🏠 Daniel Ek's (Co-Founder, Spotify) Morning Routine

In partnership with

GM! It’s Brett again. It’s crazy how a simple thing can 10x your output. Instead of focusing on the effort it takes to do something, focus on the the payoff.

Laziness comes from focusing too much on the effort which makes you less inclined to do it, but if you hyper-fixate on the payoff for doing it, you're 10x more likely to do it.

It’s literally just a mindset shift, but your mind shapes your reality more than anything else.

🔥 Daniel Ek's Morning Routine

Wake Up + Family Time (6:30 AM)
First hour is family-only - breakfast, school prep, presence > productivity. Reflects Swedish work-life balance values.

Physical Exercise (7:30 AM)
Cardio, weights, sometimes yoga. Lost 40-50 pounds after 100-hour work weeks. Focuses on enjoyable activities rather than forced routines.

Creative Walk (8:30 AM, 60 minutes)
His "biggest life hack". Daily walk regardless of weather (even Swedish winters). Does his "best thinking" and takes relationship-building calls.

Reading Block (9:30 AM)
News + rotating books (history, leadership, biographies).

Workday Begins (10:30)
He has a "maker's schedule" (Paul Graham concept). Maximum 3-4 meetings per day. Keeps calendar open for ad-hoc creativity.

Focus Time & Work Philosophy
• One major topic per day
• Schedules dedicated thinking blocks
• "Ruthless" about priorities - refuses non-essential meetings

Decision Window (Afternoon/Evening)
Handles major decisions later in the day to align with the U.S. team’s schedule.

Core Philosophy: Swedish Balance
• Work-Life Balance: “Work is not everything.”
• Energy Management: Optimizes energy, not just time.
• Family-First: Protected family blocks boost his work effectiveness.
• Structured Creativity: Dedicated time for ideation and deep thinking.

👀 This guy used AI to prep for his wife’s surgery & his job hunt

I’ve been watching how people actually use AI in the wild, and this one stood out:

• His wife needed hip replacement surgery. Instead of drowning in PDFs and Facebook threads, he dumped Clinic links, doctor notes, and long community posts into NotebookLM. Suddenly, every late-night “what happens after week 3?” question had an instant, personalized answer.

• Then, he flipped it to a totally different use case: job hunting. He loaded his resume as a source. Whenever he spotted a role, he’d paste in the job description, ask NotebookLM to find overlaps, then spin up a tailored cover letter.

It’s a small glimpse of how AI tools become leverage when you treat them less like shiny demos and more like a operating engine for your life.

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🧠 ON MY MIND

👀 How ElevenLabs grew from $0 to $200M ARR in 2 years + their pre-seed deck

📌 THE ANTI-PITCH: One-liner rebuttals that kill startup ideas (Andrew Chen)

‼️ The ultimate guide: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product

😳 RSS co-creator launches new protocol for AI data licensing

💥 Albania appoints world’s first AI-made minister

🤝 Microsoft & OpenAI reach non-binding deal to allow OpenAI to restructure

🚁 Uber to offer air taxi service as early as 2026

📱 All of the iPhone 17 models compared

🚀 Perplexity raised $200M at $20B valuation and Replit closed $250M in funding

🎯 THE 80 / 20

Simple tricks to get a ton of value with minimal effort for work and life.

NFC Tags for Chores & Habits
Stick NFC tags on everyday objects (weights or yoga mat, your journal, the laundry basket). You tap your phone → trigger an automation: log that you did your workout, started the journal, folded clothes, etc.

Push to Kindle
You ever have dozens of tabs open promising to become “interesting articles” - then you forget them? Tools like Push to Kindle are the fix. It’s a browser extension + mobile app that lets you send any article or blog post straight to your Kindle.

😂 FROM THE FEED

🤝 COMMUNITY POLL

Last week’s poll:

When your to-do list explodes, how do you decide what to tackle first?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Urgency (closest deadline)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Importance (biggest impact on goals)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Energy matching (do the task that fits your current state)

🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜️⬜️ Delegation (who else can take this off my plate)

Homescreen is a collaboration between Micro and Launch House Ventures

Micro is a CRM that doesn’t feel like homework and an email client that knows what matters. Simply put, it’s an all-in-one productivity tool that organizes itself so you don’t have to.

LHV is a community-driven, early-stage venture fund backing ambitious founders at the earliest stages.

REACH 40K+ FOUNDERS, INVESTORS & OPERATORS

If you’re building tools that help founders, investors and other professionals who want to be 100x more productive with 100x less work, and you’re interested in advertising with us, send an email over to [email protected] with the subject “Homescreen Ads”