United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has a simple rule for his calendar: No more than four hours of meetings a day. And even when he does sit down in the conference room, he doesn’t want someone reading through a PowerPoint presentation—instead, he wants a meaningful discussion.
“My meetings are also quick, and my meetings are almost all conversational,” Kirby said in a recent interview with Semafor. “I want to talk—really, don’t go through decks. If you want to send a deck, send it to me in advance, and then we’re just going to talk about it. But you’re not going to read slides to me.”
The time he saves gives him room to focus on what he considers to be the more important parts of his job.
“The further you go in your career—certainly by the time you’re the CEO—your job is not to work hard; it’s to think hard,” Kirby said. “If you’re spending your time looking at yesterday’s detailed metrics, you’re doing the wrong thing.”
That philosophy has shaped Kirby’s approach as he works to position United for further growth in an increasingly competitive airline industry. The Chicago-based company is adding hundreds of upgraded aircraft, expanding its international network, and rolling out Elon Musk’s Starlink Wi-Fi across its fleet as it seeks to capture more market share from rivals such as Delta Air Lines.
For Kirby, who brought home more than $30 million in compensation last year, the goal isn’t simply to manage what United is doing today. It’s to anticipate what’s coming next.
“My job is to be focused over the horizon—what’s coming that no one else sees yet,” Kirby said. “It is not to be focused on what happened yesterday.”
United CEO Scott Kirby reads for 3 hours a day to see what ‘other people don’t see’
Kirby’s carefully structured workdays begin well before most United planes are off the ground. The 59-year-old typically gets about eight and a half hours of sleep, waking naturally around 5:30 a.m. without an alarm.
After a brief check of his email, he then starts his day by reading and exercising. He reads The Wall Street Journal cover to cover, followed by articles from The New York Times. In total, he spends roughly three hours a day reading—enough to also get through about five magazines and two books a week, often biographies and science fiction.
At a time when fewer Americans are reading books, Kirby views his reading habit as more than a way to unwind. It’s a critical tool for staying curious, making connections, and spotting opportunities others might miss.
“Reading, I think, is the number one thing you can do to connect dots, which I think I’m good at that other people don’t see,” Kirby said.
The CEOs of Delta, United, and Southwest agree: a calendar packed full of long meetings is not a recipe for success
Kirby is hardly the only airline CEO pushing back on the idea that a packed calendar is a sign of productivity. Other top executives in the industry have similarly argued that too much time in the conference room or on Zoom calls can get in the way of work leaders actually need to do.
Late last year, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan argued that many leaders mistake a full calendar for effective leadership.
“When you first start, it’s easy to confuse busyness and going to meetings with leadership,” Jordan said on a panel of CEOs at The New York Times DealBook Summit in December 2025. “…Because what we all find, I’m sure, is there’s no time to ‘work,’ and you confuse going to meetings with the work.”
This year, Jordan made a commitment to leave his calendar clear during Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons to give him time to get the “real” work done.
“It’s so that you can work on things you need to work on. You can think about what’s important right now. You can call people you need to talk to,” Jordan added.
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, who leads the industry’s largest airline by market capitalization, has also made clear that he has little patience for meetings that drag on. At the Great Place to Work for All Summit, which Fortune co-hosted earlier this year, Bastian said the ideal meeting should be far shorter than the typical calendar invite.
“The ideal length of a meeting is about 10 minutes,” Bastian said.
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