David Solomon oversees one of the most powerful banks on Wall Street, but the best career advice he ever received didn't come from a mentor in the office; instead, it came from his grandmother.
"Don't rush," said this Goldman Sachs CEO during a quick Q&A interview with NBC News. The interview focused on his daily routine and the experiences that shaped his career. He mentioned that this piece of advice was given to him by his grandmother when he was in his twenties.
This video is from a longer conversation between Romans and Solomon for the NBC “Business in America” series. The conversation was broadcast on October 23rd, which was the day after Goldman Sachs launched Small Business AI Institute. This project is part of the company’s decision to invest an additional $500 million into its Small Businesses initiative, with Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI as partners. In the segment broadcast on Nightly News, Solomon expressed his excitement about the potential impact of artificial intelligence on businesses and human longevity.
However, in this round of quick questions and answers, he talked more about how he organizes his daily life rather than about the market.
Before 7 a.m.: Fitness, coffee, and protein shake.
When asked about the three things she does before 7 a.m., Solomon's answer was very simple: get up, go to the gym, and usually have a cup of coffee and a protein shake afterwards.
He is not alone. Morning exercises are a part of the daily routine for many executives; from the CEO of Bupa who trains with his Generation Z son six days a week, to many leaders featured in Fortune’s “A Day in the Life of CEO” series, it is the same for them all.
Research indicates that the key may not lie in the time of day, but rather in the habit itself. A systematic review published in 2022 in the journal affiliated with the Public Health Agency of Canada ( Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention in Canada ) examined 35 studies. Of these, 11 found that morning exercise was more beneficial, 12 found that afternoon or evening exercise was more beneficial, and another 12 did not find any clear difference. The authors concluded that there is no consistent evidence to suggest that exercising at a specific time of day is better for health, and they rated the quality of the evidence as “very low.”
"Stick to the schedule"
Solomon The best way to keep moving forward as planned throughout the day is not complicated: stick to your own schedule.
"The only thing we can't get back is time," he said, adding that he arranges his time very consciously. This means making commitments and keeping them, because, as he pointed out, it's easy to deviate from one's schedule.
Scientific research supports his claims to some extent. A meta-analysis published in 2021 by Brad Aeon, Aï da, Faber, and Alexandra Panaccio found that time management is positively correlated with work performance; the association with happiness is even stronger, especially with life satisfaction. In other words, the benefits of sticking to a schedule may be reflected both in work outcomes and in how you feel.
Why slowing down doesn't contradict anything
At first glance, "adhering to the schedule" and "not rushing" seem to be in opposite directions. For Solomon, these two phrases correspond to different time scales: maintaining discipline within the hours of a day, and maintaining patience over the long cycle of one's career.
He often repeats this message. In August of this year, during a meeting with all employees, he told Goldman Sachs' summer interns that spending more time might bring more opportunities and encouraged them to "try not to rush and enjoy the process." Last week, when the research institute was established, he gave the same advice to small business owners, telling them that "what's important is to do things right, not to do them faster."
"I don't like to give up halfway."
Even Solomon has his limits of patience, and those limits are related to the things he truly cares about. When asked if he has any obsessions, he said it depends on what captures his interest.
“If I’m interested in something, I become very obsessed with it. I don’t like to give up halfway,” says Solomon. He added that once something captures his interest, he tends to delve deep into it.
Psychologists have found that this intense engagement has a dual nature. In a study published in Journal of Personality in 2007, Robert Vallerand and her colleagues distinguished between “harmonious passion” and “compulsive passion”: the former refers to activities that you freely choose and that are in harmony with other aspects of your life, while the latter carries a sense of compulsion. Compulsive passion can predict deliberate practice and goal-oriented proficiency, which is beneficial for performance; however, it is also associated with goals driven by fear of failure, which can undermine outcomes. Harmonious passion, on the other hand, brings benefits with fewer side effects.
The conclusion is: deep commitment can drive success, as long as this obsession serves you, and not the other way around.
Of course, not every passion will eventually turn into a career. Solomon also mentioned a wish that he had to let go of: playing professional basketball. He admitted that this was not within the scope of consideration for him.
