🎯 Executive Time Management ≠ GTD

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🔹 Chief of Staff
Company: David AI
Location: San Francisco, CA (On‑site)
Apply: withdavid.ai
Summary: David AI builds AI‑powered tools for data and audio research. The Chief of Staff partners with the co‑founder/CEO as a strategic “force multiplier,” working with customers, teams, and investors to drive execution. Responsibilities include defining company priorities, managing business strategy and planning processes, running the operating rhythm (leadership meetings, off‑sites), and handling special projects. Candidates need at least 2 years of operations or strategy experience in fast‑paced environments and must be comfortable shaping systems, leading cross‑functional initiatives, and working closely with executive leadership. Responsibilities include defining company priorities, managing business strategy and planning processes, running the operating rhythm (leadership meetings, off‑sites) and handling special projects. Candidates need at least 2 years of operations or strategy experience in fast‑paced environments and must be comfortable shaping systems, leading cross‑functional initiatives and working closely with executive leadership

🔹 Vice President, Programs
Company: Points of Light
Location: Remote (U.S. – Eastern or Central time zone; Washington, DC preferred)
Apply: Job Link
Summary: The world’s largest volunteer‑service organization seeks a senior leader to guide its network and NGO programs. Reporting to the EVP of Global Network and Nonprofit Programs, this remote‑first role provides strategic leadership and operational oversight for the organization’s portfolio of programs—designing, implementing, evaluating, and scaling initiatives across the global affiliate network. The Vice President aligns annual work plans, guides program strategy, leads teams, and fosters cross‑departmental collaboration. Responsibilities span program strategy and execution, team and stakeholder leadership, impact and evaluation, development, and external partnerships. Candidates need at least 10 years of progressive leadership experience, deep knowledge of nonprofit program development and evaluation and the ability to manage high‑performing teams and grant funding.

🔹 Director, Strategic Initiatives
Company: EFI Foundation
Location: Washington, DC (Hybrid – staff work from the DC office Tuesday–Thursday)
Apply: EFI Foundation
Summary: EFI Foundation, a non‑profit accelerating clean‑energy solutions, is hiring a Director of Strategic Initiatives to lead projects at the intersection of finance, policy and climate solutions. Reporting to the Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Executive Director of the Nuclear Scaling Initiative, the director will combine corporate/project‑finance expertise and policy development to manage complex projects, guide teams, build coalitions, and represent EFI and its Nuclear Scaling Initiative with stakeholders. Duties span leadership and management, research/analysis and strategy, stakeholder engagement, and execution of high‑impact reports and briefs. The role requires 7+ years of relevant experience (including at least two years in corporate finance or investment banking), strong quantitative and financial modeling skills, and the ability to integrate policy, regulatory, and market signals into strategy

🔹 Chief of Staff
Company: Snif
Location: New York, NY (remote team; travel ~10 %)
Apply: Snif application
Summary: Snif, a fast‑growing fragrance company, seeks a Chief of Staff who acts as an extension of the CEO to drive strategic and operational initiatives across the brand. In this generalist role, you’ll manage meeting rhythms, goal‑setting, product‑launch timelines, cross‑functional alignment, and special projects. Additional duties include owning the hiring and performance‑review processes and cultivating company culture. Candidates should have extensive experience in consulting, operations, or strategy (ideally within startups or consumer goods), high EQ, strong project‑management skills, and the ability to break down complex problems and influence stakeholders. The team operates remotely but is based in New York; the post may require up to 10 % travel.

🔹 Director of Program Operations
Company: Lead For America (LFA)
Location: Remote (U.S.)
Apply: Lead For America
Summary: Lead For America’s Programs Department designs and executes AmeriCorps‑based service programs. The Director of Program Operations reports to the Chief Operating Officer and ensures that program designs become high‑quality, lived experiences for stakeholders. The role bridges program design and real‑world execution and supervises a team of Program Coordinators. Key responsibilities include translating program design into operational plans and processes, overseeing day‑to‑day and long‑term program operations, and ensuring timelines, deliverables, and standards are met. Additional duties involve building scalable systems and workflows, developing SOPs, maintaining feedback loops with design and recruitment teams, coordinating with departments (finance, development, communications), managing Program Coordinators (providing support, setting KPIs, onboarding), and maintaining accurate data in CRM systems. Candidates should have 7–10 years’ experience in the international NGO or public‑sector space, proven team and project‑management skills, data‑driven decision‑making, experience with program budgets, and a commitment to equity and inclusion

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Bots Take the Wheel

The Problem: You spend 20+ hours/week in meetings, and another 5 hours writing up notes and tracking follow-ups.

The Fix: Automate meeting summaries and action item tracking so you can focus on the conversation, not the documentation.

