How do CEOs spend their time?

At meetings, of course. New study finds that during an average 55-hour work week, chief executives spend 18 hours at meetings - by far the largest single chunk of time. The study, prepared by the London School of Economics and Harvard Business School, uses time logs kept by personal assistants. From the WSJ:

CEOs say they pine for more solo time to think and strategize. Rory Cowan, CEO of Lionbridge Technologies Inc., a Waltham, Mass., technology-services firm with about 4,500 employees, says he is constantly communicating with staff and clients. "I don't know when I'm not in a meeting," he says. Instead of spending a lot of time in long face-to-face meetings, however, Mr. Cowan spends more time "doing frequent iterative touches," either in person or via text messages, instant messaging and video chat--sometimes with "four or five windows open concurrently." As a result, his meetings rarely last more than 15 minutes, he says.

Would be interesting to compare meeting times at large, multi-layered corporations vs. entrepreneur-based operations. Here's the study.