Productivity Secrets From Jeff
Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Susan Wojcicki, And More
From streamlining decision-making to starting work at 4 a.m., this is
how the CEOs you admire get so much done.
The average CEO works 58 hours a week,
putting in 10 to 11 hours per day, plus an extra six hours on the weekend,
according to Time. That’s 11 hours more than the average full-time worker. More time
means the potential to get more done, but many enlist powerful productivity
hacks to give them an edge.
Here are nine secrets top CEOs use to
accomplish more during those long workweeks:
1. STREAMLINE DECISIONS
As CEO of Amazon and owner of the Washington
Post, Jeff Bezos makes a lot of decisions every day. Since this can be
time-consuming, he’s developed a four-step process for navigating his business
more quickly.
First, never use a one-size-fits-all
decision-making process. “Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors,” he
writes in his 2017 letter to shareholders. “Those decisions can use a light-weight process.”
Second, make the decision when you have about
70% of the information you wish you had. “If you wait for 90%, in most cases,
you’re probably being slow,” he writes.
Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.”
“This phrase will save a lot of time,” he writes. “If you have conviction on a
particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say,
‘Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree
and commit?’ By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for
sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.”
And fourth, recognize true misalignment
issues early and escalate them immediately. “Sometimes teams have different
objectives and fundamentally different views,” he writes. “They are not
aligned. No amount of discussion, no number of meetings will resolve that deep
misalignment. Without escalation, the default dispute resolution mechanism for
this scenario is exhaustion.”
2. FIND YOUR RHYTHM
As CEO of Twitter and Square, Jack Dorsey
works 16-hour days. In an interview at Techonomy, he said being disciplined and practiced are vital.
To handle workflow, he assigns themes to each day.
“On Monday, at both companies, I focus on
management and running the company,” he said in the interview. “Tuesday is
focused on product. Wednesday is focused on marketing and communications and
growth. Thursday is focused on developers and partnerships. Friday is focused
on the company and the culture and recruiting. Saturday I take off, I hike. And
Sunday is reflection, feedback, strategy, and getting ready for the rest of the
week.”
While he admits there are frequent
interruptions, he quickly deals with them and gets back to focusing on the
theme of the day. Themes also set a good cadence for the rest of the company.
“We’re always delivering, we’re always showing where we were last week, and
where we’re going to be the following week,” he says.
3. GET TO WORK BEFORE EVERYONE
ELSE
If you want to get work done, start before
most of the world is awake. Sallie Krawcheck, CEO of the digital financial
platform Ellevest starts
work at 4 a.m.
“For me, the most precious commodity in
business is time. And I find I am most productive when I balance time that I
spend with others with blocks of time during which I can think, write and —my
favorite — build earnings models,” writes Krawcheck on LinkedIn.
She tried to reduce her schedule on Fridays,
but incoming emails took away her focus. So now she works when others sleep.
“My mind is clear, not yet caught up in the
multiple internal conversations that we all conduct with ourselves once we gear
up for our first meeting of the day,” she writes. “And there’s a peace that
comes from knowing that my family is all in bed and safe upstairs while I work.
It is at this time of day that I often have a rush of ideas (some of them are
actually good).”
4. PROTECT YOUR TIME
Instead of letting the day fill up with
urgent tasks, Keller Williams Realtyfounder Gary Keller blocks out the first four hours to work on his most
important task for the year—his “one thing.”
Each year, he chooses the one thing that,
when tackled, will make everything else he has to do easier or unnecessary.
Then he protects the first four hours of his workday to do only that one thing.
Keller has used the technique to write books as well as grow his company to the
largest real estate franchise, and believes that until his top priority is
done, anything else is a distraction.
“The key is time. Success is built
sequentially. It’s one thing at a time,” he writes in his book The One Thing: The Surprisingly
Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results.
5. CLOSE VIRTUAL DOORS
Open work environments may be a modern
approach, but they can also hinder productivity by fostering interruptions and
unnecessary distractions. Michael Pryor, former CEO and head of product
for the project management software platform Trello, encourages workers to
close virtual doors by turning off Slack and email, and by putting a Post-It
note on their desk that says “heads down.”
Interruptions not only take time away from
important projects; they take a while to recover from. “Every time you switch
contexts, there’s this huge cost associated with that,” Pryor said in an
interview with Time. “Our time is limited, essentially. Your trick is to be able to ration
that resource for all the things you need to do, and that’s the hardest part of
being productive.”
6. SEPARATE WORK AND PERSONAL
LIFE
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki makes being home
for dinner with her five children most nights a priority. Leaving the office at
a reasonable time helps her organize her work and get it done more quickly.
When she’s home, her attention is not divided.
“We try to have the rule to not check email
between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., because if you are on your phone then it’s hard to
disconnect,” Wojcicki said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Unplugging not only helps facilitate family
time; it helps Wojcicki be more creative and productive. “[Success] is not
based on the number of hours that you’ve worked,” Wojcicki says. “If you are
working 24/7, you’re not going to have any interesting ideas.”
7. STRIVE FOR INBOX ZERO
Email can be a big time suck, but Elliot
Weissbluth, CEO of the financial services company HighTower, has a
trick for taming his inbox. He empties it every night.
“Email is unidirectional—anyone, at any time,
can just go to your inbox without permission, invitation or consideration,” he
writes in a post on LinkedIn. “Empowering the world to demand a thin slice of your attention is more
than unfair—it’s a recipe for constant distraction.”
He uses three rules to take back control and
get to zero emails each day.
1. Unsubscribe from newsletters. It takes
more time upfront than simply deleting, but it saves hours every year.
2. Delete with a vengeance. “When in
doubt, delete. If it’s that important, someone will follow up with you,” he
writes. Then respond to what you can and move the rest to recycling.
3. Don’t bother filing. A good search tool can scan
your folders and find whatever it is you need instantly.
“If you do nothing else but these three
things, your inbox will be a lot leaner,” he writes. “Whatever messages are
left become a to-do list of the items that actually need your care and
attention. Keep this list short, between two and five items, or what you can
actually hope to achieve on any given day. Get those items done and you’ve just
reached Inbox Zero.”
8. DO THE EASY THINGS FIRST
While “eating the frog” and doing the hard
things first make the rest of your day feel easier, Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg takes the opposite approach.
“I think a simple rule of business is, if you
do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of
progress,” he was quoted as saying in the book Mark Zuckerberg: 10 Lessons In
Leadership by Michael Essany.
Checking off easy things creates a snowball
effect that helps you gain momentum. That forward motion helps build energy and
stamina for the larger, harder things.
9. PUT YOUR PHONE ON SILENT
As a CEO, there are several external demands
on your time. For Ivan Mazour, CEO and founder of the marketing platform Ometria, the best
productivity hack is to always be in control of how he allocates his time.
“Calls, text messages, notifications–all
these things take away that control,” he writes on Quora. “If someone calls you and you pick up, it means you are
speaking with them when it’s convenient for them, not when it’s convenient for
you.”
Once your phone is on silent, however, you’re
in your control. “You check your missed calls, texts, emails at specific
times–times when you have chosen to allocate attention to doing so,” he writes.
“The rest of the time you are fully focused on whatever you are doing–on that
important meeting, on that important document, or on being with your family. As
long as you check the communication regularly enough, every few hours for
example, you will never miss out on anything.”
BY STEPHANIE VOZZA
https://www.fastcompany.com/40443893/productivity-secrets-from-jeff-bezos-mark-zuckerberg-susan-wojcicki-and-more?utm_source=postup&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Fast%20Company%20Weekly&position=2&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=08112017
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