Real Use Cases:

TL;DR: Stop treating meetings like a black hole where decisions disappear. Automate transcription, action tracking, and documentation so every meeting has a paper trail—and you get hours back every week.

Visionary Voices

Quote: "Boring meetings are a sure sign of time wasted, if not bigger leadership problems. If team members don't understand the goals of their work, their leaders are not doing a good job engaging the team in the purpose of the work." (Source: Camille Fournier's Blog)

Camille Fournier is one of tech's most respected voices on engineering leadership. As the former CTO of Rent the Runway and former VP of Technology at Goldman Sachs, she's navigated the full path from individual contributor to C-suite executive—and documented every step in her bestselling book, The Manager's Path.

But what makes Camille different from most leadership authors? She doesn't sugarcoat the hard parts.

Her writing is brutally honest about the challenges of management—the boring meetings, the difficult feedback conversations, the endless context-switching, and the loneliness of senior leadership. She doesn't promise that executive life gets easier. She promises you'll get better at dealing with the chaos.

On Time Management at the Executive Level:
Camille emphasizes the importance of regular 1:1 meetings, quoting Marc Hedlund: "Regular 1-1s are like oil changes; if you skip them, plan to get stranded on the side of the highway at the worst possible time." Lighthouse

Her philosophy on executive time? Stop trying to control it. Accept that 60-70% of your week will be reactive—meetings, fires, decisions—and design systems that make the reactive work more efficient.

On Making the Leap to Leadership:
Camille has "a strong opinion on pushing people into management roles, which is that you shouldn't do it." Not everyone should be a manager, and that's okay. But if you do choose management, you need to accept that the job changes fundamentally at each level.

In The Manager's Path, she breaks down the distinct challenges of each stage: tech lead, manager, director, VP, and CTO. Each level requires different skills, different priorities, and different ways of spending your time.

On Strategic Thinking:
Camille writes extensively about boring meetings as a symptom of deeper problems. If meetings are boring, it might mean "the team members don't feel that they can actually help set the direction of the team, choose the work that will happen."

Her advice for execs: If your team doesn't understand why their work matters, you're not communicating strategy effectively. And if you're spending all your time in status meetings instead of strategic conversations, you're operating at the wrong altitude.

What You Can Learn From Her:

Where to Learn More:

Why She Matters to Delivery Professionals:
Camille's work is essential reading for anyone moving from "doing the work" to "leading the work." Her frameworks for tech leads, managers, and executives map directly to the challenges TPMs, Implementation Managers, and delivery leaders face every day.

She's also refreshingly realistic about the costs of leadership—the meetings, the context-switching, the emotional labor—which makes her advice more trustworthy than the typical "10 habits of successful leaders" nonsense.

Final Word:
Camille Fournier doesn't promise that executive life is easy or glamorous. She promises that if you understand what each level actually requires, you can make informed choices about your career—and be effective wherever you land.

That honesty is what makes her one of the best guides for anyone navigating the messy path from engineer to leader.

In a provocative Vogue essay, writer Sophia Gao warns that our relentless obsession with frictionless convenience is eroding our humanity and urges us to welcome a little intentional friction back into daily life — to slow down, savour the mundane and rediscover joy.

Rob Henderson’s eye‑opening piece argues that the educated elite’s so‑called luxury beliefs — from preaching screen‑time abstinence while selling addictive devices to embracing “white privilege” rhetoric — are status signals that inflict real costs on poorer people and quietly erode social cohesion.

Quarter Mile’s cheeky article serves up a liberating list of things you absolutely don’t have to do — like read the news, own a smartphone, attend unfun social events or even have a five‑year plan — reminding readers that opting out can be wildly freeing.

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Professional Development

Let's start with the uncomfortable truth:

Your color-coded calendar isn't helping. Your time-blocking system isn't working. Your GTD setup is making things worse.

Not because these systems are bad. They're excellent—for ICs and managers.

But executive-level work requires a completely different operating system.

Here's why.

Paul Graham wrote the definitive essay on this back in 2009: "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule."

Maker Time (IC Level):

Manager Time (Director Level):

Executive Time (VP+ Level):

The Problem:

Most executives try to manage Executive Time using Manager Time or Maker Time principles. It doesn't work.

You can't "batch meetings" when your job is to be available for high-stakes decisions.

You can't "time block deep work" when fires erupt hourly.

You can't "protect your calendar" when the CEO needs you in a room right now.

So what do you do?

Here's the shift:

Old Mindset: "I need to find time to do strategic work."
New Mindset: "I need to design my weeks around energy, not tasks."

At the executive level, you're making dozens of high-stakes decisions daily. The quality of those decisions depends on your cognitive sharpness, not your calendar hygiene.

