The CEO with an empty calendar

“So this is it,” says Amir.

“Oh my god,” I say. My jaw drops.

His calendar is almost completely empty. There are meetings, yes, but they’re drifting like planets in outer space. They dot the darkened landscape but with unimaginably vast distances between them.

Amir continues to explain. He seems oblivious to my cosmic level of shock.

“This is a pretty busy week of meetings actually because our CTO is on paternity leave. I’m doing a lot of his final reviews of engineering hires. So this is actually more meetings than usual.”

I’m incredulous. I’m curious. Frankly, I am almost offended. He’s the CEO of an 80 person company and this — THIS — is his daily calendar? He’s got fewer meetings than Robinson Crusoe.

The question is: how does he do it? And why?

Amir Salihefendić is the founder of Doist. They make the popular todo app Todoist and the workplace communication platform Twist. He started Doist as a side project in 2007 and today he manages a fully remote team of 80 working across his two products.

I’m glad I talked to Amir for this interview, because he spoke directly to something I struggle with every day. As Nathan and I build out the Everything bundle, we’ve had to figure out how to balance creating an organization with doing our best creative work. Sometimes it feels like that’s impossible.

Creative work means being all alone in your room. Creating organizations means being in every room, all at once. It’s hard.

But after talking to Amir I realized that in the age of remote work, it’s actually possible. You can be alone in your room, and also in every room at the same time as long as you set things up properly. It takes some sacrifices, but if creative work is important to you it’s doable.

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