249: The “No Time” Myth and the Real Work of Thinking Like a CEO

Welcome to the She Thinks Big podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross, coach, speaker, life balance architect, and strategic thought partner for high-achieving women who want to think differently, lead confidently, and create success on their own terms.

As an entrepreneur myself and the bestselling author of She Thinks Big, here's what I know: You've been at this for a while, but somehow you can still feel stuck in the day-to-day. And running your business like a to-do list does not fulfill the vision.

So around here, we're not about more hustle, we're about smarter strategy, bolder thinking, and leading a business that fits your life. Each week, you'll hear the mindset shifts, real-world tools, and CEO-level conversations that help you reclaim your time, grow with intention, and elevate your leadership. Now, let's dive in.

Hey, my friends. Welcome back to the She Thinks Big podcast. I am so glad you're here today, but where are you? Where are you? What are you doing? Are you watering plants? Sometimes I get messages, Voxer messages, from one of my clients as she's watering her plants, and she usually listens to the podcast. So shout out to you. You know who you are.

What are you doing today? Message me on Instagram and let me know. Because today, we are diving into one of the biggest traps I see women, probably like you, fall into. And it is the belief that you don't have time to work on you as a CEO, to work on your business, business, et cetera, et cetera. "I don't have time. Who has time for that? Where am I going to find the time?"

But here's the thing. You don't actually have a time problem. I would argue, I would say, you have a prioritization problem because how you manage your time is a reflection of how you manage your mind. That is one of my famous sayings. How you manage your time is a reflection or evidence of how you manage your mind.

And today I want to help you see that giving yourself CEO time doesn't take time away—it creates it. I am going to share stories and research and quotes from people in the know and some very real examples of what taking time could actually look like. "Like, what do I even mean by that?"

So last episode, we talked about things that are costs versus investments. And I would say that taking time for yourself is an investment. So that time is an investment. So if we want to connect the last episode to this one, that's how I would do that.

All right, but we're going to dive in here. So when you say, "I don't have time," what you're really communicating to the world is, "I haven't made this a priority yet." Or think about it in a social setting. Someone invites you to something. "Oh, let me check. Let's see what our calendar looks like. Maybe I'll come." What you're saying in that is, "I haven't made this a priority yet."

Here's the newsflash, the universe does not care what you intend. It reacts to what you schedule or what you show up for.

And I read the Harvard Business Review. Maybe I'm a geek, but I do read it. And Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria just wrote an article, and they wrote that time is the scarcest resource leaders have. So where they allocate it matters a lot.

So, you, listener leader here, this matters a lot that I read. But when they were studying, they interviewed hundreds of CEOs, and that data showed that the most effective leaders deliberately carve out time for reflection, planning, and strategy. Are you doing that? Are you deliberately carving that time out?

The magazine Entrepreneur put it pretty simply, and they said the most successful leaders don't work longer, they manage their time with intention. So here's what I see. Urgency feels productive, and guilt tells you that client work or emails come first—we have another episode on that—more clients isn't always the answer. And without structure, you drift toward the loudest task instead of the most impactful one. The loudest one is also probably going to be the one that feels urgent or that feels the most productive. But if you don't have a structure to get away from those urgent things, then you're probably not going to have time for the impactful ones.

So once I had a client say, "Andrea, I just don't have time to think." I've had more than one client say that. "I don't have time for thinking work." And I challenged her to block just one hour—60 minutes—for nothing but thinking about her business.

And in that one hour, she realized two of her services were unprofitable. One process needed delegation. And she found $15,000 in unbilled work. So that 60 minutes paid her back weeks of future time.

So if you've been saying, "I don't have time," maybe it's time to ask, "What am I making time for?" If you're saying, "I don't have time," I want you to ask yourself, "What am I making time for?"

So I want to get practical too, though. What does this really actually look like? All right. And I'm going to give you five types of time, what you might do with it, and the result you might get from it. So this is the type of time I'm talking about.

Here are five different kinds of time. Strategic thinking, visioning time. What do you do in that time? You map your future direction. You explore maybe new offers. You review goals. A sample time slot for that might be Monday, 8:30 to 10:00 AM. And what is the result you're looking for? You're going to see months ahead. You're not just going to see today's fire. Because remember, in that strategic thinking, visioning time, you're mapping future direction. You're reviewing goals.

Another type of time: reflection and review time, where you're going to think about what's working, what's not, what did I learn this week? A time for that might be Friday, 4:00 to 4:30. And what are you going to get from that? You're going to stop repeating mistakes.

