Usually, my irrational bargaining goes something like this: I start working at around 10 if I’m feeling motivated, 11 if I’m not. I reread the work from the day before and/or passages that I think I got right in order to try to set the tone. I write a sentence. I read it aloud. I delete the sentence. I look at the clock and wonder if it’s too early to think about lunch. I tell myself that, if I can make it to 300 words, I can break for lunch.

I get to my desk (in a very small room at the top of the house) at about 10, and fiddle about with the height of the desk and the chair until I’m comfortable. I have a desk that I can raise or lower according to the state of my aching back. Sometimes I stand at it, and sometimes I have it high up to write at, and sometimes a bit lower to type.

Writing before dawn began as a necessity—I had small children when I first began to write and I needed to use the time before they said, “Mama”—and that was always around five in the morning. Many years later, after I stopped working at Random House, I just stayed at home for a couple of years. I discovered things about myself I had never thought about before.

I begin each morning, I do every single morning exactly the same way, I begin each morning by doing my highest priority work first. I have a very clear priority list and I start from the highest priority work first. Before I even get to work, my day is already a success. I've already completed my most important work and can dedicate my day to helping others.

Un constructor.

The simplicity and yet profoundness of the above logic leads us to conclude that for us the most natural and truthful path is to invest this wealth until "our last check bounces", as one of our personal heroes, Chuck Feeney, likes to say.

Pix is probably the most successful payment infrastructure run by a government in history. I think Pix has been what has allowed a country like Brazil to leapfrog developed economies like the U.S. and in Europe, and has positioned Brazil today probably five years ahead of the U.S. I don't think anybody understands that, and probably in the U.S. they didn't really expect that.

¿Es la tecnología, el machine learning y la inteligencia artificial? Sí, es verdad, pero al final la diferencia es que hacemos algo que mi mamá me decía cuando era chiquito: "Tratemos a los demás como nos gustaría que nos traten a nosotros".

Queremos crear un ambiente familiar en donde no todo sea fácil, en donde no todo les caiga del cielo, sino que puedan construir su propio camino y tengan ese sentido de desesperación y esa hambre. Eso significa también que todo ese dinero no se les va a dejar a ellos. Se les dará muchísimo amor, como les damos, y muchas oportunidades de educación y de desarrollo, pero todo ese dinero no es para ellos.

Vicky, qué pregunta más difícil (risas). Voy a hablarle de los casos que nos han inspirado, como Charles Feeney, cofundador de los Duty Free Shop en los aeropuertos. Él hizo eso en los años ochenta. Se volvió uno de los hombres más ricos del mundo cuando vendió su compañía e inmediatamente se dedicó a la filantropía y gastó todo su dinero en metas sociales.