Jeffrey Escobar on Engineering His Best Thinking

In part one, Jeffrey Escobar described the core: one location holding your gym, your bed, your food and your computer, so nothing pulls you off the work. The obvious objection is that it sounds lonely. Escobar says people are hearing the idea wrong. The core was never a room with one person in it.

It was never one person

Ian Sierra: Is this a solo thing?

You don’t have to be alone on this. The whole idea of the core is not to be a one-man show. It would be cool to have other creators, founders, builders, inventors, engineers, scientists and researchers all working together in a core, so you build a creative community, because everybody’s working on different things.

How many people?

The core is wherever you are, wherever the team is, and where the founders are. It could be a group of two, three or four people, which would be perfect. Everybody working on different things, or on similar things that connect and interconnect.

And socializing?

Socializing is extremely important, and you will be socializing a lot, because you’ll be doing a lot of meetings.

It’s a better answer than it first sounds. The social loop a builder actually needs is made of people working on hard problems, and inside a core that loop is denser than anything waiting outside it.

This already exists in the wild

This already exists in the wild, doesn’t it?

A lot of people are already doing this. Founders like to do this. They go to Bali, get a house in Bali. Or they go to San Francisco and get a hacker house, and they’re just constantly working.

So what are you adding?

The health part.

Four researchers in white coats and safety glasses working at a laboratory bench — Escobar's version of a core mixes disciplines on purpose. Engineers next to researchers, all working on different problems.Photo by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on Unsplash

The health part

Say more.

Humans should really take into consideration meditation, good sleep quality, and good food habits. You could be the best engineer in the world, but if you’re not taking care of your health, if you’re eating Chipotle every day, I don’t think that’s the best route at all. There’s nothing wrong with Chipotle. I like Chipotle. I just don’t consider it a healthy food choice.

What does the food look like instead?

There should be a share of fish, salmon, or tuna. Chicken, definitely. Reduce the red meat quantity. You want to prioritize your health so you can be in the best state possible to think more and create more.

Why does that matter more inside a core than outside one?

In the core the only thing you’re producing is thought and action. If your input is bad, the output is bad. That’s the whole thing.

Most hustle culture treats the body as a cost center, something to run down now and replace later. Escobar designed the opposite into the floor plan. The dark bedroom, the cold plunge, the red light, the gym on site. None of those are indulgences in his version. They’re the reason the schedule is still standing in month six, and they’re the detail that separates this from every “grind harder” post you’ve read.

Who it is actually for

You’ve heard people call the whole setup delusional.

Maybe you think this is hysterical. Maybe you think it’s completely delusional because you want to go out and socialize, you want to go out and party. Sure. But the whole point of this is to be able to create and build, and you have to love what you do.

Who is this actually for?

These are people who are willing to sacrifice that time of meandering, going out, doing all these ridiculous choices of life, to tackle one of the world’s biggest problems and get it done.

And once you’ve done it?

You concentrate, focus and lock in on a specific goal, execute properly, use funds properly, no distractions whatsoever. You completely dedicate your life toward that goal and tackle it until it gets done. Then you move on to the next goal, and so forth.

Does the core stay in one place

Does the core stay in one place?

The core can change. The core is wherever you are and wherever the team is. You don’t really have to constantly travel to get things done. You can be in one single place and get everything done.

Which raises the question we spent most of the third session on. If the core moves with the team, and the team is trying to solve problems that don’t sit inside any one country, what does the building look like?

Escobar’s answer involves a 200-foot yacht, a robotics team, and a navy.

Part three, next.

This is one of twelve features expanding on the August 2026 Business Insider story. The full record collects every line that ran and the complete version of each.