Why you should never aim to be fully booked

One of the questions I'm asked most often is:

"If you're successful, why aren't you fully booked?"

It's a fair question.

I deliberately limit the amount of client work I commit to each year. For me, that's around 100 days. That means I say no to a lot of opportunities.

When I explain this, the follow-up question is almost always: "So what do you do with the other 265 days?"

The answer often surprises people. Those days aren't empty. They're my competitive advantage.

They give me the capacity to think deeply about my clients' challenges rather than simply turning up and delivering another workshop. They allow me to respond when a leader needs an unexpected conversation, redesign a session because circumstances have changed, or spend hours exploring an idea that could make a meaningful difference to a client's organisation.

In other words, my clients aren't just buying my time.

They're buying the thinking that happens between our meetings.

They're buying someone who arrives prepared, curious and fully present, not someone rushing in from the previous engagement.

They're buying fresh ideas, not recycled ones. They're buying challenge, not just encouragement. And they're buying someone who continues to learn.

This week was a perfect example.

It would have been easy to work through another afternoon and tick off a few more items from my to-do list. Instead, I made myself a promise. If I completed the most important work by 11:30am, I'd head to the squash court.

I've been playing squash, off-and-on, for 45 years, yet I'm still improving. I'm analysing my game, experimenting with new approaches and deliberately practising skills that don't yet come naturally.

Why?

Because that's exactly what I ask leaders to do. And that's why leaders choose to work with me. Today I met with two senior leaders of a Special School in the West Midlands. They've moved to making space in their diaries for Friday to be their deep thinking days. Yes, things still happen that mean they have to pivot but they are becoming more strategic and less operational. And this is having a positive impact on their entire school community. They now lead rather than react. 

The best leaders don't stop learning because they've become successful. They become more intentional about how they learn.

The businesses that make the greatest progress aren't usually the busiest. They're the ones that create enough capacity to reflect, adapt and improve before circumstances force them to.

That's the work I love doing with leaders.

Helping them step out of constant reaction, creating the space to think more clearly, and turning good intentions into consistent action. Preventing today's urgent issues from crowding out tomorrow's opportunities. Because sustainable success isn't built by filling every hour. It's built by making better decisions in the hours that matter most.

A question to leave you with:

Is your diary helping you do your best thinking, or is it simply proving how busy you are?