What a Room Full of Executive Women Reminded Me About Time Management
In this episode, I talk about:
Why time management is really a prioritization problem
The hidden cost of constant notifications and interruptions
My weekly planning system (and why I stopped forcing the same schedule every week)
Why small changes create ripple effects in your business, career, and leadership
The goal isn't to overhaul your entire routine overnight. It's to choose one thing, stay consistent for 30 days, and let that momentum build into something bigger.
I came into this week planning to talk about something completely different. And then I had one of those mornings filled with incredible conversations that shifted it all.
Once a month, I get to sit with a group of executive women here in Hickory, North Carolina. Directors of HR’s, VPs, high-level leaders doing the dang thing in their corporate companies. And I am the youngest in the room by many, many years. It has become one of my favorite places to be.
A little background on how this came to be: about a year ago, I was sharing my experience with masterminding in a one-on-one coaching session through a local leadership program I had invested in. The coach started asking questions and what unfolded over the next six months was a whole program. A year-long mastermind experience for executive women in the area, where I get to come in as the mastermind facilitator and expert each month.
Everything I love about my Immersions and IME has come full circle in the most beautiful way especially to be impacting high level corporate women leaders with the magic of masterminding.
During our session this month, we got into it around time management. And I want to be clear, this was not a presentation. It was a real conversation. Ideas flying, women sharing their actual struggles, and three things kept rising to the top that I knew I had to bring back to you.
Because whether you are a business owner, a side hustler still in corporate, or a full-time leader in your career, you need to hear this.
#1: The Notifications Are Stealing From You
We started by going around the table, each woman sharing where she struggles most with time management. And almost immediately, notifications came up.
Think about it. You are in a Zoom call, a Teams meeting, an in-person strategy session and in the background, emails are popping up, WhatsApp messages coming in, texts lighting up your laptop, your Apple Watch buzzing on your wrist.
We are constantly being pulled out of the moment we are supposed to be in.
The shift? Actually turn them off. Not just silence them. Turn them off.
During focus blocks
During meetings and Zoom calls
During any time you need to be fully present
This sounds simple and in what to do, it is. But most of us are not actually doing it. We think we are ignoring the notifications, but our brain registers every single one. That is where the energy goes before we even realize it.
#2 Stop Setting Recurring Blocks, Do This Instead
This one hit home for almost everyone in the room and is one thing I changed for myself about 3-4 months ago.
So many of us put a recurring "focus block" on our calendars one or more times each week and then let anyone and anything interrupt it anyway. If the block is there but we are not protecting it, it is just decoration on our calendar.
Two shifts came out of this conversation:
1. Create a "closed door" policy instead of an open door one.
If you are in an office or managing a team, communicate it clearly: "Every Tuesday and Thursday from one to three p.m., I am unavailable. That is my focus time and the reason I protect it is so that when I am available, I can show up fully for you."That reframe matters. You are not closing yourself off. You are protecting your capacity to actually be present.
2. Do weekly planning instead of recurring blocks.
This is what I started doing and it has changed everything. Every Friday afternoon or first thing Monday morning, I go to my calendar and plug things in for the week ahead.
When am I working out?
What does my travel look like and how does that shift my schedule?
What are the two to three priorities (the actual needle-movers) for each day?
When you plan in real time, you stop setting yourself up for the disappointment of a Monday/Wednesday/Friday plan that falls apart the second your week does not go as expected. You work with your actual week, not a hypothetical one.
#3 Audit, Automate, Delegate, Release, and Record Everything
The third conversation was the one recently I have been actively working on myself even more so the last few weeks.
At some point (monthly, quarterly, twice a year), you have to sit down and do a real audit of your time. What do you actually need to be doing? What can be automated? What can be delegated? What can just be let go of entirely?
This is not a new concept. But the piece that never gets talked about enough is what happens after you decide to delegate.
One of the women in the room has a brand new team and a big retreat coming up to map out the year ahead. She knows what she needs to hand off. My next question to her was: "Have you set aside time to actually train them on it?"
Because that is where most of us get stuck. We know we need to delegate it. We just keep not doing it because training takes time, and we worry they will not do it the way we do it.
Here is what I told her and what I have been doing in my own business:
Record yourself doing it. Especially if you are actively doing the task yourself. And if it is someone else, ask them to record themself!
The next time you do a task you plan to hand off, this is what I would do:
Pull up Zoom or Loom, turn your camera off if you want, share your screen, and hit record.
Record yourself doing it while narrating your way through.
Send that video to the person you are training before you ever sit down together.
When you do meet to walk them through it, it is not the first time they have seen it. They already have questions. They already have a reference point. And when they forget later (they will, because we all do), they have the video to go back to.
The extra bonus? If that person ever leaves or you bring someone new on, the training video already exists.
This is something I have been leaning into heavily in my consulting business. It saves time, reduces back and forth, and honestly just makes you a better delegator.
One Thing. 30 Days.
I challenged every woman in that room to leave with one tool to start implementing… not five, not ten. One.
What is the one area of time management, prioritization, or energy that feels most out of alignment right now? Pick one thing to test for the next 30 days. Get consistent with it. See what shifts.
And know that when you start showing up differently, i.e. more present, more protected in your time, more clear on your priorities, the people around you will feel it. Your team, your family, and your clients will feel the ripple effect.
One More Thing Before You Go
If you are heading into a mastermind, retreat, conference, or any kind of event this fall, I want to make sure you actually walk away with something from it.
We consume and receive so much, but what matters most is choosing what is for us, releasing what is not, and prioritizing the 1-3 things we can actually implement and adopt.
My Event Integration Kitis a resource designed to help you take what you receive at events, masterminds, intimate retreats, etc. and actually implement it. It is the same framework I use in IME and the same process I took these women through today, narrowed down specifically to support you after any event you attend.
Grab it in the link above and if you are an event host with something coming up this fall, reach out to me directly. I would love to get this in front of your attendees. (Note: I am out on maternity leave October through December, so connect with me before September or after December 2026!)
Resources:
Connect on Instagram – @cat.roten and @imperfectly.impactful
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Download the Event Integration Kit
Cat Roten
Intuitive Leader & Mentor