Time to think: why leaders rarely stop to ask why, and what research on reflection shows
CEOs work about 62 hours a week, mostly with other people. What studies on reflection and on sitting alone with our thoughts found, with limits.
Short answer
- most leaders have very little unscheduled time to think. In a Harvard study of 27 CEOs, they worked about 62.5 hours a week, and 61% of that time was spent face to face with other people (Porter & Nohria, 2018).
- Experiments suggest that stopping to reflect is worth something: trainees who spent 15 minutes a day writing down what they had learned scored 22.8% higher on a final test (Di Stefano et al., 2014).
- And yet, sitting alone with one's thoughts is something most people find surprisingly hard (Wilson et al., 2014).
Most people who run a company can say what they are doing this week. Fewer can say, without a pause, why they started and whether the company is still heading where they meant it to go. This is not because the question is difficult, but because there is rarely a minute in the week in which anyone asks it.
This note looks at three pieces of research: how CEOs actually spend their hours, what happens when people stop to reflect, and why stopping is harder than it sounds.
What is reflection?
In the research below, reflection is "the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience". That is the definition used by Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano and Bradley Staats. It is not daydreaming and not therapy. It is a short, deliberate look back at what happened, with the aim of putting it into words.
How much time do leaders actually have to think?
In 2018, Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria of Harvard Business School published "How CEOs Manage Time" in Harvard Business Review. Over about a decade, they tracked 27 CEOs of large companies, around the clock, for 13 weeks each, and coded more than 60,000 hours of their time in 15-minute blocks.
As summarised by MGMA, the CEOs in the study:
- worked about 62.5 hours a week on average;
- worked about 3.9 hours on weekend days and 2.4 hours on vacation days;
- spent 61% of their work time face to face with other people.
This is a picture of people whose days belong mostly to others: meetings, reviews, calls. The study was not designed to measure "time to think", and it covers CEOs of large companies, not founders of smaller firms. Still, it gives a sense of how little of a leader's week is left unclaimed.
In a Harvard study of 27 CEOs, the average working week was about 62.5 hours, and 61% of it was spent face to face with other people.
Does stopping to reflect make a measurable difference?
The clearest field evidence comes from a call centre. In a study described by Harvard Business School Working Knowledge in May 2014, new employees at an outsourcing company in Bangalore went through several weeks of training. One group spent the last 15 minutes of each training day writing about what they had learned. A second group did the same and then spent five more minutes explaining their notes to a colleague. A control group simply kept working.
On the final test, the reflection group scored 22.8% higher than the control group, and the group that also shared their notes scored 25% higher.
A later version of the paper, according to its abstract, reports ten experiments with 4,340 participants and adds a nuance: reflection helps most at the beginning of a learning curve, once there is enough experience to reflect on.
| Study | Who | What was tested | What was found |
|---|---|---|---|
| Porter & Nohria, HBR 2018 | 27 CEOs, 60,000+ hours | how CEOs spend their time | ≈ 62.5 h per week, 61% face to face |
| Di Stefano et al., 2014 (field) | trainees at a call centre in India | 15 min of written reflection per day | 22.8% higher final test score |
| Di Stefano et al., revised 2023 | 10 experiments, 4,340 people | reflection vs more practice | benefit largest early in learning |
| Wilson et al., Science 2014 | 11 studies | 6–15 min alone with one's thoughts | most people did not enjoy it |
Why is it so hard to sit and think?
If reflection is useful, why does it so rarely happen? Part of the answer is the calendar. Another part may be that being alone with our thoughts is less pleasant than we expect.
In 2014, Timothy Wilson and colleagues at the University of Virginia and Harvard published "Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind" in Science. Across 11 studies, participants were asked to spend 6 to 15 minutes alone in a room with nothing to do but think. Most did not enjoy it, and many found it hard to concentrate.
In one study, participants could press a button to give themselves a mild electric shock during the thinking period. 12 of 18 men and 6 of 24 women pressed it at least once, as reported by the University of Virginia. The samples were small, and the study measured enjoyment, not the value of thinking. But it suggests that "just take some time to think" is not as easy as it sounds, especially alone.
