Just how worried should we all be about 42-year-old billionaire Jack Dorsey?
A new podcast interview with fitness guru Ben Greenfield highlights the Twitter founder’s Stoic lifestyle and makes him sound like a member of a cult. Stoicism, writes Harley Monk in a piece in Medium, is primarily about “practicing mindfulness.”
The principles are weird.
For instance, Principle 3: “Picture life without the people and possessions you have to truly appreciate them.”
There are normal things he does, like meditating twice a day and even walking five miles to and from work.
But then there is a kookier side. For example, during a 10-day retreat in Pyin Oo Lwin (Burma) in late 2018, he was banned from using gadgets, doing physical exercise, talking and even making eye contact with other humans.
At one point his mother noticed he had turned orange, which was the result of too much Beto Kerotine. So he temporarily switched to a more paleo diet. These days it’s lots and lots of Vitamin C. And eating like an anorexic.
In the podcast interview, he describes his current daily routines, which involve fasting, intermittent sauna and ice baths and bizarre eating habits.
Each morning he basically goes for a polar bear swim by taking a bath in ice cold water. He says it “unlocks his mind.”
During the week, he eats only one meal each day — dinner. On the weekend, he fasts. (RELATED: Dorsey Draws Link Between Physical Danger And Twitter Activity)
CNBC’s Cat Clifford writes that each evening he engages in ritualistic sauna and ice baths: “First he sits in his barrel sauna (set at 220 degrees) for 15 minutes, then hops into an ice bath (37 degrees) for three minutes. He repeats the process three times, finishing with one minute in the ice bath.”
“This guy is the platonic ideal of a rich white person who spends a year at an ashram,” a journo cracked to The Mirror.
Ben Dreyfuss, an avid SoulCyclist and the editorial director at Mother Jones, remarked, “Every day Jack Dorsey spends 1 hour mediating in the morning, 1 hour 15 minutes walking to work, 1 hour 15 minutes walking home from work, 1 hour meditating in the evening, 54 minutes jumping between a sauna and ice bath. No wonder Tweetdeck doesn’t work.”
But some were more worried about Dorsey than Tweetdeck.
“It sounds like Jack Dorsey might have a serious eating disorder,” wrote Manhattan author and writer Caroline Moss. “Walking 5 miles a day while only consuming one meal per weekday and no meals ion weekends is not a wellness hack…it’s a disease.”
Amanda Mull, a staff writer at The Atlantic who has written about billionaires with strange dietary habits, says Dorsey’s daily behavior should not be emulated. “I wrote this last time Jack Dorsey talked about his fasting practice, but: I think it’s genuinely very dangerous for someone as influential as he is to preach the virtues of not eating until you hallucinate!” she wrote.
Mike Monteiro, co-founder of Mule, an interactive design studio in San Francisco, didn’t sugarcoat his views about how Dorsey is living his life.
“Way to promote eating disorders, @jack,” he wrote. “You stupid stupid stupid man.”
