CNBC: Jeff Bezos Billionaire Amazon founder shares process to boost productivity and find creative solutions

Jeff Bezos doesn’t jam-pack his schedule or set strict time blocks for all his meetings.

Instead, the 60-year-old Amazon and Blue Origin founder — currently the second-richest person in the world, according to Forbes — gives himself and his teams ample time for creative thinking, he told the “Lex Fridman Podcast.”

“I don’t keep to a strict schedule,” Bezos said, in an episode first released in December 2023. “My meetings often go longer than I plan for them to, because I believe in [mind] wandering.”

For example, Bezos makes time during meetings for people to bounce ideas off each other, no matter how small or spontaneous, he said — a process he called a “messy meeting.” Those sessions usually don’t have a set end time, he added.

“When I sit down [in] a meeting, I don’t know how long the meeting is going to take if we’re trying to solve a problem,” Bezos said. “The reality is we may have to wander for a long time ... I think there’s certainly nothing more fun than sitting at a whiteboard with a group of smart people and spit-balling and coming up with new ideas and objections to those ideas, and then solutions to the objections and going back and forth.”

He added that “a lot of people feel like wandering is inefficient,” but studies show that a divergent mind can actually boost a person’s productivity, creativity and happiness.

Mind wandering vs. time blocking

Some productivity experts swear by the time blocking method, which involves blocking out specific amounts of time on your calendar for every task you need to accomplish each day — sometimes even including meal breaks and coffee chats.

But the strategy can leave you feeling stressed and burned out, Yale University psychology professor Laurie Santos told attendees at SXSW in March. Meanwhile, a 2016 study of more than 200 college students found that their creativity significantly improved when allowing their minds to wander.

If you’re the kind of person who gets overwhelmed by a packed schedule, carving out time to allow your mind to wander could help you come up with ideas you might not have considered on a more structured schedule — provided you do it effectively rather than simply zoning out, psychologist Jill Suttie wrote for the University of California Berkeley’s “Greater Good” magazine in 2018.

When a problem arises in the workplace or at school, take some time that’s free from distractions — like your phone or a string of unread emails — and try to come up with an array of solutions, both big and small, then bounce them off of your colleagues to round them out, Suttie wrote. It may sound counterintuitive, but taking a break from your work routine to let your mind wander can sometimes be the most effective way to solve a problem that’s otherwise left you feeling stuck.

“Under the right circumstances, a wandering mind may actually benefit us and possibly those around us,” Suttie wrote. “The trick is to know when to set your mind free.”

Bezos’ approach to mind wandering

Bezos lets his mind wander to consider the pros and cons of his own ideas. Once they’ve survived his own “first level of scrutiny,” he presents them to others for a productive group brainstorm to help the idea take shape.

For Bezos, that initial “intuition” is a jumping-off point that can lead to more exploration with other people. The results can be both “fun” and productive, as you work together to take a potential creative solution and figure out how to make it work in reality, he said.

“I will often say, ‘Look, it is going to be really easy for you to find objections to this idea, but work with me...’” Bezos told Fridman. “Because it’s really easy to kill new ideas in the beginning. So, you need to forewarn people and say, ‘I know it’s going to take a lot of work to get this to a fully formed idea. Let’s get started on that. It’ll be fun.’”