Twitter founder Dorsey talks about AI agents, the Nostr protocol, and future payments | Disruptors Unplugged

Jack Dorsey Image Source: Daily Sabah

Compiled & Written by: Starlabs Consulting

Recently, Jack Dorsey was a guest on Nicolai Tangen's podcast, discussing the birth of Twitter, the decentralized social platform Blue Sky, the open social protocol Nostr, the ambitions of the American version of Alipay, Block, and his observations and predictions regarding generative AI and AI agents. This episode of Disruptors Unplugged will bring you insights and reflections from this Silicon Valley mogul, spanning technology, finance, and personal practice.

Host Nicolai Tangen is a well-known figure in Norway's financial sector, serving as the CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, the management institution under Norway's sovereign wealth fund (SWF), which is also one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.

Highlights

• Generative AI is creating a flood of information reminiscent of "The Truman Show," and AI agents will become users' algorithmic bodyguards, a promising prospect.

• The next giant to defeat Twitter (X) may not be another social media giant, but decentralized social protocols like Nostr. This is a lesson from the internet.

• The internet aims to create efficiency, while existing payment networks and banks become the biggest obstacles. The Block + Bitcoin model leads the future of financial payments.

Nicolai Tangen: Hello everyone, I am Nicolai Tangen, and today I am honored to invite one of the world's most visionary entrepreneurs, Jack Dorsey. Jack, you have truly left a deep impression on the world, welcome! Jack Dorsey: Thank you very much!

Users Reinvented Twitter with @ and #

Nicolai Tangen: Let's start with the birth of Twitter (now X). Where did the idea originally come from?

Jack Dorsey: The idea had been brewing for a long time. I have been fascinated by the question of "how cities operate" since I was young. I was very intrigued by maps, often staring at them, trying to understand what was happening in a community or area.

Later, I worked at a large company in New York, which had a wealth of information about New York City maps. But it lacked one thing—what people were doing and where they were. This was the origin of Twitter: if I could see and visualize what people were doing, thinking, and where they were going, it would help me better understand the city.

This idea took about 10 to 15 years to develop until 2006, when the timing and technology finally matured. At that time, I was working at a podcast company with a great team, and we held a hack week where I proposed the idea of allowing people to share what they were doing and where they were going via their phones, enabling others to see and follow. Another programmer and I spent two weeks developing a prototype. Gradually, we gained more resources from other companies, eventually becoming independent and securing venture capital.

Nicolai Tangen: What was your vision at that time? What did you think it would become?

Jack Dorsey: Initially, I didn't have a vision; I was just playing with it. My ultimate thought was to understand what was happening in the city. I just wanted to use it, to see what my friends were doing, and to share what I was doing.

At that time, SMS was just starting to become popular in the U.S., while it had been widespread in Europe for 10 years. This was because U.S. telecom operators (like Verizon and AT&T) used different communication protocols (CDMA vs. GSM), making SMS functionality incompatible between different operators. But when we had this technology (Twitter), it became very cool—I could send messages through a cheap Nokia device, and it would spread to everyone who cared about what I was saying/doing. So we launched it, invited our friends, and they invited their friends… it spread continuously.

We found that when people used a product, service, or feature, it resonated with them in some way. Our task was to dig deeper into the reasons behind that resonance, to figure out what it was and why it was interesting.

Interestingly, the development of Twitter was not determined by us, but by the people using it. We saw people trying to communicate with each other, mentioning each other. I spent three hours writing some code during breakfast. Whenever someone tried to mention another person, it would link and filter into a "replies" tag. This opened up conversations on Twitter, forming a mode of public communication that I hadn't initially envisioned.

At first, we thought it was just a tool for updating friends on what was happening. But users wanted to communicate, so they invented a syntax, like using @ to mention others, using # to group topics, and even invented "retweet" to share content from people they followed.

Gradually, by observing user behavior, we made it more user-friendly, which in turn spread it further, allowing more and more people to derive value from it. This was an interesting experience of co-creating the product with users.

Nicolai Tangen: That's amazing! So what does its development tell us about what users need? What are the common traits of users?

Jack Dorsey: I think people not only want to consume content, but they also want to participate. Participation means creation, and of course, they may not be aware of it themselves. When you use a platform like Twitter, you develop an emotional attachment to it, hoping it continues to operate and succeed. You become emotional about any changes you think go against its intended direction or usage.

We saw many instances where, when we tried to do something we thought was important, the online community would push back, telling us it was wrong. By observing what users were trying to do, we gained deeper insights into what Twitter wanted to become. As we gained more users and audience types, the density of information further increased.

The Explosion of Twitter: Penetrating the White House "Media Wall"

Nicolai Tangen: When did you realize it had really exploded?

Jack Dorsey: When Obama was elected, he delivered a State of the Union address 100 days into his presidency. At that time, some senators and congress members were already using Twitter. I was watching the speech, and as the camera panned, I saw someone using a phone. At that moment, I received a tweet from our senator from Missouri, who was discussing Obama's speech on Twitter.

I was very shocked; it really shortened the distance between something that might seem very abstract and far away, giving me a sense of reality—someone typed out words, my phone vibrated, and I was reading it, even though they were thousands of miles away, I could feel its presence.

Nicolai Tangen: How did you feel at that moment?

Jack Dorsey: I felt excited, and I immediately went back to work. That's what you want when building a product; you want to see people using it in some way, you can see its value, and feel it.

Nicolai Tangen: What reflections do you have when you see social media platforms becoming so important in election campaigns?

Jack Dorsey: Social media itself is not important; what makes it important is people's attention. Before Twitter, everything was completely scripted, everything was hiding behind the media wall. You got information through television or radio, which usually represented corporate media's viewpoints and were funded by advertisers.

Podcasts were the first to truly break down that wall, but at that time, they weren't discussing news content, just doing interviews and such. Twitter quickly penetrated that abstract media wall. For elections, our government processes might seem very abstract, but when you have a tool where you know 90% of the content comes directly from personal expression, it is real, unfiltered, and open, not processed by others.

So, this is not about the service Twitter provides, but about people's needs and desires; anything that could fill that market gap at the time could explode. We were just lucky to have a great product that was simple, direct, user-friendly, and accessible. More importantly, we hit the right timing, as people's frustration with the media wall had reached its peak, and there were already cracks; people wanted more real, direct experiences.

I believe the true power of Twitter is based on its communication; it is not only the most direct source of news but also about what people are talking about and their views on the news.

Moreover, there are many opinion leaders on Twitter, and people want to hear their perspectives. Some tweets are even quoted by television stations; although we can't quantify the exposure a tweet receives when quoted by CNN or Fox, we know its influence far exceeds our analysis and measurement capabilities.

Ads are Poison, Protocols are the Antidote?

Nicolai Tangen: Two years ago, Elon Musk bought it and renamed it X. Before Twitter became X, did you have any regrets about what you didn't accomplish?

Jack Dorsey: In hindsight, there were probably many things that could have been done differently. I think we pursued monetization too quickly and forcibly adopted a monetization path—advertising, which brought many problems.

Google already had a scaled advertising business, and Facebook's advertising business was growing. Twitter's goal at that time was growth and going public. Going public meant needing revenue, so we copied the internet model of that time, which was advertising. But this caused problems for our growth, competition, and valuation. This model did not truly reflect Twitter's value. If we could have spent more time looking for better monetization methods or diversifying revenue models, the outcome might have been better.

The second thing is that in the early days, Twitter was more like an open protocol (similar to HTTP or SMTP), but it controlled the entire tech stack, which might have been a mistake. Because if it were an open social media protocol owned by the public, people could build businesses on it rather than just one company, it would have more freedom and flexibility to do what the platform and protocol really need to do. As a company, it inevitably faces government and advertiser interventions in content policies and may even be forced to delete content due to demands from certain countries. I learned a lot about this from Bitcoin.