In one Science study, 12 of 18 men gave themselves a mild electric shock at least once during 15 minutes alone with their thoughts.
What do we know and what don't we?
What we know
- CEOs in a large Harvard sample worked ≈ 62.5 hours a week, 61% face to face
- Short written reflection raised trainee test scores in a field study
- Most people find a few minutes alone with their thoughts unpleasant
What we don't know
- How much of that time founders of smaller firms have for thinking
- Whether the same effect holds for experienced leaders and big decisions
- Whether thinking with other people is easier than thinking alone
Why does this matter for people who run companies?
Taken together, the studies point to a gap. Reflection seems to be worth something, and it does not take much time: the field study used 15 minutes a day. Yet a leader's week is built around other people, and the few minutes alone are often the least comfortable ones.
None of this says what anyone should reflect on, or what answer they will find. The studies only suggest that the minute to ask "why am I doing this, and where am I going?" rarely appears by itself. Someone has to make room for it. You can read more about what constant interruptions do to attention in Interrupted every two minutes, and about the people around a leader in Lonely at the top.
A question worth asking
When did you last have fifteen minutes without a screen in which to ask yourself why you started, and what did you write down?
Where Stilla Circle fits
Stilla Circle is a small circle in Vienna for founders, owners and people who run companies. Our evenings are set up like this: phones stay in an envelope at the door, by choice, and the first hour is spent doing something with our hands. Then everyone sits down at one table for a slow conversation: nobody sells anything, nobody asks about job titles, and what is said stays at the table. I host the evening. You can read how an evening is set up or the questions people ask us. If you would like to talk, write to us on Instagram.
FAQ
How much time do CEOs have to think?
Not much that is unscheduled. In a Harvard study of 27 CEOs (Porter & Nohria, HBR 2018; more than 60,000 hours coded), CEOs worked about 62.5 hours a week on average, and 61% of their work time was face to face with other people.
Does reflection actually improve performance?
In a field study at a call centre in India, trainees who spent the last 15 minutes of each training day writing down what they had learned scored 22.8% higher on the final test than the control group (Di Stefano et al., HBS Working Paper 14-093, 2014). A later version, according to its abstract, reports ten experiments with 4,340 people and finds the benefit is largest early in learning.
Why is it hard to sit alone and think?
In 11 studies, Wilson and colleagues (Science, 2014) found that most people did not enjoy 6 to 15 minutes alone with their thoughts. In one study, 12 of 18 men and 6 of 24 women gave themselves a mild electric shock at least once while sitting with nothing to do.
What is reflection, in research terms?
Di Stefano and colleagues define it as "the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience".
Sources
- Porter, M. E., & Nohria, N. (2018). How CEOs Manage Time. Harvard Business Review, July–August 2018. https://hbr.org/2018/07/how-ceos-manage-time (accessed 21 Oct 2026)
- MGMA. Test of time: Harvard study reveals how CEOs spend their days on and off work (summary of Porter & Nohria). https://www.mgma.com/articles/test-of-time-harvard-study-reveals-how-ceos-spend-their-days-on-and-off-work (accessed 21 Oct 2026)
- Nobel, C. (5 May 2014). Reflecting on Work Improves Job Performance. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, on Di Stefano, Gino, Pisano & Staats, HBS Working Paper 14-093. https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/reflecting-on-work-improves-job-performance (accessed 21 Oct 2026)
- Di Stefano, G., Gino, F., Pisano, G. P., & Staats, B. R. Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Can Spur Progress Along the Learning Curve. SSRN working paper, revised 2023. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2414478 (accessed 21 Oct 2026)
- Wilson, T. D., Reinhard, D. A., Westgate, E. C., Gilbert, D. T., Ellerbeck, N., Hahn, C., Brown, C. L., & Shaked, A. (2014). Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind. Science, 345(6192), 75–77. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1250830 (accessed 21 Oct 2026)
- University of Virginia (3 July 2014). Doing something is better than doing nothing for most people, study shows. Release via ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140703142154.htm (accessed 21 Oct 2026)