Jeff Bezos uses ‘mind wandering’ to boost his productivity. What it is – Moneycontrol

Jeff Bezos is not a fan of time blocking — a trend that involves setting strict time blocks for all his meetings and engagements. Instead, the second-richest person in the world, according to Forbes, follows mind wandering and gives himself and his teams ample time for creative thinking, Bezos said during a podcast.

“I don’t keep to a strict schedule,” CNBC Make It quoted the 60-year-old Amazon and Blue Origin founder saying. “My meetings often go longer than I plan for them to, because I believe in [mind] wandering.”

Explaining what it means to him, Bezos said he makes time during meetings for people to bounce ideas off each other, no matter how small or spontaneous, he said. “Messy meeting,” Bezos called it, adding that these sessions don’t usually have a set time.

“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 in the Lex Fridman Podcast. “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 boost productivity, creativity, and happiness.

Explaining his approach to mind wandering, Bezos said that he lets his mind wander to consider the pros and cons of his own ideas. That’s his “first level of scrutiny”. Once the ideas clear the level, he presents them to others for a productive group brainstorming session to help the idea take shape.

For Bezos, this process can lead to the idea being explored by more people and prompting the results to be both “fun” and productive.

“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 said. “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.’”

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