The Founder’s Energy Audit: Where Your Time Actually Goes (and What to Do About It)
If your weeks are a blur of Zoom links, Slack pings, and “just one quick thing,” you’re not alone… and you’re not broken.
You’re just running without an energy budget.
Founders love to talk about strategy, product, and scaling. But what doesn’t get tracked? The 62 minutes you spent reformatting a deck. The five email threads you chased before lunch. The 17 tabs open that have nothing to do with your priorities.
And all of it chips away at your most limited resource: your brain.
This isn’t about better time management. This is about energy awareness. Where does your focus actually go, and how do you get it back?
Welcome to the energy audit you didn’t know you needed.
Daniel Herrera
•
September 12, 2025
You Don’t Need Another Productivity Hack
Let’s start here: Most advice for busy founders assumes the problem is laziness or poor time management. It’s not.
The real issue? Misallocated energy.
You spend your highest-focus hours responding to logistics. You use your creative windows cleaning up admin. You start your day with context switching, not decision-making.
According to the Asana Work Index, workers spend 58% of their time on “work about work”, things like email, status updates, and chasing approvals.
That means more than half your week disappears before you even touch strategy.
Where Your Time Really Goes and What Energy Drain Feels Like
Let’s break this down in founder terms.
You booked back-to-back calls because “that’s the only way to fit them in.”
You did admin at night because the day was too chaotic.
You rewrote a doc because it’s faster than delegating.
You responded to every Slack, every email, every calendar ping.
You started three big ideas and finished none of them.
You’re not unproductive. You’re over-involved.
The 4 Categories of Founder Energy (and What Drains Them)
1. Thinking Energy
Your ability to solve, synthesize, and spot patterns.
Drained by: Slack whiplash, last-minute meeting requests, unnecessary CCs Protected by: Deep work blocks, inbox rules, async updates
Translation: Energy leaks are not personal problems. They’re operational risks.
Step 1: Audit Your Real Week
Pick any five-day stretch. Use your calendar, Slack history, email sent folder, and screen time tracker. Look for:
Tasks that weren’t urgent but ate 30+ minutes
Pings you responded to that someone else could’ve handled
Calls you ran instead of just reviewing a deck
Docs you reworked because “it wasn’t how I’d write it”
Things you touched 3+ times before finishing
Add it all up. You’ll probably find 5 to10 hours of work that you shouldn’t be doing.
That’s an entire day. Gone.
Step 2: Identify Your Highest ROI Hours
Every founder has windows where they think clearer, decide faster, and create better. For some it’s 7–11 AM. For others it’s 10 PM with lo-fi beats and no notifications.
The question is: Are you protecting those hours? Or are they getting chewed up by noise?
Harvard Business Review found that burnout often has less to do with work volume and more to do with a lack of control over how and when we work.
Protect your power windows like they’re investor meetings. Because they are.
Step 3: Reallocate the Drains
Once you spot the patterns, you’ll see the fix.
✖️ Inbox check first thing in the morning
✅ Block emails until after your strategic deep work
✖️ You own meeting scheduling, rescheduling, and follow-up
✅ A trained EA handles your calendar like a project manager
✖️ You rewrite team decks and proposals
✅ You coach once and get review-ready docs
Delegation isn’t just about getting things off your plate. It’s about getting your energy back on what drives the company.
As Fast Company puts it: the best time to hire an assistant is before you think you’re ready.
Step 4: Track Energy Like You Track Revenue
You don’t guess your runway. Don’t guess your bandwidth either.
At RGG, we help founders reclaim 8 to 12 hours a week. That’s time to think, rest, or move the ball forward in ways only you can.
Our clients often say the same thing:
“I thought I needed more time. I really needed less friction.”
And that’s the real point: It’s not about doing less. It’s about doing what only you can do, and letting the rest run without you.
Forbes calls high-performing EAs “indispensable” to the executive team. Not because they do the basics. But because they protect the energy it takes to lead well.
If your week feels full but unfocused, you don’t need a time audit.
You need an energy one.
Here’s the recap:
You lose 50%+ of your week to low-leverage work
Most of it isn’t visible on your calendar
Founders who track + protect their best hours scale faster
Delegation isn’t optional, it’s how you buy back your brain
A high-functioning EA is an energy multiplier, not just a task taker
Want your hours back? We match founders with trained EAs who don’t just support your workflow, they sharpen it.
