In the age of the distraction economy—the one so many of us currently find ourselves in—it’s time to consider that the concept of time management is a myth.
Great leaders don’t merely manage calendars or time. Instead, they master moments. If you feel overwhelmed, distracted, and constantly playing catch-up, odds are it’s because you have been managing tasks (and your time) instead of your overall time behaviors.
To feel as though you are finally getting ahead with your calendar, you should contemplate evolving from merely being a good time manager to becoming a Chief Moment Master.
Defend Your Prime Time
When did you last analyze your calendar with ruthless selfishness? Identify blocks of uninterrupted time you can protect fiercely. Maybe it’s thirty minutes at the start and end of each workday—blocked, private, untouchable—to strategize, reflect, or just breathe. Perhaps it’s reserving your Friday afternoons as meeting-free zones.
Treat these moments as sacred; communicate their importance clearly to your team. Protecting prime time frees you from the relentless cycles of meetings, busy work, and perpetual reactions.
Be Fully Present
Being a Chief Moment Master demands absolute presence. Stop pretending to listen while secretly checking texts, emails, or editing that slide deck. Shut your laptop and silence all notifications. Listen with intent. Your half-presence guarantees inefficiency.
When you are not fully present, you spend twice as long later, scrambling to catch details you missed the first time. Even minor interruptions cause people to take longer to finish tasks and degrade the overall quality of their work. In one study, 96% of participants performed worse after being interrupted.
Multitasking and frequent task-switching deplete attention resources, making it harder to process information the first time. As a Stanford report suggests, it leads to rereading, forgetting, and needing to revisit tasks, which extends the total time spent.
Being fully present—perhaps ironically—saves precious blocks of more moments in your calendar.
Practice Daily Mindfulness
Being perpetually “on” isn’t impressive; it’s exhausting. Mastering your moments means intentionally stepping back, even briefly.
Try a ten-minute midday reset. Slip in your earbuds, cue instrumental music, close your eyes, and breathe. Or get up from your desk and take a quick solo walk outdoors, clearing your mental clutter and recharging your focus.
Brief mindfulness breaks might feel indulgent, but they are essential investments that sharpen your clarity, effectiveness, and decision-making.
Set Clear Communication Boundaries
Email and messaging tools are powerful, but they have become tyrants. You can’t master moments if you’re constantly tethered to notifications. A 2024 study by musicMagpie found that the average person receives 146 phone notifications daily, which equates to about one notification every ten minutes. That is unlikely to decrease in the future. What to do?
First, you need to become selfish. Establish strict boundaries and choose fixed daily intervals to process and reply to communications.
Maybe you handle your emails by limiting it to three check-in times daily—morning, midday, late afternoon. Inform your colleagues explicitly about these boundaries. Clear expectations ensure you’re no longer held hostage by instantaneous responses, enabling focused, uninterrupted productivity.
Second, ask yourself if you have notification-itis. (Inflammation of the notification.) If your mobile phone and laptop are set to notify you with every single possible notification—from emails, texts, DMs, and social media—there is a high degree of certainty you will never become a Chief Moment Master.
Respect Your Sleep
Leaders who boast that they can survive on only four hours of sleep are as rare as an ice storm in Nevada. The National Sleep Foundation confirms adults need seven to nine hours nightly for optimal functioning.
Persistent lack of sleep slowly erodes your cognitive clarity, emotional resilience, and efficiency. You must guard your rest zealously. Prioritizing sleep isn’t laziness; it’s foundational to mastering your waking moments. Quality sleep is the secret ingredient to sustained effectiveness throughout your day. More sleep, more quality moments.
Summarize Your Thoughts
General Motors CEO Alfred Sloan understood that moments matter, so he developed a disciplined habit: the concise follow-up memo.
Immediately after meetings, Sloan would craft brief summaries detailing key points, decisions, and action items. Why? To prevent future confusion.
To become a Chief Moment Master, why not Adopt Sloan’s method. Use email or an app or even a moleskin book and summarize what’s entered your brain right away. You will eliminate unnecessary follow-ups and confusion later on. Investing five minutes in the meeting (or after it) saves you countless moments down the line, preventing wasted hours spent reconstructing forgotten details.
Evaluate Regularly and Ruthlessly
Finally, Chief Moment Masters consistently re-evaluate their habits. Every month, briefly audit your calendar and your existing time behaviors and habits. Ask yourself: what’s working and, conversely, what is draining your energy? Adjust your habits with regularity and accordingly.
Perhaps certain prime-time blocks are ineffective and need shifting. Maybe specific meetings habitually overrun and require stricter boundaries. Regular evaluation keeps you agile, continuously optimizing how effectively you spend each valuable moment.
Mastering moments is not about cramming more tasks into your day. Become the Chief Moment Master is about intentionally controlling what deserves your attention.
Adopt these behaviors consistently, and you’ll stop merely managing your time. Instead, you’ll become the Chief Moment Master your calendar—and your life—desperately needs.