Q. What does your perfect day look like from wake up to bedtime? I can tell you what my current day looks like and the things that will make it perfect. I naturally wake up between 6.45 – 7am. I have kids so that’s like a natural alarm clock! I’ve not had an alarm clock for the past 11 years. About 2 years ago the kids kept waking me up but as they’ve grown older I’ve kept a natural wake up time. I don’t have to tap on my alarm clock 5 times as my body wakes up normally and I think it is also linked to what you do the night before. The things you do before bed. So, a perfect day for me starts with the night before that means I wake up quite awake. What I try to do most days is to do a 5-minute meditation. I don’t use a particular app, but do a 5-minute body scan, lying on my bed, feeling awake, feeling good. I will try to relax my muscles, just to be aware and make sure my body is here from my tiptoes to head and making sure that everything is going, as to be expected. What would make it perfect? It would be to try and start 45 minutes earlier, to squeeze in a bit of exercise. I’ve had a few occasions where I’ve been able to do this where I’m awake earlier and instead of lying in my bed trying to think, just getting up and going outside, exercise and clear my mind. It is something I want to do better and feel more awake in the morning and when the kids are awake, I’m already feeling fresh.

Q. What Kind of exercise would you do? Because I’m lucky enough to live near a park, a 30-minute jog in the park, would be a very good day. Currently, following on from feeling awake and a 5-minute body scan, usually the boys wake up and come to our beds and we all have a 5-15 minute bonding, big cuddles, hugs and it’s just such a good time and such a good start to the day. Everyone is smiling and happy. Family bonding is important, even my eldest who is 11 years old joins in. It’s a great start to a day.

Then I’ll get up and start in the shower. What I’ve learned is that I really love my showers and because I’ve already started my meditation, you’re more aware of the shower. It’s an amazing time to feel the water on your skin and it’s about developing your senses. My wife probably complains that I spend far too much time in the shower, so she tends to go in the shower before me. I have to say, especially as an entrepreneur and somebody running your own company, you have thoughts all the time about strategy and the things you have to do, I like the shower because it is a time to forget these things and let your mind wander.

Q. When you have showers do you ever find you have creative thoughts? Or is it a time for you to just blank out the rest of the world? It’s a bit of both, I think it is also linked to the night before because sleep is particularly important. What we do at Peak is cognitive training, we look at the best ways to improve your mental skills. Sleep is one of the strongest factors on having a negative impact on your performance. Lack of sleep and lack of quality sleep will be the number one negative effect on this. So in the morning because you sleep well, your memories in order, your attentions in order, your thoughts are in order, you might have a lot of creative thoughts in the morning because you’ve slept well. Following on the shower, morning time is ideally about family time, we try to spend it together, have breakfast, I go to work and the kids go to school.  Family time is very important to me, it’s a part of finding the right balance and harmony. We try to find the time both morning and evening and this is very important.

I actually find the morning commute to be very important and actually what would make a perfect day is probably a shorter commute probably to halve that. So I currently commute between 50-1 hour and I don’t want to lose those 2 hours a day (1 hour commute each way). How can I best use those 2 hours? Usually it’s 3 types of activities that I do

1. When walking to and from the station I tend to listen to a TedTalk. It’s ideal for my curiosity and trying to learn and takes 15 minutes which is my walk to the station
2. During the actual commute I do a bit of cognitive training with Peak, I launched the company 6 years ago, been live for 4 years and we have 50 million users. I’m doing a daily workout that’s between 1-15 mins per day/4-6 games just to warm up your brain. Working on memory and attention skills.
3. I try to read as much as possible. I tend to buy far more books than I have time to read so the library is growing. It’s quite diverse and I like reading novels and history (Books on civilization). I also read books on strategy as somebody who founded a company and then became a CEO. One book I’ve read three times lately is The Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. I recommend for anybody who is likely to be a CEO or starting a company. I’m currently reading Good to Great a book about companies that one day seem to leap forwards. I also read books on Psychology.

On the commute back home, I will mostly read. I tend not to read much in the mornings or the evenings. But I guess to make it a perfect day, I would try to add an extra hour of reading per day as I really enjoy it.

Other things I’m doing as a CEO as part of my schedule is to meet lots of people including my engineers and designers. But even more, in the last 9 months I’m meeting investors and other entrepreneurs to reflect, challenge and you learn a lot. Because you expand your knowledge and you get challenges, it’s super exciting to meet people from other industries and start ups as it’s quite fascinating. It’s not something you do every day but I try to have a number of meetings every week to challenge my current thinking.  Because I think to be a good CEO, it’s not just about having the vision and execution but it is about being outside to be challenged.  For example, yesterday I had a meeting with an investor and came back with 5 new ideas and if I wasn’t doing these type of meetings I wouldn’t have as many ideas.

Q. Do you find by giving that flexibility to your employees they hit their targets better? The words we use internally is that we treat you like adults, it’s about being responsible. In some ways they are the owners and are responsible for the product. When there are deadlines that require working late we do it. There are no rules or regulations, we are super flexible, and people can work from home 1-2 days a week. I’ve had no issues so far and people like that because they are being treated as adults. Q. Do you ever get a chance to work from home yourself, where you feel you can be a bit more productive? I do work from home from time to time. Not 2 days a week but I do like it every now and then as it gives me a different perspective. It wouldn’t be working from home, it’ll be working at a café, enjoying some time, having breakfast outside. And it reminds me of the early stages as a start up with no offices. So funnily enough, I do like working outside of the office but not so much from home.

Q. So going back to being at home from 7/7.30pm. What kind of things would your ideal day involve then? So that would be family time and a lot of that will be playing with the boys, chatting, reading books, even playing video games. A lot of the evening would be family bonding. I’d say the hours of 7/7.30pm-9pm would be about spending time as a family with the boys and my wife who will try to be home at the same time. After that a perfect day would be myself and wife spending some time together, the kids are asleep and for us to have a nice chat and reflect on the day with a nice glass of wine! In a perfect day trying not to take it too far and going to bed 11/11.30pm max, as it’s a question of balance.

Q. Looking into your original point of having a good night time routine, is there anything you would do that ensures that you will have a good start to your day feeling fresh? So probably the things to avoid is to try to solve things at 10 or 11pm because 1. it is taking time from your harmony and 2. It’s not the best time to make decisions anyway.  Most things can probably wait for the next morning and I prefer to make decisions the next day in the morning when I’m feeling fresh and awake. I’m getting better at this because in the beginning, the first 5 years as an entrepreneur was super challenging. We want to solve everything straight away and now working with technology I try to limit that. It takes time away from the family, we make worse decisions, so what’s the point?