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.<p>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.<p>Also, one last comment...<p>> 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.<p>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%.
Here's another time management tip: Don't real the full text content of articles like these.<p>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.
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.<p>Or, maybe each has his/her own style that works for him/her.<p>I viscerally hate these articles.
<i>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.</i><p>How does this work in practice, in particular with respect to security?<p>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?
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.<p>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".<p>Anyone with experience in breaking down the traditional CEO role into sub-roles assigned to multiple people?
it's a general article with fairly general tips. but this is simply what happens when you direct list-making at an ambiguous topic.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
As an aside - can anyone comment on the 7 minute workout [1] linked to in the article?<p>[1] <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-minute-workout/" rel="nofollow">http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-mi...</a>
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.<p>Down this road lies write-only status updates that have been the bane of dev teams since forever.<p>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.<p>If you're not meeting one-on-one with your immediate reports each week then delegate the management function.<p>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.