Hi Anna,
My typical working day covers 3 main activities – meetings (both external and internal), planning/think-time and undertaking tasks that can’t be delegated. Client entertainment is also a regular activity but not every day. Meetings normally take most of the time of a CEO. The first type of meetings is pre-scheduled and pre-arranged for weeks or even month before, incuding both internal regular meetings such as operating committee meetings, monthly sale meetings, project-based meetings, and pre-booked external meetings with clients, partners. My PA helps to schedule and arrange these meetings for me. The second type is internal meetings arranged during the day, in which I assign new tasks to my direct reports or to solve the ad-hoc issues. In many cases, I also have to use lunch time as working lunches, where I meet and discuss with my direct reports. Lunch time is aso normally used for client entertainment or networking. Since meetings take much of my time, undertaking tasks that can’t be delegated is a challenge. I normally handle these tasks at the end of a working day. Despite of how much busy I am, I always spend 20-30 minutes every day for think time/planning. This is a good habit I started a year ago, which helps me to think and and plan ahead.