Demis Hassabis's Daily Routine
Have dinner at home and still get quiet hours for hard problems. Demis Hassabis's daily routine: a second workday starting at 10:00 PM.
By Colin PaceUpdated
Overview
Demis Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010 and shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, the AI that predicts protein structures. His daily routine holds two workdays in one, with dinner at home in between.
The first is office meetings. In the evening he goes home for dinner and time with his family. At 10:00 PM he starts what Fortune, reporting in 2026, called his "second workday". It runs to about 4:00 AM, with his peak around 1:00 AM.
It's for people who think best when the house is quiet but won't give up the evening with their family. It's also for night owls who are tired of being told to work in the morning.
Meetings get the daylight, the family gets dinner, and the hardest thinking gets the hours when nobody needs you. You don't need his 4:00 AM finish: one or two quiet hours after the house settles gives you the same shape. The wake time, the daytime hours, the meals and the weekend are our estimates.
Goals
Who's it for
At a glance
- 6 hr sleep per night
- 91 hr work per week
- 3 meals per day
- 11 hr eating window
- 14 hr play per week
Schedule
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