Your Calendar Is Lying to You: 5 Steps to Take Back Your Time as a Business Owner

If you’re running a $1M–$6M business, there’s a good chance your calendar isn’t helping you—it’s hurting you.

I see it all the time: business owners stuck in back‑to‑back meetings, putting out fires that aren’t theirs to fight, and solving everyone else’s emergencies because they haven’t built the processes or guardrails to step back.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if you’re always available, your team will let you keep solving their problems. But when you step away and create the right guardrails, you’ll find something surprising—the company doesn’t burn down.

It’s time to take back control. Here are five proven steps I’ve used for nearly a decade to help business owners reclaim their time and lead with clarity.

1. Turn Off Your Notifications

This may sound small, but it’s the most powerful first step.

Stop letting your phone and inbox control your attention. Turn off email notifications. Turn off social media pings. In fact, I haven’t had work email on my phone for nearly 10 years—and nothing has burned down.

Emergencies? Real ones get a phone call or a text. Everything else can wait until you’re ready to deal with it.

2. Audit Your Week

Pull up last week’s calendar and be brutally honest.

• Which meetings actually needed you there?

• Which ones could someone else have handled?

• Which ones were simply a waste of time?

If a meeting has more than 15 people in it, you almost certainly don’t need to be there. And if it has more than four? Question it.

3. Block the Non‑Negotiables

Before you let your calendar fill with other people’s priorities, schedule your non-negotiables first.

• Time for creative work

• In‑person connection with your team

• Personal priorities (family, health, thinking time)

This creates the foundation for a workweek where you lead proactively instead of just reacting to whatever hits your inbox.

4. Set Guardrails

Decide what your workday looks like—and stick to it.

I have two kids (with a third on the way), so when I close my laptop at the end of the day, I’m done. Unless it’s a true revenue‑impacting emergency, work stays at work.

Set boundaries for when you start, when you end, and how you engage. Your business will adapt—and your team will rise to the challenge.

5. Institute “Kill Zones”

This is one of my favorite tactics: identify the meetings and tasks that simply don’t need to exist—and kill them.

Sometimes you’ll need to temporarily over‑deliver (for example, running daily updates for 30 days after a key resignation) but then phase those things out.

The more you eliminate unnecessary noise, the more space you create for real leadership.

The Unexpected Truth

The more meetings you decline, the more gets done.

When you take your hands off every small problem, you create space for your team to figure it out—and they often rise to the occasion in ways you didn’t expect.

Try It

If you’re ready to reclaim your time, step out of the chaos, and lead with clarity, my 4‑week Leadership Reset program was built for you.

It’s designed to help business owners like you reset your calendar, restructure your schedule, and lead your company (and your life) with intention.

👉Learn more about Leadership Reset here

Your Calendar Isn’t Full. It’s Broken.

Most business owners I talk to think their problem is lack of time.

“I just need to get more efficient.”
“If I could hire one more person…”
“Once this project is over…”

But the truth is, time isn’t your problem: your calendar is.

And not because it’s full. Because it’s broken.

You’re Not Managing a Calendar—It’s Managing You

Here’s the test: open your calendar right now; or think about your schedule for next week.

How much of it reflects what you actually want? Your priorities? The things that increase revenue or build up your personal life?

How much of it is:

• Noisy meetings to fix what others broke?

• Calls from your team waiting for you to make decisions for them?

• Commitments you didn’t want to make?

For most business owners, their schedule doesn’t look like leadership. It looks like a scramble. Backed into a corner, up against the ropes, ducking punches and doing whatever you can to get your own jabs out.

A Christian Brothers Franchise Owner I met yesterday said, “I’m in the thick of it pretty much every day of my life.”

That’s why they’re exhausted. That’s why they’re starting to resent the very thing they built.

The Hidden Cost of a Hijacked Calendar

A reactive calendar doesn’t just cost you time. It costs you clarity and sabotages your ability and credibility to lead. You spend most of your day leaking out focus.

You lose the margin to think deeply, to lead intentionally.

It costs you presence. You come home barely there and mentally gone.

It costs you integrity. If your schedule doesn’t reflect your convictions—if your kids, your health, your faith are always pushed to “later”—then you’re living fractured, successful on paper but misaligned in reality.

And most owners don’t even know what to call this. They think it’s “hustle.”

It’s not hustle. It’s a hijacked life.

Taking Back Your Calendar

How do you fix it?

1. Turn OFF Notifications: I know this sounds terrifying. You’ll live and your business will live. Our goal is to create an intentional work space were we go to it and start leading. Not where we constantly bleed attention and worry.

2. Audit Last Week: Look at every block on your calendar. Was it actually impacting revenue? Was it a task that belonged to the owner? If not, cut it or delegate it.

3. Block the Non-Negotiables First: Make it a habit to NOT go into emails for the first two hours of the day. Spend time with your managers, and hear things in person. Also add blocks for faith, family, and fitness. If they don’t get done first, they’ll get bumped to never.

4. Put Guard Rails Up: Fit your work into 8-10 hours per day. Work during those 8-10 hours. And when they’re up, leave it on the desk! I’ve run worldwide operations multiple times. The work is always there for you tomorrow.

5. Institute Kill Zones: Identify meetings or tasks that simply don’t need to exist. Say no. Cancel them. Tell your senior leaders to work out get-well plans and present them to you in batches.

Unexpected Truth: The more you decline tasks and meetings as an owner, the more your teams get done...without you gripping hold of it.

This isn’t about squeezing more into your days. It’s about building a week that actually reflects who you are and what matters.

If your days feel out of control, you don’t need more hours.
You need ownership.

Because until you take back your calendar, you’re not leading a business.
You’re being dragged behind one.

Want to take control of this again? Start your Leadership Reset today.