Kristen,

This is a great questions and one that is near and dear to my heart.

I was an HHC XO when I was a LT in the 82nd. I wish I could say that I had it all figured it out, but I worked crazy hours. I would come in early, before PT, and get as much “desk” work done as I could. When you are an XO, I always felt there was 1 to 2 meetings I had to attend a day. Therefore, it was hard to write/send emails, work on trackers, etc. during the day. Also, no one is there to bother you and therefore you can get the work done that you need, specifically with your extra duties.

About those additional duties. Often, those duties come with an NCO as the assistant. LEAN ON THEM heavily. If one is not appointed, appoint an NCO within the company to help you accomplish those extra duties. For example, if I am a billing official for the company GPC, I might assign an NCO as the Assistant Billing Official to help me handle that specific task. Use the NCOs in the company to help you drive the train.

Finally, there are key relationships that if you foster can significantly decrease the amount of time you spend on tasks. The MOST important one is with the BDE PBO. If you foster that relationship, he/she can really help to ensure that your paperwork is always right, that your stuff gets done fast and on time. Not having to worry about redoing paperwork can increase your efficiency and therefore save you significant amounts of time. This also works with all of the BN shops. The better your relationship the more stuff you will be able to accomplish for your unit.

I know you are struggling to find the time to do everything. Behind every good company commander is an exhausted XO. Just know that there is no better job to prepare you for Company Command than executive officer. The more you put your hands into now the more educated you will be about command. As you are finding out, XO is exhausting, but it was my favorite job as an LT (almost as good as company command…. almost).

Also there was a thread awhile back about transitioning from PL to XO.. a lot of good stuff to read about XO time. https://juniorofficer.army.mil/discussion/transition-from-pl-to-xo/

I hope this helps and if you need anything hit me up, always ready to help tired and exhausted XOs!

~ Joe