United CEO caps meetings to 4 hours a day and has a strict rule for PowerPoint presentations: ‘You’re not going to read slides to me’

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.