Nike CEO Elliott Hill said he protects family time by scheduling them like work commitments.
Hill, who came out of retirement to lead Nike in 2024, said he follows a structured routine when he is not traveling.
“What time I try to get to sleep, what time I try to wake up. I get a workout in every morning, too. That helps keep me grounded and keeps me balanced,” Hill told host Greg Byrne on the “You Got Byrned” podcast.
He said he makes a point of identifying what matters most to him and scheduling time for those priorities.
“I sat down, and I actually listed what was important to me: family, friends, my own personal — and then work — growth, and I put commitments underneath each one of those, and then I built them into my calendar,” Hill said.
For example, he said he knew his work schedule meant he would miss his two kids before they headed to school, so he found other ways to show up for them.
“I knew I wasn’t ever going to be there for breakfast with the kids because I was an early bird, and I was going to be in the office,” Hill said. “But I did say I’m going to be home for dinner, and I had my admin build it into my calendar so that I would leave in time to be home for dinner.”
He also blocks off parent-teacher conferences and other school events on his schedule, and said he would shift work trips when they overlap with those commitments.
“It all comes down to being very deliberate about what’s important to us. Writing it on a piece of paper was very, very helpful, and then being planful enough to build it into your calendar. That’s how I’ve always managed the balance,” Hill said.
Hill joined Nike as a sales representative intern in 1988 and spent more than three decades in the company in a range of roles. He retired in 2020 after leading Nike’s commercial and marketing operations, then returned in 2024 as CEO.
Other business leaders have also shared the systems and habits they rely on to stay organized.
Leah Solivan, a venture capitalist and the founder of TaskRabbit, told Business Insider in April that she uses six color-coded calendars to stay on top of her day.
The cofounder and CEO of Fishwife, Becca Millstein, told Business Insider in September that she does not hold company meetings without a written agenda.
Allie K. Miller, the CEO of Open Machine, told Business Insider in early October that she’ll take regular “Claude walks,” during which she’ll walk for an hour while talking to AI or taking a call.
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