Elon Musk: Daily Routine

120-hour workweeks nearly broke him — now Elon Musk sticks to a (still wild) 80–90 hours.

When it comes to the daily routines we’ve written about so far, I’ve found that there’s two ends of the spectrum, Jason Fried with his 40-hour workweeks (32 hours in the summer), and Elon Musk’s seemingly endless hours, often reaching over 100 hours a week. Both are extremely successful founder-CEOs and both have their own unique approach to work-life balance.

There’s no denying that Musk’s workaholic habits have had a huge impact on the world and yielded tremendous results. In a statement, Tesla’s board said, “Over the past 15 years, Elon’s leadership of the Tesla team has caused Tesla to grow from a small start-up to having hundreds of thousands of cars on the road that customers love, employing tens of thousands of people around the world, and creating significant shareholder value in the process.”

Elon Musk’s daily routine can be summed up as work, eat, sleep, with work taking up a bulk of that time. With a bedtime of around 1am, Musk typically wakes up at 7am, getting 6 to 6.5 hours of sleep, which, he discovered over the years is his sweet spot.