Mark Cuban has 3 smartphones and receives about 700 emails every day
- 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.