4 Tools for Government Leaders to Budget Time Like Money—Before It’s Spent for You

Time is your most limited public resource. Here’s how to use it like it matters.

If time were tracked like money, most leaders would be bankrupt.

Every year, government leaders go line by line through financial budgets, defending every dollar. Budgets are scrutinized, debated, and justified. The goal is always to allocate resources wisely and avoid waste. But when it comes to time, the most finite, non-renewable resource, we give it away freely. Meetings with no agenda. Reports no one reads. Days are swallowed by inboxes and fire drills. We guard our money but leak our time.

As a leader, I’ve seen firsthand how unchecked calendars can derail even the best strategies. We pride ourselves on fiscal responsibility, but we rarely apply the same rigor to how we spend our hours.

The Time Leak Leaders Ignore

Here’s the paradox: leaders know time is precious, yet they treat it like it’s free. You wouldn’t spend $10,000 without knowing its return. Why spend 10 hours that way? Treating time as currency means tracking it, assigning value, and making intentional tradeoffs. But most public leaders don’t have a clear framework to do that. Time, unlike money, isn’t visible in spreadsheets or quarterly reviews. It gets lost in the margins.

Run a Time Audit

Start here: run a time audit like a budget audit. Where is your time going? What are the hidden costs—decision fatigue, duplicated efforts, reactive scheduling? Map your calendar for a week. Categorize tasks into strategic, operational, and administrative. You’ll likely find that your highest-value work is squeezed between interruptions and obligations. Once you see your time-spending patterns, you can reallocate. Delegate, automate, or eliminate. Just like dollars, hours should be invested, not just spent.

Bonus tip: color-code your meetings so you can visually associate your time commitments.

Align Time with Role

This isn’t about hustle culture or squeezing more into the day. It’s about aligning your time with your role. A county administrator stuck in tactical loops isn’t leading at the strategic level. A public safety leader who can’t find an hour for proactive planning is constantly in crisis mode. Scaling your time means protecting it through better boundaries, smarter systems, and empowered teams.

Your Calendar Is a Strategic Document

The result isn’t just efficiency, it’s clarity. When time becomes visible, it becomes manageable. Your calendar tells a story about your priorities. Is it aligned with what matters most? Are you showing up where you’re needed most? If not, it’s time for a new budget. Just as we cut unnecessary spending to balance a financial budget, we must cut distractions to balance our time.

Time is the most honest reflection of your strategy.

You can’t fake where your hours go.

If you want to lead with intention, start treating your hours like your dollars. Because once time is spent, there’s no getting it back. And for leaders charged with public trust, that’s too high a price to ignore.

If you want to explore this further, you may be interested in my free five-day email education course on Productive Email Systems. Mistake #4 specifically touches upon Calendar Pollution. Sign up here