I like to break up days and structure them. You have breakfast, work for two hours on a project, check your emails, work on another project for another two hours and then lunch. Your day has to be a measurable process, in order to minimize aimless drifting. Of course, you can have some days on automatic pilot, and there’s nothing wrong with drifting in and of itself. But you can’t do that every day—you’ll never get anywhere.
In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say and why?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What is the biggest obstacle you have faced professionally?
Craft & work
Question
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
Time & hindsight
I told our Ariel team, we are not going to limp out of COVID. We're going to slingshot out of COVID. We're going to be pulling that rubber band back and back, and we're going to be warehousing ideas, and getting work done, and so when this is over we will pole vault ahead.
Kathleen J. McInnis, Smart Women, Smart Power podcast, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 28 August 2024 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 20 →
Brian Eno
Composer, record producer and visual artist
Recorded
Max Dax, Eno's London studio, 2011, Telekom Electronic Beats, 1 January 2011
source ↗
Megan Rapinoe
United States international footballer, 2006–2023
I am kneeling because I have to do something. Anything. We all do.
Nithin Kamath
Co-founder and chief executive of Zerodha
Sleeping by 9 pm & getting a workout at 5 am has been helpful. Sleeping early reduces the chances of bingeing when we are drained and have low self-control at the end of the day. A workout in the morning also increases the odds of making healthier choices throughout the day.
Akio Toyoda
President of Toyota Motor Corporation, 2009–2023; chairman from 2023
Even I can't predict what kind of car we will be driving 20 years from now, but my time at Babson taught me to embrace change rather than run from it, and I urge all of you to do the same.
Recorded
Babson College Graduate Commencement, Babson College (Babson Thought & Action), 21 May 2019
source ↗
More from Mellody Hobson
View profile →I wrote about this in our first quarter client letter, actually, the concept of polycrisis, and I talked about the fact that my belief is that we've all become firefighters.
Recorded
Kathleen J. McInnis, Smart Women, Smart Power podcast, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 28 August 2024
source ↗
I remember the day. It was just such a big day. It happened to be the same day that I got to be on the cover of Forbes. And I remember just being so overwhelmed by the opportunity that we had at hand, that we had closed this $1.45 billion fund - first time - probably in the top five of first-time funds ever that had been closed.
Recorded
Kathleen J. McInnis, Smart Women, Smart Power podcast, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 28 August 2024
source ↗
We cannot afford to be color blind. We have to be color brave. We have to be willing, as teachers and parents and entrepreneurs and scientists, we have to be willing to have proactive conversations about race with honesty and understanding and courage, not because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the smart thing to do, because our businesses and our products and our science, our research, all of that will be better with greater diversity.
I really appreciate the fact, and I constantly tell Reverend Jackson and Reverend Sharpton that I appreciate the fact that they're fighting for us, because I am an accident of birth.
We would constantly have to move because we couldn't quite afford the places that we were living. And sometimes we got evicted. And it was just very, very difficult as a child to try to understand that.
I'd say be just like you. I once had someone tell me that I don't remind them of anyone that they ever met. And I took that as a huge compliment, which meant I was original. And so I would suggest to her that she speak her truth with her life, with her own sense of purpose and pursue her dreams.
More on daily life
- What single thing would improve the quality of your life? 206 answers
- What keeps you awake at night? 196 answers
- What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? 30 answers
- In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? 22 answers
- When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? 22 answers
- What does the first sixty minutes of your day look like? 16 answers
Also answered this
Ray Dalio, Akio Toyoda, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, Brian Eno, Megan Rapinoe
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All daily life questions
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject