Introduction: Why You Are the CEO of Your Life

An effective CEO leads a company with intention, clarity, and discipline. Those who do this run successful companies with satisfied customers and highly engaged employees. Truly effective CEOs are also masters of themselves.

I encourage you to embrace the idea that you can master yourself and lead a more effective and engaging life by seeing yourself as the CEO of your life. This means taking ownership of your health, time, goals, and choices.

Think of this like having four “departments” you manage: health, time management, goal setting, and decision making. Mastering each of these departments leads to a better life.

Health: Managing Your Energy Like a Vital Asset

Just like a CEO prioritizes business sustainability, you must protect your health to ensure long-term performance. An unhealthy company will struggle and may go out of business. In the case of your life, unhealthy habits can derail your life and make you less effective. If you are unhealthy or otherwise not in top shape, you will have a much harder time leading and motivating yourself. If you are healthy, you will have a strong foundation to lead from.

View energy and wellness as your “operating system.” What goes into your operating system determines the effectiveness of the results you get in life. If you live on junk food and fast food, you will be unhealthy and will have a less effective operating system. If instead you eat well and exercise regularly, you will operate at increased capacity and will feel better overall.

To operate at peak efficiency, prioritize sleep, movement, nutrition, and stress management. Conduct regular “health reviews” just like a performance review – track what’s working and what needs adjustment. This way you will understand what is and is not working in your life, and you can make changes to improve yourself.

Action tip: Schedule your workouts and meal prep like meetings you can’t miss. This makes you intentional with your health and you won’t be leaving your health to chance.

Time Management: Controlling the Clock Like a CEO

CEOs don’t let others run their calendar – you shouldn’t either. Everything that you decide to do should be in alignment with your long-term goals and ambitions. They should be items that move you forward in fulfilling your responsibilities and improving your life. They should be actions that bring you closer to fulfilling your goals.

Treat time as a non-renewable resource. Use it intentionally. If you waste time, you can never get it back, so use your time wisely. This is not to say that you always have to be on the go. Having fun and relaxing is important as well. Ultimately, you should always use your time intentionally to move closer to achieving goals. That can include time for rest and relaxation as well.

Build systems: time blocking, prioritization (e.g., Eisenhower Matrix), and focused work sprints. This will help you to make progress on your top goals and responsibilities. For example, working in sprints is about picking a period of time, such as a week, and focusing on a subset of your goals and priorities during that sprint. And time blocking is scheduled blocks of time to work on goal or task as a focused block of time.

Audit your calendar: are you spending time in ways that align with your priorities? If you keep track of what you do every day and every week, you can identify patterns in your life. If you don’t like what you see, you can make changes to adjust those patterns and to improve your effectiveness.

For example, if you find yourself spending too much time on entertainment, you can make plans to increase the time you spend working on your priorities each week by reducing the time you spend on non-productive activities. You could even schedule specific blocks of time each week for recreation and specific blocks of time for working on your priorities. This way you get the best of both worlds: time spent improving yourself and time spent enjoying yourself.

Action tip: Start each week with a CEO-style planning session – set your top 3 priorities and structure your time accordingly. This will be your focus for the week. I also create daily action plans every Sunday, where I decide on the key items I will act on each day of the week.

Goal Setting: Leading with Vision and Purpose

CEOs have a clear vision and measurable goals – you should too. This gives you a direction to move towards in life and it can be motivating to have exciting goals to work towards. For example, I love being a member of Toastmasters International and I aspire to serve at the highest levels of leadership for my Toastmasters district. I have developed a clear vision based on that goal which has me slowly moving up the ranks in district leadership over the next four years, starting with the role of Club Growth Director for the July 2025 to June 2026 Toastmasters year.

Set quarterly personal goals the way companies set strategic objectives. This will give you a focus every three months. You can then break down your quarterly goals into monthly and weekly goals that will move you closer to achieving your long-term goals.

Use SMART or OKR-style frameworks for personal clarity and accountability. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound. OKR sounds for Objectives and Key Results. Both are powerful goal setting frameworks that can help you set more specific goals that have key results you want to achieve.

Break big goals into manageable action steps and review progress regularly. For example, you can start with large, long-term goals that may take several months or even years to achieve. You can then brainstorm and identify smaller, shorter-term goals that you complete in days or weeks that will move you closer to your longer-term goals.

Action tip: Create a personal scorecard or dashboard to track goals in key areas of your life. Keep track of your progress and review your progress regularly. This will help you to review if you are moving towards or away from your goals, and this allows you to make adjustments to bring you back on track.

Decision Making: Steering with Clarity and Confidence

CEOs make tough choices with data and conviction – you can too. This means understanding the nature of the problems and opportunities in your life, and making the right decisions, which are not always the obvious or easy choices. Making the right decisions requires you that you analyze the situation and make more informed decisions, rather than reacting without thinking.

Avoid “decision fatigue” by simplifying routines and using frameworks (e.g., pros/cons, values alignment, opportunity cost). For example, you can review an important decision you need to make by reviewing all of the positive and negative outcomes that will occur if you move ahead with that decision. If the cons outweigh the pros, then you may be better off choosing not to proceed. However, if the decision will bring your top goals to fruition, then you may consider moving forward despite some of the potential negative outcomes.

Evaluate decisions based on your long-term vision, not short-term comfort. For example, we looked at health earlier in this article. When it comes to choosing what to eat, picking the easy choice of fast food will lead to instant gratification, but longer term this decision could sabotage your health goals.

Learn to say “no” strategically to protect your priorities. For example, other people may make requests on your time. If you can accommodate their request without sacrificing your top priorities, then it is ok to say yes. However, if you always accommodate other people’s requests, you may end up not having time to work on your most important goals and priorities.

Action tip: Use a weekly reflection process to review recent decisions and improve future ones. I do this by doing what a call a weekly retrospective, and I do this every Sunday. I evaluate and review my experiences during the week, and I reflect on what I learned and how I can improve. I have even used ChatGPT to generate weekly reflection questions that help me evaluate and learn from my experiences.

Conclusion: Run Your Life with Intention, Not By Default

In this article we looked at four “departments” (health, time, goals, and decisions). To be effective in each of these departments, you need to act intentionally and lead yourself effectively.

You’re not just living – you’re leading your life. Just like great companies are built through consistent leadership, your life will improve with consistent self-leadership.

Which area of your life needs a leadership upgrade – health, time, goals, or decision-making? Pick one, take action this week, and watch what happens when you start leading like a CEO.