What is the best use of a CEOs idle time?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9185367

by Apane101 • 11 years ago

5 8 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I don't want to hear that there is no such thing is a idle time for a CEO because frankly that isn't true in every case. There are cases when you're waiting for other parties to make their move as you've made a bunch of moves.

I'm at that point today, where I'm waiting for my developers to finish things up, I'm waiting for a client to get back to me about something, and I'm waiting for a prototype to be completed before I can start calling customers.

What do I do in this case that is a good use of time?

JSeymourATL• 11 years ago

Get outside in the fresh air, take a long walk-- & just think!

atmosx• 11 years ago

I'm not a CEO but my current job has a lot of stress. I think a CEOs daily workload has even more so, I'd say the most important things are:

* Exercise: Helps you 'de-compress' yourself. This is vital for anyone expected to go the long run.

* Family time: Relationship are not static. They are dynamic. You need to put a lot of effort in to a relationship in various forms (patience, trust, physical work, romance, etc.). This takes time and having a healthy relationship in your personal life, helps a lot.

* Quality time: In the form of vacations, SPA, a walk with a friend, a nice dinner with a friendly interesting new couple (if you're married, etc.) or friend. Organise a nice family weekend so you can be all together.

* Self-improvement: The mind needs spiritual inputs, exactly like our body needs food (energy). I've seen people increasing their daily lives incredibly by becoming more patient, less aggressive (towards arguments) and more aggressive towards ending but habits, etc.

* Think: Thinking is an Art that very few people master. Thinking clearly takes time and effort. It takes concentration and amounts of un-interrupted time. Taking your time to think alone with no distractions about important decisions will help you avoid mistakes that will cost you money and energy.

All these are interconnected and people have talked about them in one way or another since (at least) ancient Greece (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), probably even before.

Wish you all the best & stay strong :-)

floppydisk• 11 years ago

Haven't been a CEO, yet, but I have worked a high stress job that involved a lot of team coordination/leading and these were my takeaways:

Short Term:

1) If you have other business to attend to today--i.e. the customer--get out of the office for an hour and go take a walk or read a book somewhere quiet and private. Driving yourself batty waiting on everyone else is a fool's errand.

2) If nothing is going to be done "today", call it a day and go home. Seriously. Use the time to run personal errands, think, and do things that will take your mind off of the things holding you up.

A former CEO would get real fidgety when things weren't done exactly when he envisioned them and would then spend the next several hours frequently checking in with us and just slow things down. If you're getting antsy about things, the best thing you can do is take yourself out of the environment until you calm down and not infect the rest of your team. People feed off their leader's emotions and if you're getting fidgety they'll start getting nervous and frustrated.

Long Term:

1) Budget in time for self-improvement. Be reading as much as you can, take up a physically active hobby that gets you moving, and try to improve in areas of weakness.

2) Budget work time to think and plan out the business. Bill Gates was famous for taking thinking trips where he'd duck out for a week with a stack of research papers and other materials to see where the industry was headed and figure out how to get in front of it. You might have not the time to take a week, but take a day here and there to pay attention to the trends going on around you.

3) Know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em. Sometimes you gotta ride herd when things aren't getting done for legitimate reasons (i.e. everyone's clowning around). Other times, you gotta let things ride and accept that it's not all under your control -- you can't control the server crashing, unforeseen technical bugs, delayed client responses etc. Learn to be comfortable with things not being under your control and not letting it frustrate you to no end.

4) Enjoy the down time! Really. We all think we have to be hyper productive all the time and any down time is simply a waste of our time because we could be doing something. I struggle with this a lot and it makes it hard to be. Consider having an unplanned hole in the schedule as an opportunity to take 15 minutes to clear your head--writing helps me a lot--refocus and prepare for the next challenge. Those unplanned holes can be a lifesaver if you count them as a blessing instead of a cost.

Edit: Grammar errors.

pskittle• 11 years ago

find something personal to do. Call your family or loved ones. catchup with an old friend. go out on a date. be socially relevant

alexvomwald• 11 years ago

Idle time means idle money. Think about how you would react if you were hiring someone and that someone had "idle" time while you're paying him. If you have investors, they expect you to do something good with your time that ultimately multiplies their money. If you don't have investors, you are your own investor (your time is your cost of opportunity) and you probably also want to make your time worth.

