Eric Schmidt, whose net worth is hovering around $45 billion, is aware of what it takes to climb the company ladder in Silicon Valley, having spent a decade as CEO of Google. But the key to his success shouldn’t be racking up infinite hours within the workplace.
As a substitute, Schmidt credit a deceptively easy behavior, one he calls a game-changer for anybody in search of significant productiveness good points: Put aside just a few undisturbed hours every weekend for reflection, and seize a pen and paper. No screens allowed.
This strategy, which Schmidt revealed throughout a latest interview on The Gstaad Guy Podcast hosted by Gustaf Lundberg Toresson, traces again to his mentorship by the late great Bill Campbell, legendary coach to tech’s most influential leaders.
“You’re employed actually exhausting through the week, as exhausting as you may—you recognize, 12 hours, 14 hour days, no matter—and on the weekends, whenever you’re at house or with your loved ones or no matter, carve out just a few hours to suppose,” Schmidt said on the podcast. “Flip off the telephone. You’re not texting. You’re not Instagram and so forth. And suppose and write down your evaluation of what you probably did final week, after which what it’s worthwhile to do subsequent week to handle the stuff you forgot to do final week.”
He insists this straightforward observe might be transformative as a result of it helps you observe specializing in accountability. “It’s a great trick as a result of it forces you to take cost of your subsequent week. Like, ‘Oh, I forgot that I’ve a gross sales drawback over there,’ or ‘I forgot I used to be speculated to name this particular person,’ ‘Oh, I didn’t have this proposal and I had this concept however I didn’t get to it.’ And that normally works fairly nicely,” he mentioned.
This observe isn’t about squeezing extra duties into the weekend. It’s about utilizing downtime to recalibrate. Schmidt mentioned he finally discovered his optimum workweek to be about 63 hours—not the 80-plus-hour marathons of his youthful years—which simply goes to indicate that extra time on the desk doesn’t all the time result in higher outcomes. “You hit declining marginal productiveness,” he mentioned on the podcast, including that too much “slaving away” can actually erode results.
He additionally makes clear that reflection isn’t just for CEOs or entrepreneurs. Anybody, from engineers to junior employees, can profit, particularly in a world saturated with digital noise and the ever-present danger of distraction. In an period the place “consideration has turn into a type of foreign money,” he mentioned, the necessity to carve out considerate time whereas unplugged from our cavalcade of digital distractions has by no means been higher.
According to Schmidt, adopting this weekend behavior may help you catch small issues earlier than they develop into huge ones, and allow you to keep centered on vital issues. As Schmidt notes, “writing issues down equals readability”—and that readability is what retains the world’s strongest leaders not simply busy, however efficient.
You possibly can watch the total Gstaad Man episode that includes Eric Schmidt under:
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to assist with an preliminary draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the data earlier than publishing.
