CEOs have their own quirks when it comes to running their companies, from no-shoes policies to no-meeting afternoons. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said a nap at the office is his trick for staying sharp throughout his decades-long business career.
“One thing I do that people think is weird is, throughout my entire career, when I’m in the office, I close the door and take a 20-minute nap,” Kirby recently said in an interview with McKinsey and Company.
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“When I first came to United, people were like, ‘Oh my God, where do you take a nap?’ I said, ‘I lie down on the floor,’” he continued. “They said, ‘We need to put a couch in here!’ They were all worried.”
Kirby’s habit may come as a surprise, but the leader says taking a break keeps him energized to lead the $30.1 billion airline giant.
“If I take a 20-minute nap, I accomplish more than anything else I would do in that time,” explained the CEO. “When you’re tired, your brain isn’t at 100%. If you’re not at 100%, you shouldn’t be making decisions.”
And he has maintained this break as a routine throughout his career — from when he served as president of US Airways and American Airlines for years to his current six-year stint as CEO of United.
And research shows the U.S. Air Force Academy alumnus may have adopted a leadership trick: A “quick nap” of 30 minutes or less has been linked to greater alertness and better mood, as well as improving mental clarity and combating fatigue, according to a 2024 Harvard Medical School study.
Meetings limited to four hours per day
While leading one of the largest airline groups in the world, Kirby also established some rules to avoid burnout. The leader of United Airlines has a clear limit on his busy schedule: “a maximum of four hours of meetings per day”.
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Instead of constantly engaging in long, tiring conversations, Kirby said he prefers to use the time to think or call other people. He described his workday as “pretty unstructured,” but he makes an effort to be as efficient as possible — which also opens up space to invest in intellectual pursuits.
“Some important things are, first, having time to think rather than sitting in meetings that you don’t need to be in,” Kirby told McKinsey. “And second, you need to be a genuinely curious person, reading about a wide variety of subjects.”
Within his personal work model, Kirby sets aside daily moments for reading. And by picking up a book and eliminating unnecessary meetings, it can lead to better ideas for the business, he explained.
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“I read about three hours a day on average,” continued the CEO. “And you never know when the things you read are going to connect.”
Leaders who set their own limits: no meetings or emails
Like Kirby, the CEO of Berlin-based tax app Taxfix, Martin Ott, is not willing to waste working hours on tasks that have little impact.
The executive, who also served as Facebook’s general director for operations in Northern and Central Europe in 2012, learned some lessons working with Mark Zuckerberg. In the early days of Meta’s evolution, Ott learned to dedicate all of his time to what really matters — and that doesn’t include unnecessary meetings.
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“One of the things I also convey is that there are only so many hours in the day,” Ott told Fortune last year. “Ask yourself: What’s the one really important thing you can do today to make an impact, to make a difference? Ask yourself: Do you need to be in that meeting or not?”
Other CEOs have taken a more direct approach to wasting meeting time. Fellow airline industry leader Bob Jordan, CEO of Southwest Airlines, has established a new rule for 2026: his schedule will be completely free on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons. No meetings are allowed — he’s protecting his time to “think about what’s important right now.”
“When you’re starting out, it’s easy to confuse being busy and going to meetings with leadership,” Jordan said at the New York Times DealBook Summit in December 2025. “Because what we’ve all realized, I’m sure, is that there’s no time to ‘work,’ and you end up confusing going to meetings with work.”
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Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is preserving his time by setting limits on both meetings and emails — two routine daily tasks that many workers hate.
Instead of handling these pesky tasks, the short-term rental leader prefers texting and making phone calls over emailing (which was the part of the job he “hated most” before the pandemic). Chesky also postponed morning meetings until at least 10 am.
“Don’t apologize for how you want to run your company,” Chesky told the Wall Street Journal in 2025. “When you’re CEO, you get to decide what time the first meeting of the day is.”
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