Nicolai Tangen: Do you think it can exist without ads?

Jack Dorsey: Absolutely.

Nicolai Tangen: How would it be funded?

Jack Dorsey: There are many ways, such as subscriptions, commerce, etc. The internet was not born with a native currency protocol; advertising became the way to subsidize free services, so people think internet companies must have advertising businesses, which was taken for granted in the early days. But Netflix and eBay have shown different paths. However, for an information tool like Twitter, advertising is the way to build the largest network community, providing free services and subsidizing it through ads. But the reality is, advertising turns users into products, and the customers are the advertisers, who are deciding the direction of the product.

Nicolai Tangen: You are still a major shareholder of X; what do you think they should do now?

Jack Dorsey: Experiment as much as possible, continue to explore what people want to do with it. I think this has little to do with free speech; it's more about whether we can choose how algorithms program us. Algorithms are indeed programming us, and it's hard to judge and predict what algorithms will do, which is dangerous.

But if I could choose which algorithms to filter my tweets and what content I can see, and have an "algorithm store" like an app store, then I would have more autonomy over content and experience. This could make our relationship with technology healthier. I'm not just talking about Twitter; this applies to YouTube and fintech as well. We are being programmed, and these algorithms know our preferences better than we do, and this trend will only intensify.

How do we increase individual autonomy? Through choice, the ability to turn off algorithms, choose different algorithms, and create our own algorithms.

Nicolai Tangen: What kind of algorithm do you want now?

Jack Dorsey: For example, if I lean left or right, I could choose a more right-leaning or left-leaning algorithm. If I hate politics and just want to focus on science and art, I could choose an algorithm that filters out everything else, focusing only on physics, or even just quantum physics.

You might say this can be achieved through taxonomies and categories, but the amount of information is so vast now that those methods are no longer sufficient. You have to get into the algorithmic level to effectively create these agents that help you get the information you are truly interested in.

Currently, most internet companies and services' algorithms focus on one thing: maximizing exposure to maximize advertising revenue, rather than maximizing user experience.

Nicolai Tangen: But if it shows you content you're interested in, isn't that a good thing?

Jack Dorsey: That's great. But I want to have the choice. You can build a great business around it; you can sell algorithms, you can subscribe to them, you can place more targeted ads on these algorithms because they are actually programmed to target the results you are genuinely interested in, not randomly or by guesswork. So I think this would lead to better business, but it requires companies or individuals willing to give up algorithmic trade secrets and make them more democratic.

AI Agents: Fighting the Generative AI "Truman Show"

Nicolai Tangen: How will generative AI change the way we use these platforms?

Jack Dorsey: I think we are already seeing this; these tools may next revolve around agent systems and software, where I can assign tasks to them, and they can complete these tasks with other agents on the internet. So I am more interested in that aspect.

I believe generative AI, especially large language models, clearly has the capability to create vast amounts of information, both real and fictional. These tools will become so realistic that you will not be able to distinguish them; we will truly feel like we are in a "Truman Show."

So I think the only way is to have more information and better filtering tools, which leads to agents that will be driven by me. So I am currently less interested in LLMs and generative AI; I am more interested in how to mobilize these AIs to make them something that actually works for people.

Nicolai Tangen: Given our discussion about algorithms and generative AI, what impact does this have on journalism?

Jack Dorsey: I think it indeed becomes increasingly challenging because you face the need to sift through truth and lies again. And people have been lying since the dawn of language; journalists must figure out what is a lie and what is the truth, and they need different perspectives.

Nicolai Tangen: What do you think about content moderation?

Jack Dorsey: I believe the best content moderation is algorithms, and users should be able to decide their own algorithms, deciding what they can and cannot see. There should be a content library where only its authors have the right to delete, but as individuals, I have the right to filter out what I don't want to see or select what I want to see, but all of this depends on whether I have algorithmic choice. If a company chooses algorithms for me based on maximizing advertising revenue, then it is not truly serving me.

