Derek Sivers, entrepreneur and author, has a provocative take on being “busy”:
“Every time people contact me, they say, ‘Look, I know you must be incredibly busy…’ and I always think, ‘No, I’m not.’ Because I’m in control of my time. I’m on top of it. ‘Busy,’ to me, seems to imply ‘out of control.’ Like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so busy. I don’t have any time for this shit!’ To me, that sounds like a person who’s got no control over their life.”
He’s right. Lack of time is really lack of priorities. When I catch myself feeling “busy,” it’s a signal that I need to reexamine my systems and rules.
Every leader needs a method to stay organized. It’s absolutely essential. The method is your choosing, and I’ll share mine soon, but succeeding without a system for managing your tasks, time, and communication is nearly impossible. It doesn’t need to be fancy – I know a great leader who has an old school planner with little stickers that represent important reminders. She will carry it with her to every meeting and it’s fun to watch her put a sticker on a particular day. She never misses a deadline.
My preferred method is a digital ecosystem utilizing whichever tools your organization has adopted. For us, and many others, it’s Microsoft. If you’re in a Google Workspace environment, the principles are the same—the tools just have different names.
My Setup
Below is my setup and some helpful tips for utilizing each:
A Task Manager (I use Microsoft To Do)
This is your master to-do list. Anytime you think of something that needs to get done, add it here. Some leaders prefer pen and paper, rewriting their list fresh each morning—that works too. The beauty of MS To Do (or comparable digital tools) is the “add to my day” feature. You can pull specific tasks into your daily focus without your entire list overwhelming you.
Below is a screengrab from my Task manager. You can see that I have 46 tasks on my list, 6 of which I have added to my day. You’ll also notice I have one task marked as Important which is critical I complete ASAP, 5 that are in “Planned” which have specific due dates and 3 Flagged emails which comes directly from Microsoft Outlook.
Email Management (Microsoft Outlook)
Speaking of Outlook, I know many leaders who excel at inbox management—I’m not one of them. Below is a screengrab from someone who is (with a fairy tale twist to protect anonymity):
Look at that organization! Folders, subfolders, a clean inbox sorted by date. It’s beautiful. My approach is much simpler, perhaps to the frustration of my colleagues: I leave emails unread if I need to address them, and I don’t categorize. It works for me, but I’ll be the first to admit it’s not a system worth replicating.
Outlook has powerful features that can transform your email management if you’re willing to invest the time:
- Rules and filters to automatically sort incoming messages
- Categories and folders to organize by project, priority, or sender
- Flagged emails that sync directly to your task manager (as you saw in my To Do screenshot)
- Quick Steps to automate common actions
If email management is something you want to master, I recommend checking out tutorials by Mike Tholfsen on YouTube. He’s a Microsoft MVP with excellent guides on Outlook productivity. He’s far better at this than I’ll ever be.
Calendar Management (Microsoft Outlook Calendar)
Although I struggle with inbox management, I do rely heavily on Outlook Calendar. I try to plan my week in advance, working with my team to coordinate schedules. Start with recurring meetings—your 1-on-1s, leadership meetings, standing team check-ins. These create structure. I also block calendar time for admin work like payroll, though I’ve learned to hold those blocks loosely. The business will interrupt, and that’s okay.
Shared calendars are only powerful when everyone actually uses them. When your team keeps their calendars updated, scheduling becomes effortless. Need to meet with three people? You can see everyone’s availability instantly and book it. No back-and-forth email threads asking “Does Thursday at 3pm work?”
Below is a sample calendar once again from Fairy Tale land 🙂
A few practices that help me stay on top of my calendar:
Plan tomorrow before you leave today. Before I leave each day, I take 10 minutes to review tomorrow’s calendar alongside my To Do list. In hospitality, you can’t always predict what your morning will hold, but this quick scan helps me prepare for what’s coming and adjust if needed.
Protect your white space. Block time for what’s important—recurring 1-on-1s, guest interactions, focused project work—but don’t pack every minute. Burnout is real. Moving from meeting to meeting without a break takes a toll and I’ve learned that 10 or 15 minutes between commitments can be very healthy. Sometimes I use this time to seek out “watercooler” chat to give my mind a chance to decompress.
My Favorite Tool: OneNote
Think of OneNote as your digital binder with sections, tabs and pages (after a few months of use it’s more like a file cabinet than a binder). The best part is that it automatically syncs with other MS products across all of your devices. I use OneNote heavily on desktop throughout the day and then open it on my tablet for meetings. Below are some of my use cases:
I recommend adding to each section as the day goes on. For example, if you have a weekly meeting on Oct 7th, you might start the OneNote page for that meeting on October 1st. Let’s say on October 3rd you have a thought of something to discuss in the 10.7 meeting, you can now add it to that page so you don’t forget.
After the daily Ops meeting, the page may look like this:
Putting It All Together
The tools don’t matter as much as the commitment. You could use Microsoft To Do and OneNote like me, a paper planner with stickers like my colleague, or something entirely different. What matters is having a system and using it consistently.
Start small. Pick one tool—a task manager, a note-taking system, a calendar practice. Implement it this week. Then add another. Build the habits that keep you in control of your time instead of letting your time control you.
