By The Indian Express
Publication Date: 2025-12-02 12:51:00
Climbing the corporate ladder comes with its rewards, bigger paychecks, and bigger responsibilities, but it also demands sacrifices. For Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s chief product officer, reaching the top has meant trading free time for longer days and a schedule that rarely lets up.
As reported by Fortune, Patel works every single day of the week. His mornings begin around 6 am, and it is not unusual for him to still be working close to midnight. Even so, he follows one strict rule: no meetings before 9 am, unless they come directly from Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins or the company’s board. Those early hours are reserved for deep work and mapping out priorities.
“Picking the highest quality problems that you want to spend your time solving is 90% of the battle,” he told Fortune. “Because the quality of the problem that you pick to solve is actually directly proportional to the outcome that you’re going to have.”
Despite the relentless schedule, Patel has carved out two firm…
