Time: The Ultimate Investment For Business Owners
As a scaleup founder or ambitious business owner, your single most valuable resource is time. Not funding. Not even talent. It’s the 168 hours a week you get — the same as everyone else. But how you spend them will determine whether your business stalls or scales.
While many leaders obsess over how to invest in a business or what business to invest in, they often neglect the first and most important investment: their own time.
What follows is a practical, proven approach to managing time more effectively — not through theoretical fluff, but real-world frameworks, tech, and tactics that actually work.
Why Traditional Productivity Advice Doesn’t Work
Most time management advice is either too generic or too rigid for founders and growth-stage leaders. Your role shifts daily between visionary and firefighter. You don’t need colour-coded perfection. You need flexibility with structure, speed with space, and clarity without burnout.
That’s why the most effective time strategies for business owners are built on leverage and energy, not just calendars and checklists.
Shift Your Mindset: Time As Capital
Just like money, time can be spent, wasted, invested, or leveraged. When you start treating hours like capital, you think differently about meetings, emails, and tasks. You begin asking:
- Does this give me a return?
- Is this something only I can do?
- What would happen if I didn’t do this?
This is the mindset behind true work-life harmony — not balance as a binary, but harmony between what energises you and what drives your business forward.
The Founder’s Filter: Is It Important, Or Just Loud?
Urgency screams. Importance whispers.
Many leaders end up running their day based on the loudest Slack notification or the latest client request. But this is a dangerous trap. It’s how founders burn out — buried under operational weight with no time for strategic growth.
Apply the Eisenhower Matrix
Break tasks into:
- Urgent and Important: Critical and time-sensitive (launch deadlines, key investor calls)
- Important but Not Urgent: Long-term strategy, deep work, hiring
- Urgent but Not Important: Admin, some emails, meeting requests
- Neither: Distractions that feel productive but aren’t
Spend 70% of your week in quadrant two — important but not urgent. That’s where sustainable business value is created.
Audit Your Time With Brutal Honesty
Step 1: Track Your Time Over 7 Days
Use a tool like RescueTime, Clockify, or Toggl to log your activities in 30-minute chunks.
You’re looking for:
- Unnecessary context switching
- Repetitive tasks that could be automated
- Energy-draining meetings or calls
Step 2: Categorise Your Output
Label each block:
- Strategic (planning, vision)
- Operational (delivery, management)
- Reactive (responding, firefighting)
- Passive (procrastination, distractions)
Aim to spend at least 50% of your time on strategic and operational priorities. If most of your week is reactive, your business will remain stuck.
The Power Of Time Budgeting
Most founders track money but not time. Flip that.
Create a Time Budget Like a CFO
Design your ideal week based on:
- Deep work (30–40%)
- Team leadership (20–30%)
- Strategic planning (15–20%)
- Admin and buffer (10–15%)
Then build this into your calendar. Use time blocks, colour codes, and recurring “CEO time” each week for high-leverage thinking.
Case in point: Jack Dorsey famously split his week into daily themes while running both Twitter and Square — giving each area of the business focused attention without overlap.
Weekly Design: A Rhythm That Works
Monday – CEO Mode
- Set 3 weekly objectives
- Check metrics and financials
- Define your non-negotiables
Tuesday–Thursday – Build & Scale
- Block 3-hour sprints of focused work
- No calls or meetings before 2pm
- Use Pomodoro blocks with planned breaks
Friday – Reflection & Delegation
- What moved the business forward?
- What slowed you down?
- Delegate or delete what didn’t serve the week
This rhythm creates momentum, protects your energy, and builds habits of growth-focused execution.
Optimise With Tools, Not Distractions
Project Management
- ClickUp: Combines tasks, docs, goals, and timelines
- Notion: Great for second brains and operating manuals
- Motion: AI-powered calendar + task prioritisation
Automation
- Zapier: Link apps and automate workflows
- Make.com: More complex logic across systems
- TextExpander: Type less, reply faster
Focus Management
- Serene or Focusmate: Create accountability for deep work
- Cold Turkey: Block time-wasting sites during work hours
Tools should multiply your time, not steal it. Review your tech stack quarterly. Cancel what doesn’t move the needle.
Meetings: The Silent Killer Of Momentum
Do You Really Need That Meeting?
Before booking, ask:
- Can this be an email or Loom video?
- Is the decision already made?
- Will this improve execution this week?
Then apply this:
- Cap all meetings at 25 minutes unless essential
- No status updates unless automated
- Use agendas. End with clear action points.
The Shopify team now charges departments a “meeting tax” — a symbolic cost every time a meeting is booked with multiple people. It reframes time as a valuable budget.
(Source: Shopify newsroom)
Burnout Prevention = Growth Acceleration
Working longer hours won’t scale your business. It’ll just steal your clarity.
According to a 2023 McKinsey report, 66% of business leaders say burnout has negatively affected their strategic thinking. Your role is to steer, not grind. And that starts with rest.
Build In Breaks
- A full lunch break with no screen
- 15 minutes of fresh air or walking between deep work
- 1–2 ‘offline hours’ every evening
Recharge Rituals
- Weekly planning session with a coffee
- Friday wind-down review
- Monthly “no work” half-day to reset vision
Burnout isn’t just a personal cost. It’s a business risk.
Delegation Is Not Optional
You are not the best person for everything.
Ask:
- What am I currently doing that someone else could do 80% as well?
- What are the tasks I dread — and why am I still doing them?
Then delegate. Use Loom to train. Use SOPs to document. Invest in your team like you would in a marketing campaign — because that’s what it is: an investment in leverage.
Invest In A Business? First, Buy Back Your Time
Many founders explore how to invest in startups or invest in small business strategies — and that’s smart.
But your first investment should always be in your own time efficiency. That means hiring key team members, using automation, or saying no more often.
Time leverage is the compound interest of founder performance. Small changes today lead to massive payoff over months and years.
Real-World Case Study: Automattic’s Async Culture
Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) scaled past 1,000 employees without a single internal email. Their fully remote, asynchronous structure lets staff work when they’re most productive.
- Daily updates in shared P2 threads (like blogs)
- No default meetings
- Deep trust in written communication
The result? A globally distributed team that moves fast without micromanagement.
(Source: The Year Without Pants by Scott Berkun)
Work-Life Harmony, Not Balance
Forget the myth of perfect balance. You’re not aiming for equal time — you’re aiming for intentional time.
Redesign Your Day Around Energy, Not Time
- When are you most alert? Do deep work then.
- When do you crash? Don’t schedule decisions during that time.
- What drains vs. fuels you?
Build your calendar around rhythm, not rigidity.
Final Thought: Lead With Time, Not Tasks
You don’t need more hacks. You need better habits.
Time management is not about squeezing more in. It’s about giving yourself the space to think, to lead, and to grow. The founders who scale successfully aren't working 16-hour days — they’re making sharper decisions, faster, with less mental noise.
If you want to invest in business growth, start by reclaiming your most powerful asset.
5 Actionable Next Steps
- Track 7 Days of Time: Use Toggl or Clockify. Don’t judge — just log.
- Create a Time Budget: Apply categories (deep work, meetings, admin, etc.) and set weekly targets.
- Automate One Repetitive Task: Use Zapier or Make to eliminate friction.
- Redesign Your Ideal Week: Time block your calendar based on priorities, not availability.
- Book a Burnout Break: Set a 4-hour CEO reset block for next week. Use it to think, not do.
