Diary of a Ceo
Diary of a CEO — Entry 5 - The Currency of Time**
Time.
The one asset even the most resourceful CEO cannot manufacture, negotiate, or acquire on preferential terms.
If there’s a recurring theme this year, it’s the relentless challenge of balancing family, work, and fitness — three pillars that each demand the full version of you. And yet, only one version exists.
This year has been a test of endurance unlike any structured training session or boardroom negotiation. Between the growth of Raymund Afoakwa Consulting, the technical demands of Race Lab, the development cycles of Supermond, and the travel schedules that come with servicing national teams, I’ve been forced to confront an uncomfortable truth:
Without disciplined time management, even the most ambitious vision collapses under its own weight.
It’s only in these final months that I’m starting to see a semblance of balance forming — not perfect, but emerging like a rider finding rhythm at threshold after the initial chaos of acceleration.
As a CEO, time management isn’t about being busy. Anyone can be busy.
It’s about being effective.
It’s about saying no to noise.
It’s about protecting the narrow band of hours where high-level decisions are made — the decisions that steer the company forward, not sideways.
The danger for any founder is getting buried in the operational gravel: emails, scheduling, administrative clutter, calls that could’ve been handled by someone else. All vital, but not necessarily vital for me.
And so, I’ve accepted something I resisted for far too long:
2026 will be the year I hire a PA.
A real one.
Not an occasional helper. Not a temporary assistant.
A strategic partner whose job is to clear the runway so I can take off and stay airborne.
A PA who manages the emails, the phone calls, the logistics, the time zones, the requests — all the things that siphon attention away from engineering breakthroughs, athlete support, and the strategic direction of our projects.
It’s time to free myself from the minutiae and focus on the work that actually moves the needle.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned:
Your vision grows only as fast as your ability to protect your time.
And if 2026 is going to be the year we scale Race Lab, deliver world-class innovation, and support more federations and teams, then I need to operate with the clarity and structure of someone who values time as their rarest commodity.
Time is the ultimate marginal gain.
And next year, I intend to master it.
