Some interesting information on the daily routines of some famous CEOs, VPs and other successful big-shots. I remember my brother sending me this forward sometime back but the sources weren’t attributed. A quick google search didn’t help either. Makes for an interesting read nevertheless.
Hank Paulson
Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs
I’ve always been very efficient and disciplined. If I have a business dinner, people know that it should start at 6:30 and be over by 8:30. When I’m home in New York, I’m asleep at 10. I’m up at 5:30 and try to work out four to five times a week. Once or twice a week, I run four miles in Central Park. I used to do seven-minute miles, Now I’m up to eight and a half or nine.
Marissa Mayer
VP, Search Products and User Experience Google
To keep track of tasks, I have a little document called a task list. And in the same document there’s a list for each person I work with or interact with, of what they’re working on or what I expect fro them. It’s just a list in a text file. Using this, I can plan my day out the night before: “These are the five high-priority things to focus on”.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to make time that was previously unproductive productive. If I’m driving my car somewhere, I try to get a call in to my family and friends then. Or during dead time when I’m waiting in line, I hop on my cell phone and get something done.
My day starts around 9 am and meetings finish up around 8 pm . After that I stay in the office to do action items and e-mail. I can get by on four to six hours of sleep. I pace myself by taking a week-long vacation every four months.
Bill Gross
Chief Investment Officer, Pimco
I get up about 4:30 am and check out the markets. I have a Bloomberg and a Telerate and some other machines downstairs. I make myself some breakfast and then head off to work about 5:45 am and get into the office about 6. The first hour or two is used for acclimating the markets and various economic data releases.
Howard Schlutz
Chairman, Starbucks
I get up at 5 and 5:30 and naturally the first thing I do is make some coffee; depending on my mood, it’s ether an espresso, macchiato or one of our Indonesian coffees in a French press. I’ll take my coffee, read three newspapers – The Seattle Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York times – and listen to a voicemail summarizing sales results from the past 24 hours. This has been my routine for the past 25 years.
Carlos Ghosn
CEO of Renault(France) and Nissan(Japan)
Focus relentlessly, especially if you’re running two Global 500 companies. I do my best thinking early in the morning. I always ask that my first meeting not happen before eight. When I need more time to think , I wake up earlier. If I don’t do six hours of sleep I’m in bad shape, but I’m usually up by 6. It is also important to take a distance from the problem. I do not bring my work home.I play with my four children and spend time with my family on weekends. When I go to work on Monday, I can look at the problem with more distance. I come up with good ideas as a result of becoming stronger after being recharged. Stress builds up when you know that there is a problem but you do not clearly see it, and you do not have solution. We’re all human. I want to assure you I feel the same pain and he same stress and the same jet lag as anybody else. You may have nights when you cannot sleep and the stress is unbearable. It happens to every single person in a job like this.
I get around 600 emails a day. I divide them into four categories, and I deal with them immediately, by and large. First are emails that I forward to someone else. Next are where somebody’s giving me information that I need to cascade to somebody else with instructions. Third are the ones that I can read later on an airplane. Fourth are those that require me to respond immediately.
A.G Lafley
Chairman , President and CEO , Procter and Gamble
I’ve learned how to manage my energy. I used to focus on managing my time. I’d be up in the morning between 5 and 5:30.I’d work out and be at my desk by 6:30 or 7, drive hard until about 7 pm, then go home, take a break with my wife, Margaret and be back at it later that evening. I was just grinding through the day.
During my first year in this job, I worked every Saturday and ever Sunday morning. Now I work really hard for an hour or an hour and a half. Then I take a break. I walk around and chit-chat with people. It can take five or 15 minutes to recharge. It’s kind of like the interval training that an athlete does.
I learned this in a program called the corporate Athlete that we put on for P&G managers. I did the two-day program, where I also leaned to change the way I eat. I used to eat virtually nothing for breakfast. Now I have a v- 8 juice, half a bagel, and cup of yogurt. And I eat five or six times a day. It’s about managing your glycemic level. You don’t want to boom and bust.
John McCain
U.S.Senator (R-Arizoa)
You lose battles in politics. I do get good and angry. Really angry! By God, I’m not going to let them beat me again. I don’t like to lose. After the 2000 race for the presidential nomination, I spent at least ten days – and in many ways it was the most wonderful experience of my life – wallowing in self-pity. It was really fun. Freeing.
Judge Richard Posner
U.S.Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Chicago.
Then I just woke up and said it was time to get over this. The people you represent don’t want you this way. You’re still their Senator. And besides, America doesn’t like sore losers. I also don’t hold grudges. It’s a waste of time. What’s the point? Frankly, the sweetest revenge is success.
I usually get up around a quarter to 8 and don’t get to the office till about 9:30, 10 a.m. I usually go home after lunch and then spend the rest of the afternoon and evening, except for dinner, up till about 11:30 pm, working. I’m working on opinions, or writing a book or blog, or something else. I’m a very fast writer. I can write 20, 30 manuscript pages in an evening. I do revisions later, but I find it more efficient to et something down that indicates where the gaps I my thinking are, and what research has to be done, and so on.
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