Running one company is difficult enough, let alone two, but Jack Dorsey does just that as CEO of Twitter and Square.
To make it work, Dorsey follows a series of set routines. Meetings, for instance, are "highly regimented" with clear agendas and goals, according to a recent article in Barron's.
Dorsey also leverages themes for each day, such as business leadership or product development.
On Mondays, for example, Dorsey calls together a leadership meeting where his teams discuss what they're working on for the week and lessons learned from the week prior. Then on Wednesdays and Fridays, he blocks off 30-minute chunks of time to perform check-ins and receive updates from his employees.
Dorsey explains the reasoning behind this method in a 2016 interview with Fast Company magazine. "I like having a lot of repetition in my schedule," he said. "It allows us to see how we're actually growing, rather than randomness, which hides that."
While most of us don't have the luxury of themeing each day, smart time-blocking can still ensure you make time for what's most important to you.
For instance, try designating one hour for exercise each morning or carving out a 30-minute window to respond to unread emails each afternoon. When you organize your day into a series of themed time slots, you're able to focus all your energy into fully completing a task, which can help instill order in your day and significantly boost your productivity.
However, your schedule doesn't have to be filled with blocks of time in which you're actively doing work. In fact, CEOs like LinkedIn's Jeff Weiner and Virgin Group's Richard Branson also create time to do absolutely nothing. Weiner has found that scheduling 30- to 90-minute blocks of free time in his calendar makes him more efficient because he's able to process what's going on around him and "just think."
"At first, these buffers felt like indulgences. I could have been using the time to catch up on meetings I had pushed out or said 'no' to," he writes in a LinkedIn post. "But over time I realized not only were these breaks important, they were absolutely necessary in order for me to do my job."
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