How to run a think-week

Hey Everyone,

Bill Gates's 1995 think-week produced the "Internet Tidal Wave" memo that redirected Microsoft's entire strategy toward the internet. Jeff Bezos came back from a solo retreat in late 2002 with Amazon's new organizational structure and the "two-pizza team" principle.

Neither of those happened by accident. Gates spent two months collecting reading material before each retreat. Bezos went alone and came back with written plans.

The secret sauce for these retreats? The preparation and planning.

Here's how to plan your first one, scaled to whatever time you have.

What separates a useful retreat from a wasted one

People who've run think-weeks and written about them afterward keep coming back to the same four things:

• Show up with material ready: Gates had his team collect papers from across Microsoft, starting two months before each retreat. Any employee at any level could submit. The reading was curated and waiting for him when he arrived. If you skip this step, you'll spend your retreat figuring out what to think about instead of actually thinking.
• Pick one or two questions, not ten: Trying to solve everything produces nothing. Pick the question with the highest stakes for the next quarter and build the retreat around it.
• Go solo: Max Thake, who has written about multiple think-weeks in detail, says three is a crowd, two can work, but solo delivers the biggest bang for the buck. The point is uninterrupted time with your own thinking, not a group offsite.
• Stay off your phone: Delete social apps, turn on Do Not Disturb, minimize WiFi. Thake avoids scrolling through news or social media because it replaces your thinking with other people's thinking.

Plan yours in five steps

1. Pick your big question: What is the single most important strategic decision you need to think through? Write it down. Everything else in the retreat serves this question.
2. Collect your reading: Start gathering materials at least two weeks early. Articles, reports, data from your team, competitor analysis, books. The retreat is only as good as the material you bring into it.
3. Set your daily structure: Thake splits his time between focused reading, focused writing, and unstructured walks where ideas connect on their own. He deliberately leaves day one open with no goals and no reading, just settling down and letting his mind decompress. Day two is where the real work starts.
4. Set your ground rules: Decide in advance how you'll handle email (once a day for 15 minutes is a good ceiling), phone calls (two per day at most), and meals (simple, so you're not spending mental energy on logistics).
5. Block two hours the week after: Turn your notes into decisions, action items, or a written strategy document. Without this step, the thinking stays in your notebook.

Pick your time budget

Not everyone can disappear for a week, but you can scale a think-week to the time that you have.

48 hours, quarterly: Laura Stack, CEO of The Productivity Pro, checks into a local hotel every quarter for 48-hour focused sessions. She's published 8 books in 14 years this way. A hotel room, a stack of reading, and your phone in airplane mode is all it takes.

2-3 days, quarterly: Barnaby Lashbrooke, CEO of Time Etc, takes a 2-3 day solo retreat every 90 days. He reviews the prior quarter's data and builds a 90-day action plan. He credits this practice with a 3% improvement in revenue retention and says almost every major win traces back to these retreats.

5-7 days, once or twice a year: This is what Gates did. Two months of collecting reading, a full week alone, and a written memo or strategy document coming out the other side. If you've done a few shorter retreats and found the practice useful, a full week lets you go deeper on the question.

Try this today

Open your calendar and block 48 hours this quarter at a location away from your office. Write down the one question you'll focus on and start collecting reading material between now and then.

And if 48 hours feels out of reach right now, start with a single day. One day with no meetings and one good question will give you more than a month of thinking between calls.

Go deeper

👉 CNBC: Bill Gates took solo 'think weeks' in a cabin in the woods — why it's a great strategy – the full story of how Gates ran his retreats, with quotes from Laura Stack on adapting the practice

👉 Chris Bailey: What I Learned Taking a Bill Gates-Inspired Think Week – a productivity author's firsthand account and the five lessons that changed how he works

👉 Todoist: Deep Work — The Complete Guide – a step-by-step breakdown of Cal Newport's deep work framework, useful for building daily focus blocks between retreats

Coming up tomorrow

Tomorrow, we're sharing the week-by-week playbook that sits behind a well-executed and smooth price increase.

That's it for today!

P.S. Gates brought Diet Orange Crush and Diet Coke. What are you packing for yours?