If there’s one secret the smartest MENA founders won’t admit easily, it’s this: they are obsessed with their calendars. Not in a casual, “let me check what’s next” way but in the strategic, almost militant sense where every hour of the day is a line item of intention.
For these founders, a calendar is not just a scheduling tool. It’s a blueprint for scaling, surviving, and thriving in one of the world’s most competitive startup ecosystems.
Across Cairo, Riyadh, Dubai, and Doha, the most productive MENA founders know that their calendar is more than a reflection of time but also a reflection of priorities, strategy, and focus.
Let’s explore why this obsession matters, what it looks like in practice, and how global and regional leaders use it to their advantage (and sometimes, to their detriment).
The Rise of Calendar Obsession
The obsession with calendars traces back to the rise of time blocking, a productivity method popularized by thought leaders like Cal Newport, author of Deep Work.
Instead of letting tasks scatter across to-do lists, time blocking demands that you assign specific blocks of time to every activity. You schedule thinking, coding, fundraising, team check-ins, even rest.
Tech giants in Silicon Valley were early adopters. Bill Gates, for example, famously blocked “Think Weeks” on his calendar to disconnect and read deeply. Elon Musk is known for running his days in 5-minute increments. Jeff Bezos once declared he only takes three high-quality decisions a day and his calendar protects that bandwidth.
Now, MENA founders are increasingly adopting this mindset, fueled by the fast-paced demands of venture-backed businesses, hypergrowth goals, and ecosystems that are maturing at record speed. In this region where the cost of distraction is higher than ever, a well-structured calendar is becoming a competitive advantage.
Strategy Encoded in Hours
What makes the smartest MENA founders different isn’t just their work ethic. It isn’t their genetic makeup either. It’s how deliberately they encode strategy into their calendars. How do they do this?
1. Fundraising Focus: A founder preparing for a $10M Series A doesn’t leave investor meetings to chance. Time is carved out weekly to refine pitch decks, rehearse narratives, and connect with warm leads. In the UAE, fintech founders often dedicate “networking blocks” at DIFC or Abu Dhabi Global Market events, ensuring relationship-building happens systematically.
2. Building While Scaling: Saudi founders building AI or logistics startups often reserve “deep work” hours early in the morning, before teams log on. These protected hours are where product pivots or technical breakthroughs happen.
3. Protecting Energy: The smartest MENA founders know that calendars aren’t just about fitting more work, they’re about fitting the right work. A Doha-based healthtech founder admitted in a panel that blocking exercise and family time into her calendar has been the only way to avoid burnout in hypergrowth mode.
In essence, the calendar becomes a scoreboard: if your week doesn’t reflect your priorities, then your startup won’t either and numbers back this up.
A Harvard Business Review study found that executives who engaged in structured calendar management were 74% more productive than peers who relied on task lists alone. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Work Trend Index (2023) revealed that 68% of leaders feel overloaded by meetings, but those who practice time blocking report two times higher job satisfaction.
And closer to home: a 2024 survey by Wamda showed that 61% of MENA founders struggle with time management as their biggest personal challenge. The ones who reported confidence in managing growth almost always cited disciplined calendar use as part of their toolkit.
Simply put: MENA founders who treat their calendars as strategy outperform those who treat it as a diary.
Global and Regional Examples
Elon Musk (Tesla/SpaceX): Runs on micro-blocking, sometimes breaking his day into 5-minute intervals. While this maximizes efficiency, it’s also been criticized for creating unrealistic expectations for his teams.
Jack Dorsey (Twitter/Square): Used “theme days” where Mondays were for management, Tuesdays for product, Wednesdays for marketing, etc. This method has been widely adopted by startup founders worldwide.
Ritesh Agarwal (OYO Rooms): Credits his disciplined calendar as essential for scaling OYO into a global hospitality giant before age 30.
Careem Founders (UAE): Mudassir Sheikha has spoken about the necessity of structured routines during Careem’s scaling years. Their obsession with prioritizing time allowed them to execute rapidly, eventually selling to Uber for $3.1B.
Vezeeta (Egypt): Amir Barsoum emphasized that one of his biggest productivity hacks as CEO was blocking entire mornings for strategy and product reviews, while leaving afternoons for external engagements.
These stories highlight the double edge: calendars can sharpen focus, but if taken to extremes, they can strip flexibility and stifle spontaneity. And in case you haven’t figured it out, these qualities are equally important for startup leadership.
When Obsession Backfires
Like any tool, calendar obsession has its pitfalls.
Rigidity: Some MENA founders become so rigid with schedules that they fail to adapt to sudden opportunities. A last-minute chance to meet a potential investor can’t always wait two weeks.
Burnout by Over-Optimization: Packing every minute leaves no space for downtime or creative wandering. Several founders admit that the calendar obsession made them feel like “prisoners of their own startup.”
Team Disconnect: A hyper-optimized calendar might work for a founder, but if team members can’t get facetime, morale suffers. Balance is key.
Lessons for Aspiring MENA Founders
So, what can emerging MENA founders learn from this?
1. Audit Your Calendar Weekly: Does your week reflect your strategic priorities like fundraising, product, team, growth? If not, you’re drifting.
2. Adopt Time Blocking: Even if it’s just 2 hours of deep work daily, block it and protect it.
3. Balance Meetings and Maker Time: Paul Graham’s essay on “Maker’s Schedule vs. Manager’s Schedule” reminds us: MENA founders must straddle both worlds.
4. Leave Breathing Space: Don’t fall into the trap of filling every box. Innovation often happens in the white spaces.
5. Adapt to Culture: In the MENA region, where relationship-building is paramount, leave time for serendipitous coffee chats and networking.
The smartest MENA founders obsess over their calendars not because they love meetings or schedules but because they understand that time is the most valuable currency in building startups. In ecosystems where capital, talent, and market dynamics are constantly shifting, the one resource every founder controls is how they spend their hours.
A well-managed calendar is more than productivity. So, if you’re a founder dreaming of building the next unicorn in the region, start by asking: What does my calendar say about my priorities?
