Billionaire Mark Cuban spends hours reading 1,000 emails/day, but defends offline life

In today’s age of AI, productivity—and mastering the perfect ChatGPT prompt—can be more pressing than ever. But, according to billionaire Mark Cuban, people may be focusing on the wrong priorities.

“It’s time for everyone to break out of inertia, leave the house and have fun,” Cuban told Inc. in early January, shortly after investing in a live events company. “In an AI world, what you do is much more important than what you type at the prompt.”

Also read: Why This Billionaire Spends 3 Hours a Day Listening to Podcasts and Audiobooks

Coming from Cuban, the message carries a touch of irony: the former Shark Tank investor built his career on intensity and working harder than everyone else. And while he’s long moved between business and entertainment — from owning the Dallas Mavericks to betting on high-profile sports ventures — Cuban is still on the front lines of technology trends, including AI.

But when it comes to finding work-life balance, the 67-year-old doesn’t exactly preach moderation.

“If you want to work nine to five, you can have work-life balance,” he said on “The Playbook,” a business and sports podcast from Sports Illustrated. “If you want to crush the game, whatever game you’re in, there’s someone working 24 hours a day to crush you.”

For Cuban, this marathon is literal. Averse to meetings, he reads between 700 and 1,000 emails a day on his three mobile devices.

This relentless grind makes his advice about fun sound almost contradictory. But Cuban’s point isn’t that hard work doesn’t matter — it’s that AI doesn’t replace real-world experiences or relationships.

The advice Cuban would give his younger self

Cuban may be worth billions today, but his career began with small odd jobs.

In one of his first sales jobs, at age 12, he traded boxes of trash bags for $3 to $6 — all to save money to buy a pair of sneakers.

This experience laid the foundation for his work ethic. When he became a more serious entrepreneur, setting up his first technology company, he managed living with five flatmates and never taking a vacation.

Looking back, if he had to do it all over again, Cuban said he wouldn’t change a thing.

“Don’t stress. Don’t change anything. Have fun,” he told Business Insider in 2015.

“You don’t need to know what you’re going to be when you grow up,” Cuban added. “You don’t have to have answers. You don’t have to have the perfect degree. You don’t have to choose the perfect job. You’re allowed to be f—ing wrong.”

Richard Branson and Satya Nadella agree with Cuban

Cuban isn’t alone in arguing that life and work don’t need to seem so serious.

When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, one of his first messages to employees was simple: “Have fun, communicate, and achieve great things.”

It’s something that has long been echoed by billionaire Richard Branson, who believes many companies take themselves too seriously — and says it’s up to leaders to set an example of fun.

The 75-year-old British businessman, owner of the Virgin Group, said at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School that “it’s up to the person running the company to be willing to let loose, to be the first to dance on the table at a party and to be the first to jump into the pool fully clothed to liven up the event and make sure everyone has a good time.”