If you don't have at least 10 hours a week put aside for LEADING your MSP rather than doing stuff in your MSP, you should read this.
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been doing something slightly nerdy. I think you'll approve.
I vibe-coded my own very simple time tracker using Claude. Nothing complicated, just a tiny web app that sits on my phone and lets me record what I’m doing throughout the day.
Look!
(side note: I'm the least technical human on the planet. If I can vibe code a working app, then I do wonder if this heralds the end of SaaS... anyway...)
The reason I built it was because I had a nagging feeling that too much of my working time was being wasted. I wanted a clearer picture of where my working hours were actually going.
The system is very simple. It's based on traffic lights. Every task I do gets labelled with one of three colours:
- Red tasks are things I really shouldn’t be doing at all. They’re tasks someone else should be doing for me
- Yellow/amber tasks are things that are fine for me to do occasionally, but if I start doing too many of them something has gone wrong
- Green tasks are the work I really want to spend my time on. The things where I can create the most value for my business
After using it for a couple of weeks I discovered something reassuring: about 80% of my working time is green. Which means I’m spending most of my week doing the work I’m supposed to be doing.
HIGH FIVE!
This was very reassuring, but it was also not a surprise. Because this balance in my working life didn’t happen by accident.
Over the years, I've deliberately engineered my week to protect TONS of time. So I can do the stuff that only I can do
A small example, I DON'T have a live calendar link where people can book meetings with me whenever they like. If I did that, my week would quickly fill up with conversations that might not be the best use of my time.
Instead, meetings happen at specific times that I choose. I batch calls together to get them done.
I don't even let my team call or text me unless it's a literally "OMG the house is on fire" emergency.
The rest of my time is protected. And that protection allows me to spend a lot of time working ON the business instead of constantly reacting to what’s happening inside it.
When I look at the MSP owners I work with, I notice something interesting.
😱 Very few of them do this 😱
Many MSP leaders run their day in permanent reaction mode.
It's a constant flow of activity, dealing with staff interruptions, answering emails, ping, ping, ping on Teams... all of that.
Before long, the entire week is gone. AGAIN. At the end of it, the MSP owner has worked incredibly hard… but hasn’t actually spent any meaningful time leading the business.
There's been no thinking about strategy or marketing improvement. There's just been doing stuff.
It feels like you've achieved a lot, but that's an illusion. Because you're in business, not busy-ness.
Understand this: Leadership requires space
Growing an MSP requires something that many owners forget to schedule.
---> Time to think and reflect <---
You need time to step back and ask questions like:
- Are we attracting the right clients?
- Are our services positioned properly?
- Is our marketing actually working?
- What should we change next?
Those questions rarely get answered in the middle of a busy day, hammering away at your laptop...
They get answered when you give yourself space.
Some of the best leadership thinking happens when you’re away from the business entirely. On a long walk, in the gym, or doing something that allows your brain to process ideas properly.
If that means taking your dog out for a ridiculously long 3 hour walk in the middle of the day, that might actually be the most valuable work you do all week.
(lucky dog!)
Protecting your 'green' time
And that's why you need to design your week so that there is space and time for the most important work.
If your entire calendar is reactive, the business will always drift.
But if you deliberately block out leadership time every week, everything starts to move faster. I promise it works this way. Because you stop reacting and start steering.
So... if you looked at your working week honestly, what colour would most of it be? Red… yellow… or green? (you could always vibe code your own time tracker to find out)
And when was the last time you deliberately blocked out time just to think about your MSP?
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