Welcome to your journey in Managing Executive Time and Priorities with Confidence.

Managing your executive’s time isn’t just about keeping a calendar organized — it’s about becoming their trusted partner and strategic gatekeeper. As the person who protects your executive’s focus and helps them navigate competing demands, you have a direct impact on their productivity and the success of your organization. Your ability to prioritize, communicate clearly, and set boundaries shapes how effectively your executive and the team can achieve their goals.

Throughout this course, you’ll discover the art and science of executive time management from the perspective of an executive assistant. You’ll see that your role goes far beyond scheduling meetings or triaging emails. You’ll learn how to:

• Balance priorities with realistic timeframes to protect your executive’s productivity.
• Exercise sound judgment without overpromising or overcommitting.
• Recognize when and how to say “no” with professionalism and tact to honor existing priorities.
• Communicate scheduling constraints clearly while offering alternative solutions for effective time management.

In this unit, you’ll dive into the foundations of setting realistic timeframes and expectations. You’ll explore practical strategies, real-world examples, and hands-on practice to help you prioritize effectively, communicate with confidence, and keep your executive (and your team) focused on what matters most. By the end, you’ll be ready to manage executive time and priorities with clarity, confidence, and impact!

Setting realistic timeframes is your superpower. It’s how you keep things moving forward without burning out your executive (or yourself). When you’re faced with a packed schedule, your first move is to figure out what truly matters most. Ask yourself: “What will move the business forward today?” That’s your north star for prioritizing!

Let’s say your executive has a board meeting and a routine check-in on the same day. The board meeting almost always comes first. But it’s not just about what’s urgent — it’s about what has the biggest impact. Use this lens to sort and stack tasks, so the most important work always gets done.

Smart scheduling is about more than just plugging meetings into open spaces. It’s about building a calendar that works for your executive’s unique style and energy. That means:

• Adding travel time and buffer periods between meetings.
• Protecting focus blocks when your executive does their best thinking.
• Avoiding back-to-back meetings, especially during their most productive hours.

For example:
"10:00-11:00am: Client Meeting (includes 15 min travel buffer), 11:15-12:00pm: Focused Work Block."

This approach gives your executive time to transition, recharge, and show up at their best — not just for one meeting, but all day long.

When everything feels urgent, it’s easy to get caught in a cycle of saying “yes” to every request. But that’s not sustainable for you or your executive. So how do you decide what is realistic and handle urgency?

A powerful tool for this is the Eisenhower Matrix, which helps you quickly sort tasks by urgency and importance:

• Urgent & Important: Do these first (critical deadlines, crises).
• Important, Not Urgent: Schedule these for focused work (strategic projects, planning).
• Urgent, Not Important: Delegate if possible (interruptions, some emails).
• Not Urgent, Not Important: Eliminate or defer (busywork, distractions).

When a last-minute request comes in, use the matrix to assess where it fits.

For example, if a team needs a proposal by tomorrow but key contributors are out, you need to decide: Is this truly both urgent and important, or can it be rescheduled to ensure quality? The Eisenhower Matrix gives you a framework to make that call and communicate it with confidence.

Here’s how this might look in action:

• Jake: Hi Chris, I noticed you want the client proposal sent by tomorrow, but the design team is out and we’re still waiting on some key data.
• Chris: I know it’s tight, but this is a high-priority client. Is there any way we can make it work?
• Jake: I completely understand the urgency. To ensure the proposal meets our standards, I recommend we aim for end of day Thursday. That gives us time to gather the missing pieces and deliver a strong draft.
• Chris: That makes sense. Thanks for flagging it early and offering a solution.
• Jake: Absolutely. I’ll keep you updated if anything changes, and I’ll make sure the team is aligned on the new timeline.

How does this use the Eisenhower Matrix?
Jake recognizes that while the request feels urgent, delivering a high-quality proposal is also important. He weighs both factors and realizes that rushing would compromise quality (important), even though the deadline feels pressing . By suggesting a new timeline, he's prioritizing what’s both urgent and important — but on a realistic schedule — and communicating that clearly. He doesn’t just react to urgency; he uses sound judgment to protect the quality of the work and the executive’s reputation.