How to Analyze Your Time Tracking Data Like a CEO

You’ve finally tracked your time…and now you see it: endless hours on admin, scattered meetings, and your big ideas gathering dust in the corner.

That mix of horror and relief is common for creative CEOs. You realize you’re spending 40 hours a week on $30/hour tasks instead of doing the things that only you can do, the things that are going to keep your business growing. 

It’s not a fun realization, I know. But there is some good news: Identifying a problem is the first step to fixing it.

SIDE NOTE: If you haven’t, go back and read my last two posts,“Why Every Creative Business Owner Needs to Track Their Time,” and “The CEO Time Tracking Guide for Busy Entrepreneurs.” You’re going to see why all this matters AND how to start tracking your time. 

Then once you’ve collected some CEO time tracking data, meet me back here to find out what it all means!

How to Analyze Your Time Tracking Data: Strategic vs. Operational

First, make two categories that you’ll divvy your findings into:

• Strategic: Future-focused, only-you-can-do-it thinking (planning, product development, major decisions, market strategy).
• Operational: Keeping the lights on (routine client check-ins, admin, project management, most recurring meetings).

Then, take the data you’ve tracked and place the tasks into one of these two categories. If you’re not sure, make your best guess. We’re not striving for perfection, we just want to identify patterns.

If you’re spending less than 40% of your time on Strategic work, you’re paying CEO salary for manager-level tasks. As in…tasks you could be delegating out so you have more time to do what’s bringing in the big bucks. 

Turning Insights into Action

Realizing you aren’t delegating your time effectively isn’t a fun realization to come to. But like I said, it’s the first step. You can’t make improvements until you know what needs to be changed. But once you do, here’s how you turn your insights into actions. 

#1: Delegate Smarter

Delegation is your first line of defence when it comes to optimizing your time. Think about it like this…if you spend 5 hours a week on $25/hour tasks, you’re paying $1,000 of CEO time for $125 of work. That isn’t really time you can afford to be wasting. 

However, if there’s an administrative or operational task you enjoy doing, keep it. You don’t have to offload everything just because it isn’t “high-level.” If you enjoy doing it, it’s still valuable. And sometimes that can’t be measured monetarily. 

#2: Optimize Meetings

Look at every meeting you had over the last month. Were they productive? Did they help build progress? Or did you spend most of your time on things that weren’t necessarily productive? 

Meetings should:

• Require clear agendas and outcomes
• Require your attendance only when your input is truly needed (as in, a project cannot move forward without your approval)
• Respect time limits

Does every meeting need to fit these boundaries every single time? No. Sometimes getting on a 10-minute tangent about weekend plans is beneficial for team building. Doing that every once in a while isn’t going to hurt your business. But it’s when it happens every single time, while creeping on the scope of your time boundaries, that it starts to become a problem. 

# 3: Protect Strategic Thinking Time

There’s something incredibly valuable about knowing when you work best. Maybe you’re someone who thinks best before the sun comes up. Or you’re better at ideating an offer once the world has shut down at 10 pm. Whatever it is for you, you need to honor that time and use it to think your most strategic thoughts. 

Protect that time at all costs. Honoring your brain’s natural rhythm will be one of the best things you ever do for your CEO time management. 

The Bottom Line

Tracking your time as a CEO and turning the data you find from it isn’t necessarily a hard task to take on (in theory). Where it becomes hard is when it’s time to take action from those findings. Knowing you spend too much time answering emails or sitting in meetings isn’t doing anyone any good if you don’t do something about it. That’s the hard part.

Your business is depending on you to think strategically and honor that vision with your daily actions. Everything else? Someone else can probably do it for you. 

If you need more help tracking your time and making sense of what you find, I’m here to help. Follow me here to learn more about how we can work together so your schedule works for you and constantly pulls you in a direction of growth.