Article · 15 min read

70% of Time Could Be Used Better: How the Best CEOs Get the Most Out of Every Day

Bill Trenchard · First Round Review Free Intermediate

Trenchard has watched a lot of founders run their calendars, and his core move is the one that makes buffer-based planning survive contact with reality: block one or two hours against your top three priorities when you are sharpest, then batch the reactive stuff (email, ad-hoc meetings) into defined windows instead of letting it bleed across the day. The practical lever for a founder who cannot escape fires is his insistence on saying no and ending every meeting with a decided outcome, so the reactive load that does hit you is compressed rather than open-ended. Read it as the how of protecting your 60%: guard the priority blocks, fence the firefighting into batches.

  • Block your peak-alertness hours against your top three priorities first, before the day fills with other people's urgencies
  • Batch reactive work (email, ad-hoc requests) into set windows so it does not fragment your whole calendar
  • Saying no and forcing a decided outcome on every meeting compresses reactive load so it fits your buffer instead of overflowing it
Open on review.firstround.com ↗

It answers 3 questions

  1. How do I plan my week when a customer emergency or a burning production bug can blow up any day?
  2. How much time should I spend on the business versus in the business, and how do I even tell the difference?
  3. How do I track where my hours actually go so I know what to cut, without turning tracking into another chore?

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