Jeff Bezos’s Ideal Work-Life Balance Is … Really Reasonable, Actually

His 'secrets' include 8 hours in bed and no early meetings

September 14, 2018 9:00 am

Get eight hours of rest. Start meetings at 10 a.m. At work, tackle the mentally draining stuff first. It all sounds so … sensible.

Tell your boss (or your employees) that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO/founder and the richest man in modern history, has figured out the mundane secrets to a productive life.

Bezos revealed his day-to-day during a talk at the Washington Hilton on Thursday night, the same place where he pledged $2 billion to non-profit organizations. Among his other surprisingly reasonable ideas?

  • He trusts intuition and guts over analysis
  • He likes to read the newspaper, have coffee and talk to his kids before he starts his day
  • At 5 p.m., he avoids “high-IQ meetings,” noting “I’m like, ‘I can’t think about that today. Let’s try this again tomorrow at 10 a.m.” (Not 2:30 a.m., Mark Wahlberg.)

As well, Bezos plans ahead. The Amazon founder says he’s working on a quarter right now that won’t reveal itself until 2021.

Doubt that decision is keeping him up at night.

(Having problems sleeping? There’s a new club that might help you.)

Photos: Steve Jurvetson / Flickr / Creative Commons

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