The 80% rule prioritizes leaving substantial unscheduled blocks in the workday rather than filling every slot with meetings. Slack in the schedule enables rapid reprioritization and provides dedicated time to execute a few top tasks each day. Avoiding routine one-on-one meetings reduces calendar fragmentation and preserves longer, uninterrupted periods for focused work. Maintaining open time also prevents frustration that arises when important work lacks space on an overscheduled calendar. Many high achievers and executives embrace similar flexible scheduling to combine agility, concentrated productivity, and improved emotional steadiness.
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 superachievers, from Google executives to Albert Einstein. It's called the 80% rule.
Instead, he tells Collison, 'I try to generally keep a bunch of time open' in his schedule. Why? 'Stuff is pretty dynamic and you wake up in the morning and you're like, 'Okay, I need to work on these three things today.' I want to make sure that I have a block of time where I can go do that,' he explains.
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