“Meetings are not work.”
I swear it wasn’t me this time. Instead of thinking Amy, there you go again with your unrealistic ideas, you can take it out on Bob Jordan.
Bob Jordan is the CEO of Southwest. And like the rest of us — falling asleep or playing Wordle in meetings that could have been emails — he’s fed up. According to remarks at the New York Times DealBook Summit, Jordan’s goal for 2026 is to “keep his calendar completely clear every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoon — blocking anyone from booking meetings during those hours.” (source: Fortune)
Must be nice to be the CEO of a company and make that change, right? Meanwhile, how many people at Southwest are still attending meetings because their immediate supervisors measure success in hours clocked?
Southwest posted a surprise profit last quarter while Jordan was blocking those afternoons. He admits it sounds crazy. The numbers say otherwise.
We have a long way to go for these proven productivity systems to work their way down to the rest of the organization. They would get a lot more done if they followed suit: more high-intensity work sessions (as you'll read in our O-note below), fewer pseudowork days on the clock.
But leadership can’t just change their own calendar. They must also train their people to have the same values.
You don’t have to be Bob Jordan to do this. You can choose to block your time from unnecessary crap anytime you want. You don’t need a board of directors or a corner office to decide your afternoons are for actual work. You don’t need a title to stop performing busy.
If your week is packed but your needle isn’t moving, that’s a permission problem dressed up as a time problem. And the only person whose permission you actually need is yours.
Welcome to The ROLE Model
My framework for building a personal brand that creates opportunities, income, and influence. It guides you to Reveal Your Focus, Optimize Your Energy, Lead the Movement, and Elevate Your Impact.
R — Reveal Your Focus
Write your ideas immediately. Pen to paper is best for processing, but an audio note will do. The sooner it’s out of your head and in the real world, the sooner you can make sense of it and clear space for more good ideas.
Write clearly enough for a stranger to get it. You may think what you wrote will make sense to you later, but just in case, write it as though a stranger needs to understand it. Believe it or not, you will feel like a stranger to yourself when you read something you can’t quite parse. You are the stranger. Write clearly for you.
Write the ideas that are interesting to you. What’s the use in keeping ideas if they’re not that interesting to you later? You want to be excited by your thoughts when you see them again. Reenergized. Generate real energy by collecting ideas related to your interests.
O — Optimize Your Energy
Pseudowork is when you’re busy with something but it isn’t directly contributing to the outcome of a project that needs to be done.
Society has convinced us this is what working looks like — report to a desk from 9 to 5 to prove your worth — when actually we’ve just sold our time to the highest bidder, waiting for them to give us our daily orders.
You don’t need long, drawn-out blocks of time to get things done. You need short, intense bursts of progress toward a greater vision.
If you want to get things done, you need to give a SHIT: Short High Intensity Time.
Watch your productivity skyrocket so fast you’ll be saying “Oh SHIT, I have time for a round of Mahjong.”
The Inner Circle applications open shortly.
Group coaching for ambitious women who are done collecting capability and ready to expand capacity. Applications open soon. Get on the waitlist to be first in.
L — Lead The Movement
The people who want to make a name for themselves the fastest use social media to open the door to a known personal brand.
The people who actually make it do the simplest thing in the world: talk.
Photos are pretty and can be edited. Skits are funny and need to be scripted. Video blogging is when you take your thoughts and speak to the camera about them like you’re talking to a friend — bringing them in on a secret you think they should know.
No viral formula needed. No trend hopping necessary.
This will be the fastest way for the right people to see you and think Dang. She really knows what she’s talking about.
E — Elevate Your Impact
What are you doing today that you do every week at this time?
Stop it.
Or at least, stop starting from scratch every time you do it.
If you don’t have a system for tasks you do regularly, you’ll never get your time back. And most certainly, you’ll never elevate your life.
When in doubt, ask ChatGPT how to do it.
Go after the life you want!
Amy
The version of you everyone is used to is the version keeping you small.
On the latest AmyTV, I’m breaking down how I pivoted my brand without losing my audience — and tripled it instead. The friends-and-family address, the Instagram Stories capture process, and the three affirmations that pull you out of over-explaining.
If you enjoy this newsletter and know someone who’s ready to step into their ROLE Model era, feel free to share this with them.
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