Here is another type of time: planning and prioritization time, where you're going to structure your week. You're going to align with your quarterly rocks. And this might happen on a Sunday night or Monday morning. It might involve a lot of your personal life too.

So what are you going to get from this? If you have planning and prioritization time, you're going to stop chasing the shiny objects.

Next type of time might be deep work and creation time. And what are you going to do during that? You're going to do a high-value project. You're going to map out a new product. You're going to create a new system. That might be Wednesday, one to three o'clock, where the result is you're actually going to move something forward.

And then this last type of time I want to talk about is the learning, growth, and rest time, where you might be reading or listening or resting or journaling. That might be Saturday morning. This is something I do on a Saturday morning, and it's going to refill your creative tank.

So here's what it might look like. I'm going to combine all this. Here's what it might look like in a real week for you as CEO and founder and entrepreneur and small business owner, whoever you are, right? It might look like this: Monday, 90 minutes of strategy time where you're going to review your goals and set your focus. Wednesday, a two-hour deep work block on something only you can do, like reimagining an offer or writing marketing copy. For me, that might be planning for a podcast, creating a slide deck.

Friday, a 30-minute block in the afternoon to celebrate the wins and plan for the improvements. Celebrate the wins of the week and plan for the improvements.

Saturday, one hour of personal growth: listening to a podcast, reading something, something that fuels your leadership brain.

Sunday night, planning and prioritizing. What do you need to do this week? What do you not need to do this week?

So I want to make something very clear here. Taking time like this isn't just sitting quietly with a notebook. Taking time like this could look like showing up for your coaching call every other week and giving yourself the mental space to think differently.

It could look like Voxering me, pausing midweek to process something out loud with someone else listening on the other end to shift from reacting to responding. It might also look like Voxering me on your morning walk, which I have a lot of people doing, as you process something.

This also could look like taking 10 minutes to write down what you're tolerating or one thing you've been avoiding. That's CEO time.

It could also look like heading out to an in-person retreat. And one of the things I'm going to have my clients do at our upcoming in-person retreat—I would love for you to be there, by the way, I am inviting you there. If you are curious, you need to go to the show notes, set up a call with me, we'll talk about it—but I am going to ask my clients: What do you want this retreat time to be for you? Do you want it to be strategic thinking and visioning?

Do you want it to be reflection and review? Do you want it to be planning and prioritization? Do you want it to be deep work and creation? Do you want it to be learning, growth, and rest?

Because these are all the long days of retreats, for example, or the day-long retreats, the Voxer, the coaching call that happens bi-weekly, these are the moments where the thinking happens. They are where awareness builds, where new beliefs start from. They are how you begin managing your mind, which, remember, always shows up in how you manage your time.

So those 10 minutes of Voxer aren't lost. They're leveraged. They're leveraged in and of themselves. They create clarity that saves you hours of spinning your wheels later. That one-hour coaching call, that's not 60 minutes lost. That's leverage. That's helping you think through a situation that maybe you haven't made a decision on, deciding, moving, and helping you move on.

So time blocking is always a theme in leadership discussion. I now want to give you an example. Some big names here in the CEO leadership space—Jack Dorsey used to theme his days: Monday for management, Tuesday for product, Wednesday for marketing, and so on. Marc Andreessen literally schedules thinking time on his calendar.

Research shows that high-performing CEOs book 70% to 75% of their time in advance. All of their time is booked in advance, and they guard those blocks like gold. So this isn't about rigidity. It's about respect—respect for your brain, your priorities, and the impact that you can make.

So let's just flip the script here, my friends. It's time we flip the script. Taking time doesn't cost you time. It multiplies it. And here is how. I'm going to give you five reasons that taking time for your CEO-type work does not cost you time—it multiplies it.

Number one, it reduces rework. Planning eliminates chaos. You spend less time cleaning up avoidable mistakes.

Number two, it leverages your team. When you think ahead, you delegate more effectively. Your team knows what “done” looks like, and you stop being the bottleneck.

Number three, it sharpens prioritization. Time spent clarifying what matters means fewer decisions later. You can say no with confidence.

Number four, it improves decision speed. Clarity breeds confidence. You stop second-guessing.

And number five, it preserves energy. When you rest or reflect, you replenish your creativity, and you prevent burnout.

