 7-minute) seems to work pretty well.

b_emery• 12 years ago

No, but it's much better than nothing. If you're out of shape, 7 min every other day or even 2x per week is a great start. If you're reasonably fit then I agree, 7 min is not enough. I've been both in the last few months, and I can attribute the 7 min workout to getting me back on track.

epaladin• 12 years ago

I've been using this set of exercises as a less-intense interval routine when I don't have time to do a full p90x workout, or don't feel like making up my own set of intervals for a day. Two times doesn't feel like enough for me, but I was pretty tired after getting through four once. Three will probably do it for most people, I'm small so I can do an unusual number of reps for bodyweight exercises. I like it since it's fairly focused on the core and hits the major muscle groups. You can always make it harder by changing the normal squats to jump squats, doing a different ab move, etc.

jay_neyer• 12 years ago

I use a portable resistance training method my friend invented to maximize quick workouts like the 7 minute one. you can check it out at www.rhinoboss.com if you want.

loladesoto• 12 years ago

it's a general article with fairly general tips. but this is simply what happens when you direct list-making at an ambiguous topic.

although there was definitely some value there (templates are incredibly useful) i think a more interesting topic would have been time-management mistakes inexperienced CEOs make. because there are a lot and you don't find out what they are until you get absolutely obsessive about managing your time.

_sentient• 12 years ago

Here's another time management tip: Don't real the full text content of articles like these.

Read the subheadings and bullet points, and you will probably walk away with as rich an understanding of the intended message as if you'd read every word.

elwell2• 12 years ago

14 hours a day

Yeah... I don't believe that's the average, sorry.

elwell2• 12 years ago

Profile pic looks overly 'shopped: http://frcs3.s3.amazonaws.com.global.prod.fastly.net/library...

ch4s3• 12 years ago

Yep, stopped reading at "Be an E-mail Ninja."

jol• 12 years ago

That is actually very important, there is just too many people that cannot communicate efficiently over email, it wastes not only their time, it wastes everyone's time. (I agree that "be xxx ninja" is not nice language, but still...

bravura• 12 years ago

Assistance. You retain the help of a full-time or virtual assistant who can help sort through your email to flag what’s actually important, what requires action and what doesn’t.

How does this work in practice, in particular with respect to security?

i.e. how do you find a trustworthy assistant? Do you have to give them access to your entire spool? How do you deny access to sensitive emails?

lbr3• 12 years ago

there are some awesome companies like zirtual.com

larrys• 12 years ago

Hadn't hear of them. Good tip. Thanks.

Spooky23• 12 years ago

There is a lot off good advice here. The key is get rid of work. Leaders lead. Do BS work 1-3 times and get rid of it. That's what you have employees for.

If you cannot afford to do that, you're short changing yourself and your company, because you should be out there selling and building, not dicking around with salespeople or linkedin.

kartikkumar• 12 years ago

Interesting article with a lot of productivity tips. Wonder if this article actually implies that there's some sense in not having the typical CEO tasks assigned to just one person.

I'm assuming that certain tasks make most sense if one person is in control, but in some sense with things like email, I can't help but wonder if you're not better off "parallelizing".

Anyone with experience in breaking down the traditional CEO role into sub-roles assigned to multiple people?

marcus_holmes• 12 years ago

stopped reading at "don't hold status meetings, get people to write it down". This is such monumentally bad advice it immediately made me discount the rest.

Down this road lies write-only status updates that have been the bane of dev teams since forever.

If your priorities lie elsewhere than with keeping up with what your team(s) are doing then you don't need status updates; you need to delegate the management function.

If you're not meeting one-on-one with your immediate reports each week then delegate the management function.

If you're really so busy doing "important stuff" that what your actual employees are working on is not worth the time it takes for them to tell you about it, then you're doing it wrong.

How the Best CEOs Get the Most Out of Every Day

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