Jeff Bezos's Daily Routine

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 and Blue Origin in 2000, and ran Amazon as CEO until 2021. For someone with that much on his plate, his day is strikingly unhurried. It's built around one modest target: three good decisions.

His morning routine is slow on purpose, with coffee, the newspaper and breakfast before anything else. His first meeting is at 10:00 AM, the "high-IQ meetings" happen before lunch, and anything that needs hard thought after 5:00 PM waits for tomorrow. He laid it out at the Economic Club of Washington in 2018 and again in 2023, as CNBC reported. Every night, he does the dishes.

It's for founders, managers and anyone whose biggest calls keep landing at the end of long days, when they're tired and rushed. It works best if you can protect your mornings and push routine meetings to the afternoon.

You make your hardest calls at your sharpest hour, end the day with nothing important left hanging, and trade a pile of rushed decisions for a few good ones. He protects 8 hours of sleep for the same reason. The sleep and morning times, the meals and the weekend are our estimates.