Elizabeth Holmes' Daily Schedule | Hacker News Reader

Elizabeth Holmes' Daily Schedule

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74 pointsHrundi78 comments

The single most important task for a CEO at a large company is to publicize their daily schedule, describing how they rise at either 5am or 6am (Holmes goes a step further), and then work out and take care of a large amount of business before the rest of the common people even wake up. Bonus points for preparing and having breakfast with your small children after your workout and morning email/decision-making routine. Additional bonus points for family time every evening, as well as prolific reading across a multitude of subjects.

It is imperative that people understand the CEO's total superiority over the common person. They do not sleep like everyone else. They don't waste or lose time like everyone else. They do not neglect their family. Their body is toned and strong. Their mind is focused and cultured, with an insatiable appetite for information.

Behold, I bring you: the CEO!

Wow you pretty much describe me ... except for me being a CEO, or a CxO, or even just an O. So I guess just my superiority over everyone else. I guess I will take it.

It is so funny to me when people on this website absolutely refuse to believe that some people really do like to rise early and get things done in the morning.

I almost certainly get lots of stuff done before you get out of bed. You probably get more done than I do in the evening. I don't know why so many of you get bent out of shape about the former but not the latter.

Oh, the CEO superman mythos is not just about the early rise-time. That's just part of the story of pure ascetic discipline without any detectable sacrifice along any axis. Perfect execution at work, perfect maintenance over one's health and physical shape, perfect family life, perfect mental conditioning and intellectual enrichment. In other words, CEOs are better than any and all of us, in every possible way.

There is a great parody made about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U

I recommend it, it's rather spot on.

We aren't criticising people who get up early. It's people who claim to do the Mark Wahlberg routine[0]

  2:30 a.m. wake up
  2:45 a.m. prayer time
  3:15 a.m. breakfast #1: steel oats, peanut butter, blueberries, and eggs
  3:40-5:15 a.m. workout #1
  5:30 a.m. breakfast #2: protein shake, three turkey burgers, five pieces of sweet potato
  6 a.m. shower
  7:30 a.m. golf
  8 a.m. snack: 10 turkey meatballs
  9:30 a.m. cryo chamber recovery
  10:30 a.m. breakfast #3: grilled chicken salad with two hard-boiled eggs, olives, avocado, cucumber, tomato, and lettuce
  11 a.m. family time/meetings/work calls
  1 p.m. lunch: New York steak with green peppers
  2 p.m. meetings/work calls
  3 p.m. pick up kids from school
  3:30 p.m. snack: grilled chicken with bok choy
  4 p.m. workout #2
  5 p.m. shower
  5:30 p.m. dinner/family time: fish (halibut or cod or sea bass) with veggies (such as sautéed spinach and bok choy)
  7:30 p.m. bedtime

According to this schedule, Wahlberg has eaten three breakfasts before I've eaten anything. Is he a hobbit? :D

[0]: https://manofmany.com/lifestyle/fitness/mark-wahlbergs-diet-...

Considering the timezone, her getting up at 4AM GMT+8 is ahead of the world, but still 3 hours before Australia.

Australia gets up before everyone, they should be dominating.

Context: “Elizabeth Holmes says Theranos’ former president abused her”, https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/29/22809049/elizabeth-holme...

> Holmes’ lawyer moved into evidence a bizarre handwritten document. Holmes said she recognized the handwriting as Balwani’s. (...) The document contained instructions such as, “Every morning I will force myself out of bed and spend 30 minutes+ (never a minute less) to write what I want from my day.

> Then we saw a schedule Holmes had drawn up for herself on what appeared to be hotel stationery for a hotel in Singapore called Raffles.

The Raffles hotel is probably the most expensive hotel in Singapore.

Also the birthplace of the Singapore sling cocktail. It's famous.

I doubt this was her practiced schedule. More of like an sketch for her envisioned perfect day. Do you really believe people practice such schedules?

Is it really that hard to believe someone would do it somewhat regularly? I certainly don't do it every day, but more often then not I'll do the same kind of things in the morning (wake up around 4 - 4:30am, meditate, exercise, shower / clean, ...). It's just basic habits

The part after the schedule is weird for sure, but the schedule itself sounds fine.

Maybe it sounds fine to you, but to me, a night owl, it sounds absolutely insane. I would go insane if I had to do this and I don't know if I would ever recover.

different folks. They say Obama is a night owl, I doubt he was waking up at 4am, but i dont doubt he had a schedule none the less.

It *is* insane to wake up at 4am if you go to bed anytime after 10PM.

I know some people will swear before god that they can function on little sleep, but the fact is that your decision making and judgement is seriously hampered by maintaining a long term sleep deficit.

That could be a plausible explanation by Holmes' defence for all her actions that got her in trouble in the first place! Personally, I find my own coworkers who lay claim to having such regiments are usually the smallest contributors in the team and mostly 'talk' too much and do too little.

Meh, it's a night owl schedule from a different time zone.

I'm the same. These habits are the foundation of my day. It's my choice to start with something I can control. Achieve some things, build some momentum before letting the world (news, emails - things I cant control) in.

If Elizabeth Holmes did actually follow this schedule, then she wouldn't have to write it down. This is a wishlist. I actually do practice a similar schedule to this but I have never written it down anywhere. Writing it down and hoping you do it never works. This is the sort of thing you build naturally, piece-by-piece, and over time.

She seems to be sociopathic, it wouldn't be very surprising if she practiced variations of a schedule like this with the intent of molding herself into an image/fantasy of success, as she was appraently trying to do with quasi copying Jobs. It is certainly unlikely she was able to rigidly maintain a daily schedule like that.

Executives, whether they're sociopaths or not, don't have to hold that schedule all on their own. They have executive assistants and personal assistants (not always different people) to help them with that. I dunno, if I had someone who's job it was to help keep me on that schedule, I think I'd have better luck than the plebes do, don't you?

Not having to do any of your own: housekeeping/cooking/laundry; child-running-around (if you have kids); maintenance on anything including even scheduling work to be done; driving; schedule-keeping; filtering (turning down calls and such from people you have no intention of talking to—your assistant does that for you); shopping (even for stuff you want, but don't need—"assistant; I'd like an X by next week, please find me a good one") et c., really would free up a lot of time & energy.

Very true. There's a meme I see every so often. "Work out for an hour a day. It's 4% of your day. What's your excuse?"

Uhh, well, other than the fact that it's closer to 25% of my _available_ day (8h sleep, 8h work, 1h commute, 1h preparation, 1h meals), you mean?

You also might want to write it down for them, so there'd be no confusion between you.

Daily affirmations and goals like this are part of nearly every self help system on the market. This is straight out of a Tony Robbins style life success guide.

Jocko Willink posts a picture of his watch during his workout every morning, usually in the 4:20 to 4:30 range.

A psychologist would have a field day with that.

Can you elaborate? I have no idea why a psychologist would care.

I would consider why someone is doing something. Try to put yourself in their shoes.

Would you post what time you worked out everyday? Would you post how many hours you worked today? Would you post how many calories you ate today? There is a reason why this isn't a common way for people to use the internet.

Constant need for validation and attention, for one thing.

It's a marketing thing, like a lot of social media content. He's just trying to build a personal brand to promote his consulting business and clothing line. Nothing wrong with that.

This is BS. I do this daily, and it has nothing to do with validation. I don't post it online but I do send a snap. Its a system that a friend and I have in place, it keeps up accountable to go get some sort of workout in every morning.

I can see someone doing this and posting it online to keep themselves accountable.

He was also in the military for 21 years, so waking up early is probably a long-ingrained habit by now.

https://thecooperreview.com/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-junior-go...

Which was a parody of: https://www.businessinsider.com/a-day-in-the-life-of-hsbc-ex...

I know of a handful of people who practice(d) regimented schedules like this. I also know a few people for habitually draw up schedules and then fail to follow them.