A study in Harvard Business Review found that leaders who spend as little as 15 minutes reflecting daily are 23% more productive and 25% less stressed. Fifteen minutes! Imagine what you could do with an hour. If that 15 minutes could leave you to be 23% more productive and 25% less stressed, would you do it? I would say yes.

Because listen, the research shows that executives who constantly block strategy and delegation time scale faster and experience fewer bottlenecks. And again, this is not just theory. I recently worked with a client who was really drowning in what I would call operations. So I said, “Listen, let's get on a call—you and me. We're going to block 60 minutes and we are going to document your onboarding process,” which we did.

In those 60 minutes, we did that. Then guess what? The next day, she delegated it to her VA to put into action. So that one block freed up, I would say, two hours of her week of onboarding clients—forever. So yes, taking time is productive. It's not just the kind of productivity, though, that shows up in your inbox or on your to-do list.

So I want you to do an experiment. I'm calling it the 30-Day CEO Time Experiment. You don't have to overhaul your life. I just want you to try this simple 30-day experiment. Here's what I want you to do.

Week one—an awareness audit. Track your week. Where are you reacting? Where could you create space? And I want you to identify two 60 to 90-minute blocks that you can protect.

Week two—you're going to book your first CEO block. You're going to put one on the calendar and label it clearly “CEO Time.” And I want you to treat it like your most important client meeting, because it is.

Week three—you're going to protect and you're going to experiment. Keep that CEO block each week. Mix it up. Some weeks plan, others reflect, others create. No email, no phone. Let's experiment with what is the best use of that CEO block of time. I like my clients to do a CEO day, but you can start small. You can start with a block of 60 to 90 minutes, two of them each week, versus a day.

But week one, you're going to do awareness and audit. Week two, you're going to actually book your first CEO block. Week three, you're going to protect and experiment with that block. And then week four, you're going to reflect and repeat.

So at month’s end, you're going to ask, what shifted? What did I get back? You're going to adjust your timing, but you're going to keep it going. And most people who try this tell me they suddenly feel calmer, clearer, and more in control, not because they worked harder, but because they managed their mind differently.

Remember, how you manage your time is a reflection of how you manage your mind.

So let me leave you with three quick mindset shifts. These would be the things you would want to write down.

Number one, you don't earn CEO time, you create it. It's not a luxury. It's leadership. That's why I say these retreats that we do inside Ascension, they're not luxury, they're leadership. You don't earn them. You create these experiences for yourself and this time for yourself.

Number two, no time now is your cue to protect your time later. If you're too busy to think, that's your signal that you need to. So if you don't feel like you have time to do these CEO things, if you don't have time for a coaching call, if you don't have time for a retreat, that’s your cue that you do need to make the time. You're too busy to think.

And number three, the third mindset shift I want you to make: you're not stepping away from your client work or your team. You're stepping up. Taking time isn't selfish. It's strategic. And as Oprah says, “You can have it all, just not all at once.” Isn't that fun? You can have it all, just not all at once.

So when you take time to think or plan or get coached, you're not abandoning your business. You're investing in its longevity.

Okay, friends. So go to the show notes. Actually, I just decided live as I'm recording this, I'm going to put in the show notes a link to this 30-Day CEO Time Experiment. Go to the show notes, download that, so you can have a hard copy of that.

Number two, if you want support creating time, join me. Join me in an Activator Intensive. Join me inside the Ascension Collective. Come with us on the retreat. And how you do either of those—Activator Intensive—you can go right to the website and book it. Ascension Collective—you can also go to the website and book a call with me. We'll put both of those links too inside the show notes.

When you make time for your business and yourself as CEO, the time starts to multiply. I can attest to that. So you don't need more hours. You need to think bigger about how you use them. Let's lead with clarity, calm, and courage. You've got this. You're a big thinker. I'll see you next week.

Thanks for listening to She Thinks Big. I know you’re committed to yourself and your businesses because you listened all the way to the end of this episode. But this isn’t really the end. It could be the beginning of your next power move.

If today’s episode gave you clarity, courage, or just a much-needed breath of fresh air, take that as your sign to take the next steps. So do it. Visit andreaslinks.com to take my Silent Saboteur Quiz and to discover our next steps in getting you to take action and achieve the success and freedom you crave.

You can also keep your momentum going by hitting subscribe right there on your screen so you don’t miss the next episode. Don’t forget to grab a copy of my book. She Thinks Big can be found on Amazon or at your favorite bookstore. Until next time, keep thinking big.