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How I Run

This is my operating system. Not aspirational. It describes what I actually do and what I come back to when I drift.

The goal is not to work hard. It is to build a life where the goal is a foregone conclusion. The habits, the structure, the protected time — none of it is the point. They are the conditions that make the outcome inevitable. Someone following me for a day should not need me to explain what I am working toward. They should be able to see it.

Daily

Habits first. Workout, quiet time, and reading. Every day, before work. Non-negotiable. Not productivity hacks. They are what I am built on, and what I come back to when everything else gets loud.

Deep work: one 90-minute sprint. The brain runs on ultradian rhythms, roughly 90 minutes of high focus then a real break. I do the hardest, most important thing first. No calls, no messages during the sprint. The break after is not optional. See Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time.

Batch messages, twice. One pass through email and Slack after the sprint, one before closing. I respond to what needs a response and flag what needs a decision. Not reactive. Scheduled. See Marc Andreessen on productivity.

Plug the leaks. Know what is draining capacity and remove it. A late evening meeting that could have waited until morning. Staying out longer than necessary. A commitment accepted because it was easier than saying no. None of these cost much once. Together they compound into a version of yourself operating below what you are capable of. The standard is: if it is not returning something proportional to what it costs, it does not belong in the system. See Plug the Leaks.

Calls and meetings. Mid-day and afternoon. 1:1s, product calls, external conversations. Some Systeric calls run into the evening given time zones. I try to be heads-off by 8:30pm.

End of day: clear the deck, place the monkeys. Every open item has a named owner and a named next action before I close the laptop. I do not end the day carrying monkeys I should have handed off. Read Who’s Got the Monkey.

Weekly

Monday: one priority question. What must move this week that only I can move?

Friday: week review. One paragraph. What moved, what did not, and why. One question: did I spend most of this week in work only I can do? If not, what shifted and why.

Thinking time, when needed. When direction feels fuzzy, when a pattern across 1:1s will not leave me alone, when a quarter is approaching and I am not clear yet, I block time to be alone and quiet. I bring what I have been collecting and let it surface and connect. Some of it becomes decisions. Some becomes questions I want to bring to specific people. Some dissolves. This is where direction comes from before it becomes a plan. It is also where I pray and listen, not just reason.

Biweekly

1:1 with every direct report — engineers and PMs. They fill out the biweekly template before we meet. I read it in advance. The meeting is for solving problems, not reading updates.

A good biweekly ends early because everything got resolved. They came in with blockers; they leave without them, or with a named date. I came in not knowing where the quarter actually stands; I leave knowing. The takeaway for them: at least one decision made, one blocker cleared, one piece of feedback they can act on today. The takeaway for me: a real read on what is happening, not what the doc says. Three things I watch for every time: are their goals on track, what is blocking them that I can remove, and are they giving and receiving honest feedback.

Monthly

Code walk with engineers. See code review. How I stay close to engineering quality without creating a bottleneck.

External thinking call. One or two a quarter. A short list of advisors and peers whose thinking sharpens mine. I come with a question, not an agenda.

Quarterly

Quarterly 1:1s. Before the conversation, I set direction for each person. Two sentences: where I need them to be by end of quarter, and why it matters for the team. Not a task list. A directional statement: what the team needs them to own, or what capability they need to unlock. I write this before the meeting, not during it.

They come with their proposed goals, filled out in advance. I come with direction. The conversation is the alignment between the two. For each of their goals: does it connect to the direction? If yes, sharpen it: deliverable, number, timeline. If no, name why and redirect. If the direction requires something not in their list, name it together and add it.

Three goals. Each with a deliverable, a number, and a reason it matters. They leave knowing exactly what they are building and why. If they cannot say it without looking at notes, the goals are not right yet.

Energy and zone of genius audit. What gave me energy in the last 90 days, and what drained it? The answer shapes the next quarter’s calendar. The question underneath: am I spending time on the work only I can do, or filling my calendar with things someone else could handle?

Direction. Before each quarter begins, I need to be able to state where I want the team to be by the end of it in two sentences. If I cannot, I have not thought about it enough.

Quarterly planning. See quarterly roadmap.

People

Most decisions do not need me. I trust the team to think critically and handle things. Most decisions are reversible. The team makes them without me. The two-way door principle: if you can walk back through the door, walk through it. Do not ask for permission. Irreversible decisions come to me before they are made. These include architectural choices that are hard to unwind, new vendors with significant lock-in, material changes to core user flows, and anything with lasting financial or product consequences.

For product and tech calls: I join when the decision is irreversible or when I can see something across contexts that the team in the room cannot. If neither is true, I stay out.

For people who need more support: Some people are overwhelmed, not operating at the level I expect, or have not yet internalized the direction. For those people, I increase the cadence: daily 15-minute check-ins for a period, until they are operating with more confidence. This is not performance management. It is mentoring. The goal is to close the gap, not document it.

What I Do Not Hold

Monkeys. Every problem has a next move. That move lives on someone’s back. When I leave a conversation without a named owner and a named next action, I have absorbed a monkey or lost one. Every conversation ends with someone owning what happens next. Not “let’s follow up.” Who follows up, on what, by when. Read Who’s Got the Monkey.

Decisions that are not mine to make. If a decision can be made without me, it should be. My job is to build the conditions where most decisions happen below me. If the team needs me for everything, I have not built context. I have built dependency.

What I Read

Books I return to:

  • The Bible
  • Scaling People (Claire Hughes Johnson)
  • High Growth Handbook (Elad Gil)
  • CEO Excellence (Carolyn Dewar et al.)
  • Smartcuts (Shane Snow)
  • Problem Solving 101 (Ken Watanabe)
  • The Mochary Method (Matt Mochary)
  • Rituals of Great Teams (Shishir Mehrotra)
  • Rituals of Hypergrowth (Shishir Mehrotra)

Articles worth re-reading once a year:

The Test

At the end of each week: did I work in my zone of genius? Did I protect the things worth protecting? Did the people I invest in leave better equipped than before? Is my direction for the quarter sharp enough to say in two sentences?

If yes, it was a good week. The output follows.