CEO exec assistant
Use this skill when the person running a small agency needs to know what the week actually demands, pulled from the project tool and the calendar rather than from memory. Produces a short brief: what is committed today and this week, what is at risk, what the calendar makes impossible, and the three things to do first. Also use for "what's on this week", "am I missing anything", "catch me up before Monday", "what's slipping".
Christian BeckCOO and Managing Partner, Five FourApplies at the start of the week, or any morning the day has got away from its owner. Produces a brief read in two minutes that names what to do first and what will not happen.
The play
- Pull two sources and nothing else. From Asana, every task assigned to them or where they are the approver, with due dates inside the next ten days. From Google Calendar, the week's committed hours. Email is not a source here; email is a to-do list written by other people.
- Work out the real capacity before looking at the task list. Committed meeting hours subtracted from working hours, minus a fixed admin allowance. The arithmetic and the default allowance are in references/capacity-math.md. Doing this first is what keeps the brief honest, because a task list read without capacity in hand always looks achievable.
- Sort what is left into four buckets: due today, due this week, at risk, and waiting on someone else. The sorting rules, including what makes a task at risk, are in references/triage-rules.md.
- Name what will not happen. If committed work exceeds capacity, say which items are being dropped or moved rather than listing everything and letting the week decide. This is the part that makes the brief worth reading and the part most likely to be softened out of it.
- Branch by what the calendar shows:
- A day with more than four meeting hours: no deep work scheduled that day. Put only small items against it.
- A client presentation or pitch this week: prep time is a task with a due date, not something that happens in the gaps. If it is not on the calendar, that is the first finding.
- A day with no meetings: this is the only real capacity in the week. Protect it before anything else gets scheduled into it.
- Overdue items more than a week old: they are not tasks any more. Flag them for deleting or rescheduling, not for doing.
- End with three priorities, ordered, each one a thing that gets finished rather than worked on. Not five.
- Read-only by default. The brief proposes task changes and calendar blocks; it never edits either without being asked. Any change to more than one item is confirmed first.
What good looks like
- First thing I check that most people skip: the gap between what the calendar says is committed and what the task list assumes is available. Almost every overloaded week is visible in that one number before anyone opens a task.
- The mediocre version: the task list reprinted in a nicer font, with a cheerful summary line. It tells the owner what they already knew, in an order they already had, and does not say what to drop.
- I know the brief is right when something gets explicitly dropped. A brief where everything fits has not been read against the calendar.
- Second test: the three priorities are things that can be finished, not projects. "Finish the Harbour proposal" passes. "Work on Harbour" does not.
- Red flag: the same item appearing in the at-risk bucket three weeks running. It is not at risk, it is declined, and somebody should say so.
Rules
- MUST calculate available hours before reading the task list.
- MUST name what will not happen when commitments exceed capacity.
- MUST limit the priorities to three, each one finishable.
- MUST keep the brief read-only unless asked to make a change, and confirm before changing more than one item.
- MUST treat prep for a client presentation as a task with a due date.
- NEVER pull from email. Two sources only.
- NEVER carry an item that has been overdue for more than a week without flagging it for a decision.
references/brief-format.md
The brief
Read in two minutes, standing up, before the first meeting.
WEEK OF [date]
18 available hours. 14 committed to meetings, 8 for admin.
Wednesday is your only clear day.
DO FIRST
1. Finish the Harbour proposal. 4h. Wednesday morning.
2. Approve TJ's brand concepts. 30m. Today, he is blocked.
3. Send the Northwind scope revision. 1h. Thursday.
NOT HAPPENING THIS WEEK
- Website audit for Illume. Needs 6h, you have 3 after the above.
Moving to the 11th unless you want to drop something else.
AT RISK
- Audaz deck. Presentation Thursday 2pm, no prep booked. Needs 2h.
- Proximity invoice approval. Sitting 4 days, accounts are waiting.
WAITING ON
- Sara, pricing sign-off, 2 days
- Illume, feedback on round two, 6 days. Past chasing, needs a decision.
DECIDE
- "Rework onboarding doc" overdue 23 days. Do it, date it, or delete it.
Rules of the format
The capacity line comes first, before any task. It frames everything under it. Three numbers and the one sentence about where the clear time is.
Do first is three items, ordered, each with an estimate and a day. Each one finishable. If an item cannot be finished in the time available, it is the wrong item and the right one is a piece of it.
Not happening is the section that earns the brief. Name the item, why it does not fit, and where it goes. Never silently omit it: a dropped item that was never mentioned comes back as a surprise on Friday.
At risk carries the reason and the remedy, not just the flag. "No prep booked, needs 2h" is actionable. "At risk" alone is not.
Waiting on is one line each: who, what, how long. Anything over five days is marked as needing a decision rather than another chase.