Benjamin Franklin's schedule (from his autobiography) is a famous and probably factual example[1].

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/04/picture...

Pretty generic executive coach/mentor nonsense

Ding ding. This isn't anyones schedule.

Yeah, it's the sort of exercise that people do when they're trying to establish good habits (and in this case maybe diet? She's eating very lightly). Seems very much in the "Think and Grow Rich" tradition

I'm baffled at the response in these HN comments. There are currently thousands of life coaches and influences all over the internet who tell people to do these exact type of morning aspiration journals. There is nothing abnormal in these notes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

Just because thousands of life coaches do it, doesn't mean it isn't a weird thing to do.

Reminds me of this krazam.tv video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U

I know HN is not the place for this, but those guys are so painfully underappreciated. I love so many of their videos, do yourself a favour and watch a few, such as the microservices one: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgBVkKoOAr3ajSdFFLp13_A

Legitimate question: why do people find this interesting and/or why is it relevant to the trial?

Because her defense is "her boyfriend made her do it" and this is allegedly a schedule he made for her.

I can definitely see her as that specific type of insecure person who chooses someone like that because they feel they deserve the punishment. It reminds me a little of Nastasya Filippovna, from the Idiot:

> No, no; we'd better say good-bye and part friends. I am a bit of a dreamer myself, and I used to dream of you once. Very often during those five years down at his estate I used to dream and think, and I always imagined just such a good, honest, foolish fellow as you, one who should come and say to me: 'You are an innocent woman, Nastasia Philipovna, and I adore you.' I dreamt of you often. I used to think so much down there that I nearly went mad; and then this fellow here would come down. He would stay a couple of months out of the twelve, and disgrace and insult and deprave me, and then go; so that I longed to drown myself in the pond a thousand times over; but I did not dare do it.

The biggest challenge I have with this (because intimate partner abuse/violence is a real thing and shouldn't be lessened) is that even accounting for their secrecy, the relationship didn't develop until well after Theranos was on a path, and Holmes is claiming sexual harassment from Day 1 (or earlier, when it was "just an idea").

Who thinks repeatedly sexually harassing _your boss_, who can terminate your employment, is a move that's going to earn you career success??

There's also a lot of other evidence to say that she was quite comfortable with how things went in their relationship and at work.

Similarly, through all the buildup to where we're at now, not once was this floated, until trial. Holmes was a believer, still touting that we have her and Theranos all wrong, are all luddite naysayers. Day 1 of the trial? "Actually, Sunny made me do it all".

Let's not get into the sociopathic narcissism (and other apt phrases) that comes with "I just got the trial calendar for my federal court case that could see me get 20 years in jail. Oh look, in the midst of all that, I got pregnant with a due date that is just before the trial is set to wrap up". Yes, people fall in love, accidents happen, but my thoughts in this scenario have "have a kid" pretty damn far down the list of my priorities (that being said, the aforementioned narcissism and denial could genuinely have her believing "there's no way in hell anyone finds me guilty").

> the relationship didn't develop until well after Theranos was on a path

It was news to me, literally, but apparently their "romantic" relationship goes back to 2002/2003.

But in general I am quite skeptical of Holmes.

Which I could entirely believe, despite all this.

Sunny met her when he was 38 and she was in high school, heading to Stanford in 2003. So above and beyond "secret relationship with the boss", I could also see "not wanting to be seen as grooming/a groomed high school student" as a reason to keep things on the downlow.

Yes I agree, whatever you think of her, this (sharing here notes on social media) is basically just mean gossip.

In her own handwriting?

Err, she and her counsel are the ones who entered this into the _public record_ specifically to (attempt to) exonerate her.

There's very little "mean gossip" about it.

Do you think it's being shared and discussed here because it exonerates her?