Nostr: An Open Protocol to Disrupt Social Empires?

Nicolai Tangen: This brings me to Blue Sky; you helped create this decentralized social platform. Can you tell us about the vision behind it?

Bluesky Social App Image Source: App Store

Jack Dorsey: Yes, about three years before I left Twitter, I realized the issue we discussed earlier—that one company cannot fully control the entire tech stack of social media. It would be better to build social media on a protocol shared among multiple companies.

For example, HTTP is the protocol that runs the web and is also the protocol we are using to record this podcast. It is a consensus; everyone agrees to transmit data in this specific way, and then you can build browsers on top of it, like Safari, Firefox, or Chrome, which are built by different companies. They can establish business models on top of the protocol, but as separate entities, they cannot control the direction of the protocol's development; they can only push it through a consensus model.

Since we have such protocols for the web, email, file transfer, and video, why not establish a protocol for social media? Why not create a social media protocol that any company (whether Facebook, Google, X, or open-source tools) can use?

That is the idea behind Blue Sky. We spent about a year finding a leader, a woman named Jay, who built a team and actually constructed the protocol and client.

Blue Sky CEO Jay Graber Image Source: TechCrunch

Another anonymous individual from Brazil created another protocol called Noster. He had a different perspective on the issue. He carefully analyzed every flaw he perceived in Twitter and then built his own protocol based on those flaws. I discovered that protocol about a year and a half ago, and interestingly, this protocol not only addressed every issue I saw but was also completely open in its development model.

Nostr Official Website Screenshot

Blue Sky is built by companies creating APIs and protocols, while Noster is a protocol built by a group of individuals, with clients built on top of the protocol. I resonate more with Noster because I believe the work at the protocol level should not be done by one company but by a group of interested and dedicated individuals.

Ultimately, I stepped down from the Blue Sky board and focused most of my energy on funding the Noster ecosystem. Noster is still small because it is more technical, but I am hopeful about it because its construction model is similar to the development models of Linux, Unix, and the C language, rather than the Cathedral model led by companies, which tries to pursue perfection but ultimately no one uses it because they are company-led with specific goals, lacking true individual drive.

Blue Sky and Noster represent two different models; I believe the Noster model is more sustainable and will ultimately prevail, but having multiple competitors is a good thing. There are also other protocols like Mastodon and Matrix, and Meta is also working on Threads; all of these are competing with each other.

Nicolai Tangen: Why is Blue Sky growing so fast now?

Jack Dorsey: Blue Sky has established what I have always wanted to build, which excites me greatly: an algorithm store that allows you to choose your own algorithms. I think this is also why people will ultimately flock to these services, as they can have more autonomy and control.

When we have these different social service camps, if X represents the right, and Blue Sky represents the left, they cannot truly communicate with each other, but there will be crossovers because people will retain their accounts to hear the other side's voice. The only way to solve this problem is: one protocol, different viewpoints, different algorithms, different business models. That is our goal.

Nicolai Tangen: What will make Nostr explode?

Jack Dorsey: Time. I think Nostr is better technology and has a healthier developer ecosystem. Nostr is not just the social media that Blue Sky is trying to become; it is more like an application ecosystem based on a common protocol. People have already built Twitter-like things, spreadsheet tools like Google Sheets, and code platforms like GitHub on it.

Nostr allows you to verify authenticity because it is a public key + private key system, rather than email + password. Every message I send on Nostr is signed with my private key, so you know that this message indeed came from me and my device, which is very different from Twitter or Facebook, where messages might be intercepted or even sent by the company in the name of individuals.

Nicolai Tangen: What will social media look like in five years?

Jack Dorsey: I hope it will be more driven by agents, with users having more autonomy, allowing me to choose how to filter content and promote content. I hope all content can exist permanently because that provides us with the greatest learning opportunities. I also hope the business models align more with individual interests rather than just corporate interests.

Nicolai Tangen: How do you think the regulation of online platforms will evolve?