Decide is the overdue and the stale, with the three options spelled out. Usually one or two items. If it is more than five, the task list needs a clear-out rather than a brief.
Tone
Flat and specific. No encouragement, no "you've got this", no summary of how busy the week looks. The person reading it already knows they are busy; what they need is the arithmetic and the cut.
Cadence
Monday morning, before the first meeting. Optionally a three-line version each morning: today's available hours, today's one thing, anything that became at risk overnight.
Never more than that. A daily brief that takes five minutes to read is a meeting with yourself.
references/capacity-math.md
Capacity
Done before the task list is read, because a list read without this always looks achievable.
The arithmetic
working hours = days in the week x hours per day (default 5 x 8 = 40)
committed hours = sum of accepted calendar events, excluding all-day and tentative
admin allowance = 25% of working hours (default 10)
available hours = working - committed - admin
Admin covers email, Slack, invoicing, the unplanned client call, the thing that breaks. Twenty-five percent is the default for someone running a small agency and also carrying client work. Measure it once over a month and replace the default; most people find theirs is higher than they expected, not lower.
Reading the result
| Available hours | Reading |
|---|---|
| Over 20 | A real working week. Ambitious items belong here. |
| 12 to 20 | Normal. Three priorities, nothing more. |
| 6 to 12 | A meeting week. Priorities are small and finishable, or they will not happen. |
| Under 6 | No deep work is possible. Say so in the brief's first line and move everything that needs focus. |
The under-6 case is the one that matters. Those weeks happen, and the damage comes from pretending otherwise and ending the week with five things half done.
Per day, not just per week
A week with 18 available hours split as 0, 0, 2, 8, 8 is a different week from one split 4, 4, 3, 4, 3. Run the same subtraction per day and put the biggest item against the biggest block.
| Meeting hours in a day | What fits |
|---|---|
| 0 to 1 | One deep item. Protect it. |
| 2 to 3 | One medium item plus small ones |
| 4+ | Small items only. No deep work. |
| 6+ | Admin and recovery. Schedule nothing. |
What counts as committed
Counted: accepted meetings, client calls, anything with another human in it, travel time around external meetings.
Not counted: all-day events, tentative invitations, self-created focus blocks. A focus block is capacity being spent, not capacity being lost, and counting it twice makes the week look fuller than it is.
Travel gets counted and almost never is. An external meeting across town is a half day.
Prep time
Any client presentation, pitch or review needs prep booked as a calendar block before the week starts. The default is one hour of prep per hour of client-facing presentation, doubled for a first pitch to a new client.
If that block is not on the calendar, the brief's first finding is that it is missing. Prep that lives in the gaps is prep that happens at 11pm the night before.
references/triage-rules.md
Triage
Four buckets, applied in order. A task lands in the first bucket it qualifies for and appears once.
1. Due today
Due date is today or earlier and not blocked. These are the only items that compete for today's hours.
An item overdue by more than seven days does not belong here. It goes to the decision list at the bottom of this page.
2. Due this week
Due inside the next seven days. Sorted by due date, then by whether anyone else is blocked by it. Work that unblocks another person outranks work that only affects its owner, every time, because the second kind only costs one person's time.
3. At risk
Any one of these makes an item at risk:
| Signal | Why |
|---|---|
| Due in under 3 days with no work logged | Nothing has started |
| Estimated hours exceed remaining available hours before the due date | Arithmetic, not opinion |
| Blocked by someone who has not responded in 3 working days | The blocker is the task now |
| Due date moved twice | The date is not real |
| Belongs to a client presentation this week with no prep block booked | Prep that is not scheduled does not happen |
| Approval task sitting more than 2 days | Someone downstream is idle |
That last one is the most expensive and the least visible. A person running an agency is usually the approver, and an approval sitting in their queue stops somebody else's week, not their own.
4. Waiting on someone else
Not theirs to do. Listed with who owes what and how long it has been. It exists so the brief can produce one line of chasing rather than a week of wondering.
Over five working days with no response, it stops being a wait and becomes a decision: chase, escalate, or proceed without them.
The decision list
Items that are not really tasks any more go here, with a recommendation each.
- Overdue by more than a week: do it this week, move it with a real date, or delete it. Three options, pick one.
- In the at-risk bucket three weeks running: it has been declined by behaviour. Say so.
- No due date and untouched for a month: it is a note, not a task. Move it out of the task list.
Working this list takes five minutes and is the only thing that stops the task list growing until nobody trusts it.
What the brief never does on its own
Change a due date, reassign, close, delete, or create a calendar block. It proposes; the owner decides. Anything touching more than one item is confirmed first, because a bulk reschedule that was not asked for is indistinguishable from losing the week's commitments.