Post by Peiru Teo

Navigating a growing team across Singapore, the U.S., Australia, and Brazil, I find myself working seven days a week, often until midnight or 1 a.m. on weekdays, and from 5 p.m. till Sunday. One Monday, after a late call with our U.S team, someone on the team asked how I managed to stay this focused so late. It caught me off guard, because I’d never thought of it as focus, doing what I was supposed to do, showing up. But over time I’ve learned that as a founder, your biggest enemy is fragmentation: the wrong division of tasks and, most importantly, energy. To make sure I use my time and focus to their full capacity, I rely on Eisenhower’s Decision Matrix. Calls and check-ins are scheduled back-to-back in the afternoon, when I can be present but don’t need to be at my sharpest. Mornings and certain quiet times in the day are non-negotiable. That’s when I tackle what Eisenhower called the “important but not urgent” quadrant (the black hole of leadership). These are the hours when next year’s strategy takes shape, hypotheses are tested, and hard questions about execution are answered. It’s invisible work, and that’s what makes it so easy to lose. The urgent but not important admin: the admin forms, the tax permissions, the signatures that can’t be delegated, always feels louder. But loud doesn’t mean meaningful. I’ve learned that running a company by inbox is like steering a ship by the sound of waves: the noise keeps changing direction. Now I protect my mornings ruthlessly. They are for thinking, not reacting. Because my team and the institutions we have the honor to serve need me to be at my sharpest at all times. And those quiet morning hours, when no one sees me working, are when I sharpen my thinking, and in turn, our service at KeyReply.