Jack Dorsey: The problem I see is that regulation is becoming increasingly fragmented, making it very difficult for companies to operate in this decentralized regulatory environment. The regulatory understanding in California is very different from that in the EU, and Australia has just banned social media use for those under 18, which is different from regulations in Europe, the U.S., and other parts of the world. Now, you have to specifically form a team for Australia to deal with this restriction. If other parts of the world follow suit and implement their own specific regulatory requirements, then you cannot build a company that serves the globe; you can only build companies that serve specific markets, which goes against the spirit of the internet.

That is why I believe protocols are very important—protocols do not need to deal with these regulations; they do not belong to any company or individual, and governments cannot control them. Bitcoin is a great example.

Block's Ultimate Weapon: Bitcoin vs. Visa, MasterCard

Nicolai Tangen: Let's talk about Bitcoin. You founded a company called Block; can you tell us what Block is?

Jack Dorsey: It was originally called Square, but later renamed Block because we now have multiple businesses. If you turn Square (a square) into three dimensions, it becomes Block (a cube).

Block Official Website Screenshot

Block focuses on economic empowerment, developing tools to help people integrate into the economy. We started by helping merchants accept credit cards, then added another business called Cash App, which allows people to easily transfer money instantly between individuals or businesses via their phones. Cash App is increasingly resembling a banking app.

Today, we have two large-scale ecosystems—Square and Cash App—that provide simple financial tools for merchants and individuals, helping them achieve economic goals, such as transferring money to friends and family, obtaining debit cards, using ATMs, establishing e-commerce stores, or managing customer relationships.

Nicolai Tangen: What will these businesses look like in five years?

Jack Dorsey: Another challenge we face now is that our business is limited by a fragmented regulatory environment. To launch Square or Cash App in a market, we must collaborate with local partners and pay attention to the different regulatory requirements of that market or country, which is a heavy cost, and we must weigh this cost against the benefits. If the internet had a protocol for transferring funds, like Bitcoin, we could launch these services in every country with internet access, serving more people faster.

Bitcoin is a protocol for transferring funds. If Bitcoin is used not only as a store of value but also as currency for transferring funds between individuals, between businesses and individuals, or between businesses, if this becomes increasingly common in the next five years, then we could launch Cash App and Square in every country with internet access.

Because Bitcoin is open, it is not controlled by any company or government, completely transparent, and people can see how it works. We can solve all problems in a transparent and open manner without relying on governments or companies because it is based on internet principles. I hope these financial systems adopt more internet principles so that we can truly become an internet company rather than expanding market by market.

Nicolai Tangen: What conditions are needed for Bitcoin to operate more effectively?

Jack Dorsey: I think this is happening; more and more people are seeing its value. I don't think the final stage of Bitcoin is merely as a store of value, but I believe it is a necessary step toward the next stage (like cross-border remittances). This has already happened in many countries outside the U.S. and Western countries because they have no other choice. Then, as people's recognition of it increases and they see it won't disappear, it will become currency.

Bitcoin has been around for nearly 16 years; it has never gone down, never had security issues, it has no leader, and its development roadmap is completely open, determined by a consensus model. These are all characteristics that make it trustworthy as a currency. As it is widely adopted, people will increasingly trust it. It is a deflationary currency, so it does not encourage spending but encourages saving. However, I think it has a very interesting development path and offers many intriguing business models for the internet. If Bitcoin had existed before Twitter, things might have been different, and social media would be better.

Nicolai Tangen: Why would social media be better if Bitcoin existed?

Jack Dorsey: Because you could conduct business transactions immediately, you could implement subscription services right away without needing permission from Visa or Mastercard, and you wouldn't have to worry about security issues. If we had such tools and could facilitate commercial transactions on that scale, we could build outstanding businesses.

All communication is an exchange of value, and business is also an exchange of value. If you combine currency with communication, you can simplify business transactions. The internet aims to create efficiency, but the biggest resistance to creating efficiency is the payment networks, banks, and the way we currently handle money. Bitcoin disrupts all of this and offers a completely different path, which I find more exciting and enables us to build larger, more valuable businesses.

