Eric Schmidt, whose fortune is currently around $45 billion, knows what it takes to climb the corporate ladder in Silicon Valley, having spent a decade as CEO of Google. However, the secret to his success is not logging endless hours at the office.
Instead, Schmidt attributes it to a deceptively simple habit that he calls a game-changer for anyone seeking significant productivity gains: setting aside a few uninterrupted hours each weekend for reflection, and picking up a pen and paper. No screens.
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This approach, which Schmidt revealed during a recent interview on The Gstaad Guy Podcast hosted by Gustaf Lundberg Toresson, dates back to his mentorship with the late Bill Campbell, legendary coach of technology’s most influential leaders.
“You work really hard during the week, as much as you can — 12-hour days, 14-hour days, whatever — and on the weekends, when you’re at home or with your family or whatever, take a few hours to think,” Schmidt said on the podcast.
“Put your phone down. You’re not texting. You’re not looking at Instagram and so on. And think about and write down your assessment of what you did last week, and then what you need to do next week to address the things you forgot to do last week.”
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He insists that this simple practice can be transformative because it helps you practice focusing on responsibility.
“It’s a good trick because it forces you to take control of your next week. Like, ‘Oh, I forgot I have a sales problem there,’ or ‘I forgot I was supposed to call this person,’ ‘Oh, I didn’t have this proposal and I had this idea, but I couldn’t act on it.’ And that usually works really well,” he said.
This practice does not mean fitting more tasks into the weekend. It’s about using downtime to recalibrate.
Schmidt said he eventually discovered his ideal work week was about 63 hours — not the 80-plus hour marathons of his younger years — which just goes to show that more time at a desk doesn’t always lead to better results.
“You achieve diminishing marginal productivity (the work doesn’t pay off after a while),” he said on the podcast, adding that working too much can actually hurt your results.
He also makes it clear that reflection is not just for CEOs or entrepreneurs. Anyone from engineers to junior employees can benefit, especially in a world saturated with digital noise and the ever-present risk of distraction.
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In an era where “attention has become a form of currency,” the need to set aside reflective time disconnected from our avalanche of electronic distractions has never been greater.
According to Schmidt, adopting this weekend habit can help you catch small problems before they turn into big ones, and allow you to stay focused on important matters.
As he notes, “writing things down leads to clarity” – and that clarity is what keeps the world’s most powerful leaders not just busy, but effective.
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For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor checked the information for accuracy before publication.
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