The founder of PayPal uses data to optimise every aspect of his life — and he says being healthier comes down to a single habit
Max Levchin says he made healthy eating and exercise a habit by doing it every day without fail
By Alyson Shontell and Shana Lebowitz
“Be on the bike.” That might as well be Max Levchin’s fitness mantra.
Levchin is a co-founder of PayPal and the CEO of online lending service Affirm. On an episode of Business Insider’s podcast, “Success! How I Did It,” Levchin told US editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell about the philosophy behind his health and fitness regimen.
That philosophy boils down to one word: consistency.
“I basically find a routine that I like, and I just stick to it obsessively,” Levchin told Shontell. “If I skip a day, it’s extremely uncomfortable. The number one power in any behaviour is in turning it into a default. So long as you make those defaults healthy, it’s very easy. You can just exist in a fairly healthy universe.”
For Levchin, that means exercising every single morning, within reason. He said: “So long as your daily default is ‘Be on the bike,’ some days you’ll miss because you’re travelling or you’re sick. But most of the time, you’ll just get up, and get on a bike first thing in the morning, which is what I do.”