Mark Cuban has 3 smartphones and gets about 700 emails every day

“The only way you’re going
to get me for a meeting is if you’re writing me a check,” Mark
Cuban has said.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Images

• Mark
  Cuban is the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks
  and a “Shark Tank” star.
• Cuban told Vanity Fair that he receives 700 emails per
  day and has three smartphones.
• He said he would rather receive upwards of 1,000 emails
  than sit through long, boring meetings.
• It’s a sentiment that other highly successful people
  have echoed.

A lot of people want to talk to Mark Cuban.

The “Shark Tank” star and billionaire owner of the Dallas
Mavericks told Vanity
Fair that he receives around 700 emails per day, which he
checks on his three smartphones.

“Now, you may think that’s a lot,” Cuban said in the interview
with Vanity Fair, “but I’d rather do 700, even 1,000 or more
emails, than sit in long and tedious and boring meetings.”

This isn’t the first time Cuban’s spoken out against meetings. In
2010, he told
Inc., “Meetings are a waste of time unless you are closing a
deal. There are so many ways to communicate in real time or
asynchronously that any meeting you actually sit for should have
a duration and set outcome before you agree to go.” 

And in 2014, he
told Inc., “I’m not big on ‘Let’s go eat lunch’ meetings. The
only way you’re going to get me for a meeting is if you’re
writing me a check. Same with phone calls — they’re a waste of
time.”

Other highly successful people feel similarly.
Business Insider previously reported on Elon Musk’s
productivity recommendations for Tesla employees, which include
“Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is
obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is
rude to make someone stay and waste their time.”

Meanwhile, actor Jared Leto, who is also an investor in Snapchat,
Spotify, and Reddit, said that his
best productivity trick is “just f—ing working.” Leto said,
“I don’t do dinners, I don’t do lunches, I don’t do breakfasts.”

Not all experts agree that most meetings should be replaced with
email. Writing in
The Harvard Business Review, David Burkus, associate
professor of leadership and innovation at Oral Roberts
University, cites
a study that found people can be overly confident in other
people’s ability to intuit their meaning over email.

Also in The Harvard Business Review, time-management coach
Elizabeth Grace Saunders uses a
decision tree to help readers determine whether it makes more
sense to hold a meeting or send an email. For example, if you
think you need outside input to make progress, the next step is
to figure out if moving forward requires a real-time
conversation.

As for Cuban, he’s even gone so far as to say, in an interview
with
Thrive Global, that he “loves” email and “lives on it.” Email
“saves me hours and hours every day,” he said.