Evan Spiegel seems to be adeptly juggling work and family — while also finding time to crusade against excessive screentime.
The CEO and cofounder of Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, spoke at length about his work-life balance during the latest episode of the “David Senra” podcast.
Spiegel, 35, is raising four children with supermodel Miranda Kerr. He said the older three kids attend the same school in Santa Monica that he did, and insist that he escorts them into the building at drop-off.
“I’m used to doing the long walk in while everyone’s in the carpool line,” the tech billionaire said, adding that “what’s fun about that is you get to connect with everyone and say hi to other parents and teachers,” including some who once taught him.
However, Spiegel acknowledged there have been “a lot of days” recently where he’s left for work before the kids wake up, and returned after they’ve gone to bed.
He explained that he’s leading Snap at a critical juncture. The company is hustling to reaccelerate Snapchat’s advertising growth while also gearing up to launch its augmented-reality (AR) glasses, Spectacles, later this year.
The upshot is that Spiegel’s schedule is “completely insane” and “untenable,” he said, adding that his role now feels like a “seven-day-a-week job.”
Yet he still appears to be striking a balance between leading a $8 billion public company, and finding time for his young family.
“I always try to keep Sunday protected,” Spiegel said. “We go to church as a family, we go to brunch, and then I spend the afternoon with our kids and that’s super important to me.”
Spiegel said that he manages his stress by spending time with his wife and kids, trying to exercise every morning, and practicing Kriya meditation a couple days a week, which he finds to be “incredibly energizing.”
He said that Kerr, best known for her time as a Victoria’s Secret Angel, is “brutally honest in a very loving way.”
Living in the same city that he grew up in, Los Angeles, also means he has a circle of “high-school buddies” close by who he can speak to about what’s going on in his life and “count on” to be honest with him.
Spiegel said Kerr is “obsessed” with her health-tracking Oura Ring, and eventually convinced him to wear one for a week. She was “shocked to learn” that he was “in the relaxed state all day long” and slept seven to eight hours a night, he added.
The Snap CEO said that his job has high stakes and time pressure, but he finds those to be “more exciting than stressful” as he enjoys and feels inspired by “periods of intense change.”
The social-media entrepreneur also said he seeks to “reframe stress as an opportunity” to grow. He gave the example of initially shying away from public speaking and holding company-wide Q&As as a young executive, then forcing himself to learn how to love those occasions.
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War on screens
Surprisingly, for the creator of a mobile app with around 950 million monthly users, Spiegel is known for being anti-screen and minimizing his children’s exposure to smartphones, tablets, and TVs.
He bemoaned that many people today are “staring at screens” for seven or eight hours a day, and report they’re “pulling them out of the moment or away from friends” and stopping them from connecting with their loved ones at the dinner table.
The Snap chief said he wants people to harness the power of computing while still connecting with other people, the outdoors, and the world.
“What if aliens are watching Earth right now and they’re terrified that smartphones have taken over humanity,” he said. “We’re spending all day long caring for these things, and plugging them in, and tending to them, and our lives are all oriented around these little screens.”
Spiegel added that he imagines “aliens are sending specs, sending these glasses to save people from their lives that I think have become so oriented around screens.”