Framework: Energy-Based Planning

Map your energy across the week:

Example:

Monday AM: Low energy (weekend recovery) → 1:1s, team check-ins
Tuesday AM: High energy → Strategic planning, big decisions, quarterly reviews
Wednesday PM: Medium energy → Cross-functional alignment meetings
Thursday AM: High energy → Problem-solving sessions, executive presentations
Friday PM: Low energy → Admin, email, expense reports

The Key: Stop trying to squeeze strategic work into random 30-minute gaps. Design your week so your highest-leverage work happens when you're at your sharpest.

At the executive level, your calendar will always be 60-80% reactive. That's the job.

But if you're 100% reactive, you're not leading—you're firefighting.

Framework: The 3 Buckets

Every week, allocate time across three buckets:

Reactive (60-70%): Meetings, fires, decisions, unblocking
Proactive (20-30%): Strategic thinking, planning, system-building
Regenerative (10%): Recovery, reflection, learning

How to Implement:

Example Weekly Calendar:

The Result: You're still reactive 70% of the time, but you've protected the 30% that drives long-term impact.

Here's a secret: Most executive decisions don't require meetings.

They require:

When to Say No to Meetings:

Framework: The Decision Matrix

Before accepting any meeting, ask:

The Result: You cut 30-40% of meetings without dropping any balls.

One of the biggest time drains at the executive level: Ad-hoc interruptions.

"Got 5 minutes?"
"Quick question..."
"Can we sync on this?"

You can't say no to all of these—sometimes they're critical. But if you're constantly interrupted, you can never think.

Solution: Executive Office Hours

Block 3-4 hours per week where you're explicitly available for drop-ins, quick questions, and unplanned conversations.

Example:

The Rule: Outside office hours, everything goes through your EA or requires a calendar invite with context.

The Result: People get access to you, but on your terms. You protect deep work time while staying accessible.

At the executive level, your to-do list will always be infinite. You'll never finish it.

So stop trying.

Instead, ask one question about every task, meeting, or decision:

"Am I the only person who can do this?"

If yes → Do it.
If no → Delegate it or kill it.

Framework: The Eisenhower Executive Matrix

Traditional Eisenhower Matrix doesn't work for execs. Here's the updated version:

The Discipline:

Every Monday, list your top 10 priorities for the week.

For each, ask: "Only I can do this?"

Cut the list to 3-5 items. Delegate or kill the rest.

The Result: You focus on the highest-leverage work. Everything else finds a new owner or doesn't happen.

Here's the trap: Executive calendars get so packed with meetings that there's no time left to think.

You're making decisions in hallways. You're reacting, not strategizing. You're busy, but not effective.

The Fix: Non-Negotiable Think Time

Block 2-3 hours per week—on your calendar, recurring, no exceptions—for strategic thinking.

What to do during Think Time:

How to Protect It:

The Result: You move from reactive to proactive. You see around corners. You make better decisions because you've actually thought them through.

Most executives are so busy executing that they never stop to assess if they're executing on the right things.

Solution: The Weekly Executive Review

Every Friday (or Monday), spend 30 minutes reviewing your week.

Template:

1. Energy Audit

2. High-Leverage Moments

3. Time Leaks

4. Strategic Progress

5. Next Week's Focus

The Result: You get better every week. You stop repeating mistakes. You optimize for leverage, not busyness.

Let's be honest: GTD, Pomodoro, time-blocking—they're all designed for ICs and managers.

Here's why they fail for executives:

GTD (Getting Things Done):

Time Blocking:

Pomodoro:

The Lesson:

Stop trying to force executive work into IC/manager productivity systems. They're solving the wrong problem.

Your problem isn't how do I get more done?

Your problem is how do I make better decisions with less time?

Here's the final shift:

Stop optimizing for productivity. Start optimizing for judgment.

ICs are measured by tasks completed.
Managers are measured by team output.
Executives are measured by the quality of their decisions under uncertainty.

Your job isn't to be busy. It's to make 3-5 decisions per week that 10x the organization's impact.

The Questions That Matter:

If you're answering yes, your time management is working—even if your calendar looks like chaos.

TL;DR: Executive time management isn't about color-coded calendars or perfect systems. It's about managing energy, ruthlessly prioritizing high-leverage work, protecting strategic thinking time, and accepting that 70% of your week will be reactive. Stop trying to control your time like an IC. Start designing your weeks around attention, energy, and the 2-3 decisions that actually move the business forward.

Wanna chat IRL? Connect with me on LinkedIn and we can set up some time.

The Delivery Career Decoder shows why you’re already qualified for more—and how to prove it.

I love feedback. If you have topics you want to see? Or thoughts or ideas on how to serve the community better, please hit reply or email [email protected].

Until next time,

The Business of Delivery

Quiet moves. Bold Careers.