I don't think it exonerates her, whether or not it was written by her, or "evidence" of Balwani's "controlling ways". I think it absolutely portrays her a way in which she wanted to be portrayed for the longest time - ultra motivated, high energy, visionary, driven. I don't necessarily think there's anything inherently wrong in calling it out as looking far more like "the notepad of someone who _wants_ to be thought of in all those ways", as much as the reality. And I say that as someone who is chronically trying to "organize" my life, and getting tripped up on the investments to that end, rather than "putting in the work".

Edit: also, she doesn't get to control the narrative. "Here's evidence of how I lived my life, but you don't get to look at it or talk about it in ways other than I intended" and we are not obligated to stick to the "approved narrative".

Have you never wondered how a genius/suspected scammer spends their day? Are they just like us? Like the videos of Hitler practicing his speeches

In regards to why do people find personal insights into famous (or infamous) people's lives, I would presume that is more common than not, but of course others like yourself presumably find no such interesting in what her daily schedule is or Julia Roberts. As to why it would be relevant, assuming she wrote it, certainly seems to show her a certain type of person that would plan their day down to the minute and put things such as change (clothes), shower, and pretty much everything other than put one foot and from of the other. So if she were to portray herself as someone whose not big into details and thus has no idea what was going on at her company or the details, evidence like this would probably draw a picture of someone who is very much into the details and or other character qualities.

I've no interest in getting into celebrity gossip. All it says to me is someone who's very young and needs a written to-do list of how to get up in the morning, just to keep barely a grip on life and the un-handleable situation she's put herself into.

If that's what it gives you then that's mission accomplished for team Holmes.

I don’t get that. I get an ambitious executive trying to keep metered and in control of their presence and internal state. A routine like this is fairly common among executives. It’s not hard, it’s just choices.

This was just her getting over jet lag schedule during one business trip.

I bet she could make all that money back if she just pivoted to Elizabeth Smart Holmes and sold a variety of IoT devices for home automation.

This is garden variety type A OCD CEO stuff. Your typical CEO, male or female or whatever, is going to not be that different than this.

Now, people are calling this also ironic given the charlatan nature of her career and the naked narcissism it hides.

Back to the point about this being typical executive crap: what do you think your typical exec or exec wannabe thinks? It's all about the (narcissistic) goals, and anything else is just a bridge or a barrier to them. Basically every CEO is a showman charlatan and a narcissist.

It makes all the Elon hate so funny. People, he's actually par far on the honest/good side of the entire CEO psycho personality statistical distribution. Zuck is probably dead middle. Now try parsing the mindset of the petroleum execs, tobacco execs, mining companies, etc.

Capitalism is a genetic engineering framework for producing more and more refined social psychopaths. It doesn't reward "good". It doesn't reward "sharing".

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/04/picture...

That’s such a good corollary.

Step one prey. Very holy of her. Step two enter the world and lie to investors possibly sending some people into financial ruin destroying their lives. The lack of morals but claiming to prey to god just blows me away. Better ask for forgiveness.

Hmm not sure if the misspelling here is intentional to make a point…

The part after the daily schedule very strongly reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmations_(L._Ron_Hubbard)

Those affirmations. I honestly wish I practice these habits, but I get caught up in my head and feel like if anyone, ya know, found it, and maybe put it on twitter, that I wouldn't go outside for maybe a decade.

Most of the list is daily affirmations, not "a daily schedule". Affirmations are part of my mourning routine as well. I fail to see what's so news-worthy about this.

I swear people who can get up early have a massive advantage in life. Any time before 7:15 is incredibly painful for me.

She was really good at mimicking other people's lives. She still gets dressed like.. apple!

Suggest title change to include “and Affirmations”. The second picture is of daily affirmations.

Seems rather tightly-wrapped. But if it works for her.

I imagine that her smile is a tad frightening.

The formula for becoming a psycho? Sounds like a playbook from the movie American Psycho

Without any of the finesse.

I was thinking Dorsia.

That's what reading too many self improvement books does to you.

- Inject cypionate to lower voice.

Nah, her voice was simply faked with effort. Androgens give women a hoarse kind of voice. Check out female bodybuilders on YouTube.

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