How Jack Dorsey Says He Balances Leading Twitter and Square The CEO of both Twitter and payments technology company Square, has a secret to keep from being overwhelmed.
By Leena Rao
This story originally appeared on Fortune Magazine
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of both Twitter and payments technology company Square, has a secret to keep from being overwhelmed.
"I look to build a lot of consistent routine," he said during a question and answer session Tuesday on the online forum Product Hunt. "Same thing every day. Allows a steady state that enables me to be more effective when I do have to react to something out of band."
Many have questioned whether Dorsey can successfully hold two jobs simultaneously at public companies. It is a work load that few others have tried. Of course, Steve Jobs successfully ran both Pixar and Apple for years. But after that, it's a short list of people who have been able to pull off holding dual roles.
Dorsey said in response to the public's questions that he sleeps from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., and then meditates for 30 minutes. He then works out for 20 minutes, makes coffee and starts his work day. Dorsey has revealed in the past that he spends his mornings at Twitter and his afternoons at Square.
Investor Chris Sacca, who was an active proponent of Dorsey being the CEO of both Twitter and Square, also weighed in with a question. What metrics does Dorsey use to track Twitter's health, he asked?
Analysts and investors have long looked at the number of monthly active users as a benchmark for Twitter's growth.
In his response, Dorsey said, vaguely, that he cares about building Twitter's daily utility with users. "It's the first thing people check when they wake up because they want to see the world, and the first place to people go when they have something to say or want to have a conversation," he wrote.
Reading between the lines, it sounded like Dorsey focuses on whether users are on Twitter every day.
In May, Snapchat co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel said that the company has internally started to look at "hourly active users," or how many people are on the service during any given hour. Meanwhile, Facebook recently celebrated having one billion users on its service in a single day.
Lastly, one commenter asked why Dorsey wasn't holding his conversation on Periscope, Twitter's live-streaming video app. Dorsey teased perhaps a new feature to come in 2016. "Soon!" he responded.
