
As part our 1,000 Stories Project, we ask entrepreneurs what their greatest challenge is, and 90% of the time the responses we get are about struggling with time management.
With that in mind, and knowing that people are still mapping out their new year and setting goals for 2025, we thought we’d ask some of the pressed-for-time CEOs we’ve featured: Is there any one strategy that helps you stay organized and productive…and on schedule?
Their best time management tips are below.
1. Make a “Brain Dump” List
Katy Allen, founder of digital calendar brand Artful Agenda, says when she’s got a lot on her plate she makes a “brain dump” list of everything she has to do. Then she whittles the list down. First, she identifies things she can eliminate or delay. Then, she goes through the remaining items on her list and highlights what is the most important – scheduling three of them as priority items for the day and assigning the remaining items to subsequent days.
2. Delegate What You Can
U.K. based-entrepreneur Helen Underwood says delegation is key to managing her time and her company, Underwood Training, a provider of first aid training. But there’s a catch, she stresses. When you delegate a task to someone, “let that person own the task – don’t keep checking on them,” she says. It’s only by fully removing items from a to-do list that you can create more time to focus on the rest of it, she says.
3. Carve Out Time Slots for Specific Tasks
Dedicated periods for specific jobs has been a game changer for Jillian Krenk, founder of budgeting app Moneywellth. Krenk sets aside one hour each day for employee questions or needs and lets her team know it’s her “open office hour.” She also blocks out separate times for focused work, emails and meetings, while using apps like Trello for monthly, quarterly and long-term goal-setting.
4. Liberate Your Mondays
Barcelona-based, digital wine marketing expert Polly Hammond, founder of 5forests, gave us her “single most valuable” time management tip: absolutely no meetings on Mondays. Hammond says her “no-meetings Mondays” afford her the time to care for her own business. But she also quickly discovered that, ahem, many Monday morning “asks” from clients were tasks they could easily handle on their own. She said, “By giving them one day at their desks, I gave them time to cross those tasks off their lists so that our time together could focus on strategy and business building.” (Though she does add that if a client is having a major emergency, she makes herself available).
5. Mute and Unsubscribe
Diana Akchurina, founder of marketing agency Easy Communications, swears by eliminating unnecessary distractions. Like most of us, Akchurina finds that the constant stream of emails, newsletters and notifications makes it hard to concentrate, so she chooses to unsubscribe from unnecessary newsletters and leaves irrelevant messenger groups. She adds, “Being present in the moment is crucial. When working, focus solely on work, and when spending time with family, fully engage with them — without distractions like phones or other things.”
6. Take a Step Back
And if it’s all feeling a bit overwhelming, entrepreneur Allyson Conklin says, “Just take a step back.” Conklin, who runs her own eponymous PR firm, told us, “If I’m in the trenches on a task, and it’s taking much longer than anticipated, I step away, give it some breathing room, and revisit it later on.” She noted that there is something about “revisiting a task with fresh eyes and restored creativity…that seems to do the trick for me!”