How top COOs use four steps to get more done in less time

Executive overview

Most time management fails because people treat all tasks as theirs to do. Parkinson's law means work expands to fill the time allocated — so the container you set determines the output.

The fix: constrain time and money budgets upfront, prioritise ruthlessly, and delegate 80% of hours to others.

The goal is to work only on the critical few, not the important many.

Applying Parkinson's law to delegation

• When delegating, state how much time you want spent — not how long you think it will take.
• "Don't spend more than 15 minutes on this memo" gets compliance; "it'll only take an hour" invites pushback.
• Apply the same logic to budgets: give a spending ceiling, and people find ways to work within it.
• Smaller containers produce faster, cheaper results without sacrificing the outcome.

Building and filtering the to-do list

• Write down everything that needs doing — this is the to-do list, not your to-do list.
• Go through each item and assign an A or B priority.
• Number the A's (A1, A2, A3…) by order of impact; then number the B's.
• This entire prioritisation exercise takes four to five minutes.

Estimating and reality-checking your week

• Assign a time estimate (in 15-minute increments) to each task.
• Total the hours — you will almost certainly not have enough calendar time to do everything.
• That gap is the signal: most of the list should not be done by you.

Delegating 80% of the work

• Hand off 80% of the total hours to team members, freelancers, or outsourced help.
• Invest a few minutes coaching others on skills or confidence so they can absorb the work.
• What remains is your focused time on the highest-impact A1 items only.