Noting that leadership is about making decisions, Apple CEO Tim Cook, wondered, “How do I make two times the number of decisions that I currently make?”

The Apple chief is not alone; this is a conundrum faced by leaders the world-over. In addressing it, there are essentially two choices: you can either allow executive decision-making to become a bottleneck to the growth of your business, or, like Cook, you can find a way of doing twice the amount of work in the same number of precious hours and minutes that your day allows.

In the same pursuit of executive productivity, one of my clients calculated how many working years he potentially had left in his lifetime, but wanting to extend his work past the inevitable he pondered, “How do I do two weeks’ worth of work in one?”

Faced with an economy reliant on a demand that outstrips a physically constrained airport, Dubai Airports CEO, Paul Griffiths, serves as another example. With gates and runways operating at overcapacity, he focused his team on finding a way of moving twice as many people through the same sized space. In other words: making better use of every minute of each 24-hour day.

So, just as Griffiths and Cook did, ask yourself this: how can you double what you’re currently doing, without increasing the number of hours worked?

These highly accomplished executives aren’t allowing normal constraints — time and physical space — to limit what’s possible. They’re defying them by becoming more productive, choosing to produce more, per hour worked. Productivity is not a cost-savings activity, it is output focused.

As obvious as it may seem, it’s worth remembering that the root of productivity is to produce: to make, grow, sell something or serve someone. In “leaderspeak”, to produce means to cause results to happen. Productivity means more output (results) from the same (or less) input.

The most productive leaders manage the minutes, not the hours. If you conduct a calendar analysis, will you find that your diary is managed by the hour? Average performers accept the one-hour default for meetings.

Whereas highly successful people are conscious of, and make each of, the day’s 1,440 minutes count. They schedule minute by minute, expecting every minute to yield results.

Don’t allow someone else to dictate how you use your time. Make a choice for every minute of the day.

Ultra-productive leaders refuse to waste their days sitting in meetings. In fact, they avoid meetings at all costs.

When author Kevin Kruse asked Mark Cuban to give his best productivity advice, Cuban quickly responded, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.”

Every time you walk into a meeting you’re forfeiting control of your time to a potential time-killer. Meetings inherently start late, chase rabbit trails and are indecisive and inconclusive, thus causing another time-wasting meeting. So, make sure every meeting is producing a result.

The most productive leaders also refuse to sit in front of their screens “checking” emails all day, believing they’re productive. All that produces is a clean inbox. Instead of responding to every ping to see who the mail is from, take control of your time.

Growing up, I was taught that time is money. While that’s true in part, time is in fact far more than that. It’s a finite resource, with minutes the unit for executive productivity.

But while time is both rigid and predictable, it is hard to control. Previously, I wrote about a study on self-control.

Psychologist Martin Seligman, and his colleagues surveyed nearly five million people to measure the degree to which they endorse 24 character strengths. Sadly, self-regulation comes in dead last. People just aren’t good at it.

While you may trick yourself into thinking you’re good at making your time work for you, are you? Are you aware of what you produce per minute?

As an example, I know I wasted two hours while writing this article as I allowed my mind to drift towards random thoughts. I tried to convince myself that they may yield the golden nugget, but in my gut, I knew they wouldn’t, and they didn’t.

Ironically, even while writing on the relationship of time and productivity, I misused my time.

What is every minute of every hour producing? If you can’t answer that, you have an enormous opportunity to use your time better.

What did your attendance in a meeting produce? What did your response to an email produce?

Did you make a decision? Give the information needed? Help someone else achieve? Encourage, motivate, inspire them? Remove a blockage? Connect people that need to be connected?

Your minutes are your most precious productivity tool, nothing is more valuable. Make every minute count.

— The writer is a CEO coach and author of “Leadership Dubai Style”. Contact him at tsw@tommyweir.com