I've been in that situation and even while it doesn't feel ideal (just the fact of having idle time feels weird and wrong), I think its the best time to learn new things relevant for your business. There will always be something helpful to learn that can be useful for your business, so just try to prioritize on what would be the most useful in the short term. There is indeed many times idle time, but it is only idle if you keep it that way.

The easiest learning comes from reading. Keep up to date with industry trends, read about marketing strategies, read about cases of successful and failed companies similar to yours.

Learn to fulfill positions that are yet non-existent on your company. If you are a small startup and you have no one doing marketing, pr or something else, use your time to learn about it and do it yourself.

just my thoughts from someone similar

T808• 11 years ago

I have been a CEO of a startup 2x, so my response just reflects what I've learned is best for myself and my past companies:

* Call an existing client. Maintain the relationship. It's easy to always just focus on what's next down the pike, but the best way to get new clients is to have happy existing clients, and it's amazing how a simple call or a drink with one can make them forgive/forget the little issues that arise, or become your strongest advocate.

* Take a group of junior team members out to lunch. Again, easy to get 'head down' and rely on your exec team for insight to company morale or suggestions. But there's nothing like caring about every level of person on your team and treating them with respect and an open door policy. I have had some executives say they are uncomfortable with a CEO 'mingling' with their teams. I think that is only happening if the CEO is creating a distraction, or undermining the execs in some way (or the execs are misrepresenting or creating politics on their teams) - none of these things should happen. You should be doing more listening than talking during these outings.

* Research what's happening outside your bubble. It's easy for myopia to set in when you're working so intensively. It's good to be current and forward-thinking, and inspired by outside industries/sectors.

* Be healthy. Echo-ing other sentiment expressed before me - being physically strong helps you be mentally strong. It only takes 30minutes a day to clear your head.

* Talk to other CEOs. Whether it's YPO, old college friends, new entrepreneurs, whatever - no one understands the trials and tribulations of being a CEO other than someone who has lived it. I spent so much time focusing on what I could do for my company, I didn't think 'networking' was worthwhile. But I learned later that surviving the struggle is easier when you realize you're not alone.

dqdo• 11 years ago

I would say that the main job of any CEO or top executive is to continuously learn and self improve. As a CEO, your job is to think strategically and with a long-term vision. Most of the daily problems should be delegated to the functional managers as you will be buried in work if you try to do everything yourself. Only in situations when the rest of the company cannot figure out themselves or when there is a lot at stake should the CEO intervene. I believe that a sign of a good leader is someone who is able to delegate work to others and trusts that they can get it done.

Given how fast we are moving in the world in terms of technology and business, there are new break throughs and developments everyday that can change the landscape of entire industries. As a CEO, your main role is to understand this landscape and have a vision for the next 2 to 5 years in the case of technology companies. For older and less turbulent industries this could be 5 to 10 years.

Keep in mind that what I am saying applies to companies with +100 employees. For early stage start-ups, the CEO will have to wear multiple hats and have to take a hands-on role otherwise the company will not have enough revenues to survive. Once you have pass the threshold of survival (~100 employees), you need to reorganize your company for growth. This is a difficult transition for most start-up CEOs and the dirty little secret that VCs keep from founders is that few founder CEOs make it through this transition.

One of the best way to ensure growth in your organization is to learn about the ever changing world outside of it so that you can help the rest of the organization continuously grow and thrive. One way of doing this is to look beyond your own industry and explore how other industries are dealing with their problems. Different industries are more advanced in different area so use this to your advantage. You can "steal" the best ideas and use them to improve internal operations. Remember that at this stage in your company, you are not really building anything new. Instead you job (which is just as difficult) is to improve on whatever already exists.

One reason why you should use your spare time to learn is that some companies actually march towards a wall because they are too busy pursuing immediate profits. This is the argument behind Clayten Christensen's book the Innovator's Dilemma. It is a great book and I would highly recommend it to all CEOs whether in start-ups or in large organizations.

alain94040• 11 years ago

I'm waiting for a prototype to be completed before I can start calling customers

That sounds really bad. There has to be something you can do to line up customers beyond waiting for a prototype. Have you pitched all the possible customers yet? Do they all know that the next exciting step is you coming back to show the prototype?

You have to be pro-active.

What is the best use of a CEOs idle time?

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