Nicolai Tangen: What impact do you think this will have on payment systems and companies like Visa and Mastercard?

Jack Dorsey: Visa and Mastercard started in a very unique way; they were initially somewhat like a protocol and then gradually became more corporate. I believe if Visa and Mastercard could adopt an open protocol to transfer funds on the internet, they could still build a very successful business.

When you build a business based on a protocol, what people value is convenience and reduced friction, and they are willing to pay for it. There is already a lot of evidence of this in the web and email space, and we can achieve this in the payment field as well.

If you could loosen your grip a bit and create an open protocol that every company could use instead of owning a payment network itself, you could increase the overall market size, increase transaction volume, and participation. If you do something creative on that basis, you can build an extraordinary business that changes the world.

The internet has many lessons, and all these lessons relate to open protocols. I believe any company that ignores these lessons will not last long. The internet is still very young, but it will teach us all, especially as more of these agent systems emerge, we will realize that these agents are working on our behalf because we have a highly interconnected network in which they can roam freely. But if there is any friction in the process, their value will decrease.

Learning from Every Rejection, Every Mistake, Every Challenge

Nicolai Tangen: What do entrepreneurs have in common?

Jack Dorsey: They all have their own different paths. Personally, I never thought about becoming a CEO or entrepreneur; I had no interest in it. I just wanted to create and use what I built, hoping others would use it too.

But one day, I realized that to sustain what I created, I needed money, which is why I built a business. So I had to learn how to build a business, operate a business, and become a CEO, learning how to program, how to raise funds, how to hire and fire employees, how to build a cultural framework, and how to establish feedback mechanisms. All these things I originally had no interest in, I had to learn to do because it was the only way to push ideas to the next step and get more people to use what I wanted them to use and mature it.

Nicolai Tangen: You once said entrepreneurs are a bit like artists; what do you mean by that?

Jack Dorsey: Artists need to know when to end something, to know the beginning and end of chapters. Products and businesses are the same; you can do a lot, but without clear boundaries, it becomes chaotic. You can draw lines, boxes, shapes, inputs, and outputs, and suddenly it becomes an expression of an idea, becoming acceptable and manageable, something people can truly use. Deciding what those boundaries and lines are, and when to start and end, is very challenging; that is where the art part comes in.

Nicolai Tangen: How do you handle rejection?

Jack Dorsey: My mindset is that every experience I encounter, every situation I go through, is a teacher, and they all have lessons to give me. Whether I learn from them depends on myself. If I don't learn from it, I waste my effort; if I learn, I have it and become better because of it.

So, without rejection, I just choose to learn from every person that appears before me, every mistake, every challenge, every encounter. No matter how big or small, it is trying to teach me something.

"Time Hacking": Eating One Meal a Day, Meditating for an Hour

Nicolai Tangen: Where did you learn this mindset?

Jack Dorsey: Practice, just do it, and meditation. I do a lot of meditation; in this practice, you spend a lot of time observing the pleasures and pains of the body, observing your reactions to pain. When you understand this and realize that pain is temporary, and you are suffering for something temporary, you ask yourself: what am I doing? Why am I suffering for something that will eventually go away?

So I can change my reaction; I can decide that reaction. This is a very embodied meditation practice, and it is one of the hardest things I have done mentally and physically because you are in real physical pain. But at some point, you observe that pain, observe your reaction, and then suddenly, the pain disappears; it is magical.

Jack Dorsey meditating in a cave in Mandalay, Northern Myanmar Image Source: Jack Dorsey / Twitter

Nicolai Tangen: How often do you meditate?

Jack Dorsey: Before the pandemic, I would attend a 10-day silent meditation retreat every year, from 4 AM to 9 PM, not speaking, not communicating, not moving, with no phones. All the centers closed during the pandemic, but I meditate for about an hour every day after I wake up.

