We talk a lot about strategy, scaling, and “making it,” but I wanted to know about the reality behind the title. On a day-to-day basis, how do others spend their most of the time?
Is most of your time spent in meetings, handling issues, reviewing work, managing vendors or budgets, or stepping in when things break?
Interested in hearing how different roles and environments shape the day-to-day work.
How are you guys actually spending your time?
byu/Reddit_INDIA_MOD inEntrepreneur
Posted by Reddit_INDIA_MOD
9 Comments
Honestly, this is the truth most people relate to but don’t say. I have two days a week where I’m focused and getting everything done. The rest is just meetings and keeping things running. It takes time to build a team you can trust to work like this, but it’s worth it.
Honestly like 60% of my time is putting out fires that could’ve been avoided with better systems, 30% is actual strategic work, and 10% is pretending to understand whatever my developer is explaining to me
Honestly, my lunch is always 4-5 hours late. I feel like my time is to solve problems with others. And since one of the firm (that is taking so much time) is start up, stretagy is in the head – implimetantion is real headache. I sometimes feel, I am an operation manager, admin manager, HR manager and everything in between.
But thats what start up is all about – eventually, once the dust will clear – I wont have so much of work in this business.
PS : I own 4 businesses, the one that is taking most of my time is one I recently started.
When it’s unclear which task actually moves the needle, tackles the bottleneck, or impacts revenue, everything starts to feel equally important.
That’s when we get stuck in constant firefighting reacting instead of progressing.
What helps is having simple systems that take emotion out of daily decisions.
One framework I use (and share with founders I work with) is a decision filter:
Does this task directly attack the current bottleneck or drive revenue?
If yes → do it.
If no → kill it, defer it, or delegate it.
10% regular meetings, 10% handling emails (I forward a lot), 10% making calls, 50% strategy & implementation, 20% visiting colleagues (small talk / dinners / parties) to stay in touch with the workforce.
1% work, 99% freedom.
I think about this alot, I got goodrevenue and profit but the product, customers and business is so boring everything just works with little inputs, drives me insane- I wanna do shit!
Great question. For most roles it’s a mix of deep work, coordination, and frequent context switching. As responsibilities grow, time usually shifts from hands on work to alignment and decision making.
Mostly putting out fires and babysitting clients. I spend about 6 hours a day on Slack or in meetings that should have been an email. Real strategy and deep work only happen after 5 PM when people finally stop tagging me in things. It is basically glorified project management with some spreadsheets thrown in.