BILLIONAIRE
ROUTINES RANKED

6:45 AM

None. Brags about it.

500+ pages/day — 10-Ks, newspapers, annual reports

Sits in his office in Omaha. No computer on his desk. Drinks 5 Cherry Cokes a day.

McDonald's breakfast every morning. Pays with exact change. Eats like a 6-year-old who won the lottery.

10:45 PM — 8 hours like clockwork

~7 AM (after sleeping at 3 AM)

Occasional. Has mentioned wanting to. Doesn't.

Physics textbooks, sci-fi novels, Twitter replies

100-hour weeks across 6 companies. Sleeps on factory floors. Fires people on Twitter at 2 AM.

Replaced food with caffeine and posting. Runs the world's most expensive social media account.

3 AM — about 4 hours most nights

3:45 AM — not a typo

Gym by 5 AM every day. Never misses.

800+ emails before most people wake up

First one in, last one out. Quiet, disciplined, surgical. The anti-Musk.

His alarm goes off at 3:45 AM and he's excited about it. That's the whole quirk.

9 PM — gets roughly 7 hours

~6:30 AM — no alarm clock

Daily. Takes it seriously.

Reads customer emails first thing. Forwards the scary ones with a '?'

'Pottering' mornings — no meetings before 10 AM. Makes 3 good decisions a day and calls it done.

Famously said 'If I can make three good decisions a day, that's enough.' Most people can't make three good decisions a week.

10:30 PM — religious about 8 hours

~4:30 AM (when filming)

45-minute walk or treadmill. Meditation before anything else.

Gratitude journal every morning. Reads voraciously.

Meetings batched, focused creative blocks. Delegates everything she doesn't love.

Writes 5 things she's grateful for every morning. Has done this for decades. It works. Nobody else does it.

10 PM — prioritizes rest

~7 AM

Treadmill with educational videos playing. Peak Gates.

50 books/year. Takes handwritten notes on all of them.

Think Weeks — locks himself in a cabin alone with a stack of papers. Twice a year.

Still washes his own dishes. Billionaire dish-washing. He says it relaxes him.

12 AM — gets about 7 hours

~8 AM

MMA training, surfing, martial arts. Got jacked in 2023.

A book every two weeks (his old reading challenge). Now reads about fighting.

Wears the same gray t-shirt to eliminate decisions. Focus on one big thing per year.

Went from robot memes to cage fighting billionaire. The character arc nobody asked for.

11 PM — 8-9 hours

5 AM

7-minute workout, 5-mile walk to work. Daily ice bath.

Mindfulness books, Stoic philosophy

Used to run Twitter AND Square simultaneously. Meditated for 10 days in Myanmar mid-CEO.

Eats one meal a day (dinner only). Fasts weekends. Makes Silicon Valley look normal.

11 PM — 6 hours

5 AM — on Necker Island, obviously

Tennis, kitesurfing, swimming. Every single day.

Notebooks. Writes down everything. Carries them everywhere.

Delegates like a king. Hasn't run Virgin day-to-day in decades.

Lives on a private island and calls it work. The ultimate 'laptop lifestyle' but with a whole island.

11 PM — 6 hours

~6:30 AM

Cardio classes 3-4x/week

3+ hours/day of industry news, tech blogs, deal flow

Email warrior. Responds to cold emails. Does Shark Tank for fun.

Still answers his own email. Will literally reply to a random person pitching him a dog sweater company.

11 PM — 7 hours

~6 AM

Runs. Credited it for creative thinking.

Listens to business audiobooks during commute

Invented Spanx from her apartment. Drove to every store personally to sell it.

Celebrates failure. Makes her kids tell her what they failed at each week at dinner.

10:30 PM — 7.5 hours

~6 AM

Tennis, cycling, sailing. Owns an entire Hawaiian island.

Military strategy, Japanese culture, samurai philosophy

Aggressive. Confrontational. Will buy your company just to prove a point.

Bought 98% of Lanai, Hawaii. When your morning routine includes 'check on my island,' you've won.

11 PM — 7 hours

~5:30 AM

20 minutes of Transcendental Meditation. Twice a day.

History books, economic cycles, his own Principles

Radical transparency. Every meeting recorded. Everyone rates everyone. It's exhausting.

Built an entire management philosophy around 'pain + reflection = progress.' His employees feel the pain part.

10:30 PM — 7 hours

~6:30 AM

Tennis every morning. Has been playing for 40+ years.

French newspapers, art auction catalogs, luxury brand reports

Visits LVMH stores personally. Inspects product quality himself. Perfectionist.

The richest man in the world shops at his own stores to check if the employees are good enough.

11 PM — 7.5 hours

~5 AM

Running in the mornings

Engineering papers, GPU architecture docs. Light reading.

40 direct reports. No 1-on-1s. Sends 'Top 5 Things' emails to the entire company.

Wore the same leather jacket for 20 years. The jacket is more famous than most CEOs.

11 PM — 6 hours

5 AM

Daily. Cardio focused. Survived throat cancer and went back to the gym immediately.

Market reports, competitor analysis, customer data

Calls branch managers directly. Skips the chain of command when he feels like it.

Once showed up to a JPMorgan branch unannounced to see if it was clean. It wasn't. Someone got a phone call.

10:30 PM — 5.5 hours

~6 AM (rumored early riser)

Uses a fitness tracker religiously. Consistent.

Poetry, philosophy, and Microsoft product reviews. All three.

Empathy-driven leadership. Killed Microsoft's toxic stack-ranking culture. Tripled the stock.

Reads poetry to relax. A tech CEO who reads poetry. This is why Microsoft came back from the dead.

11 PM — 7 hours