For most 20-something-year-olds fresh out of college, 4:30 a.m. is when the night ends, after a night of partying. For Twilio’s CEO, Khozema Shipchandler, it was the beginning of his day.
The 51-year-old exec says he’s always been a morning person—on weekdays, at least—and that starting his day while others slept is why he got ahead faster than most.
“I was kind of built that way,” he tells Fortune, adding that you set “benchmarks based on your life experiences.”
“My parents were the classic immigrant success story, and as with many immigrant parents, they wanted their kids to do better than them and to create the opportunities for them,” he reflected on his family, who moved to the U.S. from Mumbai.
“They really pushed working hard and playing hard—which, by the way, I do play hard when I’m not working—so that was the goal.”
Shipchandler graduated from Indiana University Bloomington in 1996 and that summer began his career at the industrial conglomerate. And that drive paid off early. By the time he was 31, Shipchandler was already CFO of a multi-billion-dollar GE business.
“If you were willing to put in the effort, they were willing to give you the opportunity,” he added. “So I got a lot of opportunities there.”
While Gen Z and millennial workers are rewriting the rules of corporate life—demanding flexibility, autonomy, and strict boundaries around “me time”—Shipchandler isn’t convinced you can reach the C-suite without long hours and sacrifice.
“Every one of us has to make certain work-life choices,” the Gen X boss. “This work-life choice obviously has certain consequences. I wasn’t there for all of my son’s tennis matches.”
“If you want to work eight-to-five, coach your kids sports teams, have the evenings for yourself, and maybe another hobby or interest, that’s awesome,” Shipchandler adds—but he caveats that he’s “never spoken to a peer” who doesn’t have a similar routine and level of balance as him.
A day in the life of Twilio’s CEO
While his early mornings were once about getting ahead of the competition, now that he’s running a $16 billion company with over 5,500 employees, it’s about getting ahead of his calendar: “Most other people aren’t up, and so it allows me to just get a lot of work done.” Fortune got the lowdown on his daily routine.
4:30 a.m. Shipchandler is awake and scanning Slack, emails, and texts for any “red hot” issues that need immediate attention.
From there, he has the same daily routine: A coffee, breakfast—usually a smoothie—a skim of the news headline and then a workout “immediately after” and always in that very specific order.
“I do it in that order intentionally so that while I’m working out, I have an opportunity to think through the various things that have happened, through the course of the news, the things that I’ve seen on email and Slack and stuff like that.”
7:30 a.m. Shipchandler is “officially at work,” ahead of most of Twilio’s engineers, who he says typically start at 9.
6:30 p.m. He takes a dinner break—either at home with family or with a customer or senior leader when out of town. “I tend to be on the road about 75% of the time, but same routine,” Shipchandler says.
8:00 p.m. He squeezes in about an hour of extra work before winding down with 20–30 minutes of SportsCenter when traveling, or whatever “his wife falls asleep to fastest” when at home, he jokes.
9:30 p.m. Bedtime.
Weekends: Shipchandler rises at 6:30 a.m. on the weekend. While his routine is a little more relaxed on weekends, he still works most Sundays. “It’s the nature of the job, I’m usually thinking about work and the gap that I allow for me to not think about work is six to eight hours on Saturdays.”
High-performance habits: Running around the house to blow off steam in between meetings
When asked if he thinks work-life balance is possible at the top, Shipchandler quickly responded: “I do not.”
But that doesn’t mean he lets hours slip away. “I’m all for working smarter,” he says, adding that as well as making the most of every productivity tool at his disposal, he leans heavily on high-performance habits to stay focused.
For example, he’s very strict with his calendar and making time to move throughout the day: “I do not take meetings that I don’t think drive the ball forward for the company, or that don’t bring me energy.”
“I typically only do 25-minute meetings in a 30-minute slot, and I only take 50-minute meetings in an hour slot, and in the time in between, I’ll do maybe a quick lap around the house to get the blood flowing, or get some fresh air.”
After lunch, he always immediately hits the treadmill for 10 minutes of walking so that he doesn’t get an afternoon lull. He also doesn’t use social media—and says that helps keep his focus.
“I think habits really matter,” Shipchandler explains. “When you have a set of habits, it allows you to kind of move through the work in a way in which is very intentional and you don’t let a lot of distractions creep in.”
Want to level up your workday? See how other high-performing execs structure their day.