Nicolai Tangen: What level of pain is optimal?

Jack Dorsey: Anything that teaches you new things, teaches you about yourself, and helps you understand your capabilities.

Nicolai Tangen: This must be a lonely journey, right?

Jack Dorsey: I guess it might be, but it is a feeling; it is a decision you make. I choose to be weakened by this feeling of loneliness or to ask myself: what is this experience trying to teach me? What should I learn from it?

I think all these things ultimately come down to decisions, but it takes time to realize that and time to hone the tools to execute that decision.

Nicolai Tangen: Is this how you create your dos & don'ts lists?

Jack Dorsey: Yes.

Nicolai Tangen: Perhaps you want to explain these lists.

Jack Dorsey: Every day, I write down what I want to accomplish and what I don't want to do. I think we often focus on what we want to do, concentrating on some very big goals. If I have learned anything, it is to make the goals smaller and repeat and iterate them as quickly as possible, so I can gain momentum.

Just like meditation, many people start with New Year's resolutions, like "I want to meditate for an hour every day." They do it once and then never again. Instead, if you say, "I want to meditate for 1 minute every day for 2 weeks," I can definitely do 1 minute and stick with it. Then I can increase it to 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and then an hour.

So, writing down your small goals every day is very important, and more importantly, writing down what you don't want to do because we never focus on "I won't do this."

Nicolai Tangen: What is on your todo list today?

Jack Dorsey: I am learning quantum physics, spending an hour each day reading and watching related videos; I extended it from 30 minutes to an hour. I am also learning Italian, spending an hour on that every day. At the same time, I am learning programming to keep my skills up to date and stay current in the AI agent field. So I spend 3 hours every morning learning, which makes the rest of the time feel like a victory.

Nicolai Tangen: What is on your don't do list?

Jack Dorsey: Don't get distracted by the news because it is all about the fog of war right now. Don't get distracted by politics, don't get distracted by entertainment, because I really want to learn, to learn better, faster, and deeper. So I am simultaneously experimenting with these three different themes to find my own learning patterns so I can reach a beginner or proficient level more quickly across multiple fields.

Nicolai Tangen: What do you think is the key to rapid learning?

Jack Dorsey: Long periods of observation, then taking action. But I think people often skip the observation phase. People are good listeners, but I don't think they have the ability to observe the world, observe nature, observe how things work. They are too eager to take action and neglect the importance of observation.

Observation is the behavior we had as infants; when we learn new skills, we spend a long time observing, immersing ourselves in everything happening around us. By the time we are two or three years old, we gain the ability and tools to act, but that comes from a lot of immersion. But as adults, we skip the immersion part, skip the observation phase, and we try to take action, which leads to thinking, and thinking eliminates the ability to truly act intuitively based on the information that continuously enters your system.

Nicolai Tangen: You only eat one meal a day; why?

Jack Dorsey: I like to learn through extremes. I have tried every diet you can imagine. I am very interested in my health and maintaining a healthy lifespan. Someone eats only one meal a day, and I found it interesting, so I tried only having dinner, then only breakfast, then only lunch. Surprisingly, I saved the time of the other two meals, feeling like a superpower. While others spend so much time eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, along with all those rituals, I gained two or three hours to do other things or have a real conversation without being interrupted by food.

Then I realized I didn't need that much food; we eat too much, especially in America. So I needed to distinguish between what is a need and what is a desire. I feel my health has improved, my energy has increased, and I have given myself all this time to do what I really want to do. When I eat, the taste becomes amazing; I regain my sense of taste and appreciate food as something that sustains life rather than just entertainment.

Nicolai Tangen: What advice do you have for young people?

Jack Dorsey: Observe, observe everything, accept everything, love receiving information, and don't rush to react or take action. Stay open, and when you need to do something with it, it will naturally present itself.

Nicolai Tangen: Jack, it has been an honor to have you here. Thank you very much for sharing these thoughts; it has been very interesting.

Jack Dorsey: Thank you.