Practical Leadership Micro-Change: Focus Blocks That Actually Create Time
Leadership requires more than doing time - it requires thinking time.
by Janet Ply, PhD · The Practical Leadership Newsletter · May 14, 2026
“What Did I Actually Accomplish Today?”
Many leaders are overwhelmed.
Days are packed with emails, meetings, chat messages, interruptions, and fire drills. They spend the entire day reacting, letting work happen to them, and go home exhausted wondering: “What did I actually accomplish today?”
I get it. I’ve been there and have burned out more than once in my career.
It’s easy to stay busy for 12-hour days and still not get to the highest-value leadership work. Reactive work expands to consume every open space on the calendar.
There’s So Much to Learn - Where Do I Even Start?
A group of high-achieving leaders recently completed my Practical Leadership Workshop with AI Prompts. It’s an intensive 40-hour program over 10 weeks covering leadership topics like accountability, difficult conversations, executive communication, strategic planning, productivity habits, and high-performing teams.
After teaching and coaching hundreds of leaders, one thing is clear: The number of skills leaders need can feel overwhelming.
Workshop participants routinely ask: “There’s so much to learn. What should I work on first?”
That’s why I’m starting a new series called Practical Leadership Micro-Change to give you small changes you can put into practice immediately.
Maybe you’re wondering how micro-changes can make much of a difference. I’m glad you asked!
The Magic Penny
In The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy talks about a Magic Penny. The question is: Would you rather be given a $3M lump sum or a penny that doubles in value every day for 30 days?
If you’re like me, I’d take the lump sum and run all the way to the bank. But, if you do the math (which I did because I didn’t believe it at first), the every day doubling penny is worth $5,242.88 by Day 20 and $5,367,709.12 on Day 30.
What’s interesting is that at first, the progress barely seems noticeable. On Day 10, the penny is only worth $5.12.
Leadership growth works the same way.
But over time, the skills add up, just like the magic penny and you start to notice that you’re feeling more confident in your leadership skills, people want to work for you, and your productivity and outcomes have increased.
Small behaviors. Repeated consistently. Over time.
Jim Rohn said it well: “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.”
If you pick just one microchange at a time to double-down on, over time, the results will be massive.
The First Micro-Change: Focus Blocks
The first one is Focus Blocks. Not just doing time. Thinking time.
If leaders never create thinking space, they stay reactive. They jump from issue to issue. They struggle to prioritize. They delay difficult conversations. They continue solving problems their team should own. And they often feel overwhelmed no matter how hard they work.
Don’t Overcomplicate It
Start out small at first - just block an hour on your calendar.
Then use that time for thinking about high value leadership work that you need to be doing. Here are a few ideas to consider:
- Clarify the top three priorities for myself and my team
- Plan work for a time period (next week, month)
- Set goals for the next quarter
- Identify work you can delegate to someone else
- Review your calendar and look for ways to optimize your meetings (combine, decline, shorten)
By using focused blocks of time to think more strategically, you’ll free up more time. Use that extra time to expand your focus blocks.
The Ripple Effects of Focus Blocks
Focused leadership time creates ripple effects for you and your teams (and beyond).
Better Prioritization and Less Wasted Time
You have time to determine priorities instead of reacting to whatever feels urgent in the moment. That helps ensure you and your team are working on the highest-value work instead of just staying busy.
More Delegation and Team Growth
You delegate more intentionally. Instead of holding onto everything yourself, you identify opportunities to develop others. That creates growth opportunities for your team while also freeing leadership capacity.
Better Decisions and Less Hair-on-Fire
You make better decisions because you finally have time to think through risks, tradeoffs, dependencies, and consequences. That reduces rework, confusion, and constant firefighting.
More Proactive Leadership and Communication
You communicate more proactively with your team. You have time to prepare for coaching discussions, difficult conversations, and expectation-setting instead of handling situations reactively in the moment.
Focus Blocks Actually Create More Time
By using focused blocks of time to think more strategically, you’ll free up more time.
Use that extra time to expand your Focus Blocks.
Over time, these small changes compound into stronger execution, higher trust, better accountability, improved morale, and healthier team culture.
Practical Leadership Challenge
Today, block one hour on your calendar for focused leadership work and protect it like an important meeting - because it is.
Then build from there. Don’t try to completely overhaul your calendar overnight. Just start with one hour. That’s it.
Leadership improvement rarely happens through one massive breakthrough moment. It usually happens through small disciplines practiced consistently over time.
One micro-change at a time.
If you like this micro-change, you can find many more ideas in my award-winning book, Practical Leadership: A Guide to Building Trust, Getting Results, and Changing Lives. You can get a copy on Amazon or your local bookstore.
Mel Robbins, New York Times bestselling author and host of the Mel Robbins podcast had this praise for the book, “Janet Ply is the real deal. I’ve seen way too many talented people flail in leadership because nobody ever taught them how to do the job well. This book fixes that. Janet has been in the fire, she’s led through chaos, and now she’s giving you the tools she’s used to rescue high-stakes, high-dollar messes. If you lead people - or you want to - Practical Leadership should live on your desk. Get it, use it, lead better.”
Order it on Amazon or your favorite local bookstore.