We all have the same number of hours in a week, but for some of us the demands on our time are greater. This is true with CEOs. A study published in Harvard Business Review found that each week CEOs work an average of 62.5 hours and attend 37 meetings. Getting the most out of their hours is critical.
Here are nine tricks successful CEOs use to squeeze more productivity out of themselves and their employees:
KEEP ONE DAY A WEEK FREE FROM MEETINGS
Thirty-seven meetings a week is a lot, and Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz makes sure at least one day a week is meeting-free, implementing a company-wide “No Meeting Wednesdays” (NMW) rule.
“The high-level goal of NMW is to ensure that everyone gets a large block of time each week to do focused, heads-down work,” he writes on the company blog. “The justification is well articulated in a now famous Paul Graham article: Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule. The gist is that makers suffer greatly from interruptions in their flow time. Managers are generally used to having a schedule-driven day, so it’s easy for them to throw a disruption into somebody else’s calendar. Makers also do this to each other.”
Moskovitz wants managers to be makers some of the time, so NMW ensures they get some flow time, too, he said.
