Mark Zuckerberg Is the Latest Super Achiever to Say He Swears By the 80 Percent Rule

Imagine you’re Mark Zuckerberg. What does an average day at work look like for you?

Most people with experience in management would probably guess the Meta boss spends his working hours in an endless series of meetings. Maybe he even schedules his time down to the minute like his fellow billionaires Bill Gates and Elon Musk.

But when Zuckerberg sat down for a fireside chat with Stripe co-founder John Collison recently and described his productivity system, it looked nothing like the overscheduled meeting mania many leaders suffer through. Instead, Zuckerberg claimed favors an alternate approach to productivity (and sanity) favored by many other super achievers, from Google executives to Albert Einstein.

It’s called the 80 percent rule.

Why Mark Zuckerberg avoids one-on-one meetings

The relevant portion of the conversation kicks off when Collison asks Zuckerberg how he organizes his time “to actually spend time on the things that you think are valuable for the company.”

It’s a key question faced not just by the CEOs of multibillion-dollar behemoths but by everyday small-business owners and middle managers too. Which makes Zuckerberg’s answer even…