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Why does Jeff Bezos constantly plan three years ahead of time and make only a few decisions per day?

Here's why.

It's likely that Bezos has been thinking about it for some time. This is because Bezos has stated that he thinks three years ahead and only makes a few solid decisions per day.

According to Jeff Bezos' book, "Invent & Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos," he and his senior staff are continually working "in the future."

"People will approach me and say, 'Congratulations on your quarter,' and I'll reply, 'Thank you,' but what I'm really thinking is that quarter was baked three years ago," Bezos said.

For example, according to the book's text, "Thinking Three Years Out," Bezos and his colleagues are currently working on a quarter that will "show itself in 2023 somewhere."

"And that's what you need to be doing when you're running a company with a market cap of over a trillion dollars," Bezos remarked. According to Bezos, who spoke at the Internet Association's annual gala in 2017, having this long-term thinking approach helps organizations focus on planning and where they should put their efforts.

It's also crucial for Bezos to make only a few decisions per day as CEO. "What do you get paid to do as a senior executive?" "You are compensated for making a limited number of high-quality selections," he explained.

"Three solid judgments a day, that's enough," Bezos, 56, added, "and they should just be as high quality as I can make them."

He said that things were different when Amazon was a start-up in the mid-1990s. Bezos had to make hundreds of decisions every day during that time, and he was even packing boxes and dropping them off at the post office himself.

When Amazon went public in 1997, things changed swiftly, and the company's staff base swelled from 158 to 614 that year. Amazon now employs over a million people all around the world.

Bezos follows fellow billionaire Warren Buffet's decision-making philosophy to make wise decisions: "Warren Buffet says if he makes three solid selections a year, he's good, and I believe him," Bezos added.

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