Aaron Levie: Daily Routine

The Box CEO stays up late, powers through meetings on caffeine and pho, and swears by midday naps to keep his startup energy firing.

Puff Daddy once famously boasted “Don’t worry if I write rhymes – I write checks.” Aaron Levie, co-founder of the enterprise cloud storage company Box has a similar saying (albeit not as catchy), “I don’t use many apps. I use naps.”

For the 34-year old CEO, who typically stays up to 2am working at the Box headquarters, taking naps are the secret weapon to what Levie dubs “continuous productivity.” Because of his late night working hours, Levie tends to wake up between 9.30-10am, “I’m in bed for 30 minutes swiping, replying, and deleting. I try to make sure I have no unread messages by the time I get into the office,” he told Fast Company in 2013.