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An early start is followed by furious exercise. David Cush, the CEO of Virgin America, is on his exercise bike shortly after getting up at 4.15am. Tim Cook of Apple is in the gym at 5am. However strenuous the workout, it is often combined with other tasks. Mr Cush reads, makes phone calls and listens to a sports-radio station while cycling. Mr Iger once told the New York Times that, while exercising, “I look at e-mail. I surf the web. I watch a little TV, all at the same time.” And all while listening to music.

These guys probably aren't really working all that hard. If you have time to read emails and surf the web then you should exercise harder.

A lot of adventure sports mostly require money eg sky-diving - cost of fuel, mountaineering - paying for the expedition. I know people who mostly spend their money on adventures. Anyone can do this if that's your thing. Otherwise get into some cheaper adventures like rock climbing or canyoning.

The triathlons and mountain-biking might be impressive if we knew their times. Lots of people have jobs and families and commitments and regularly compete in and train for endurance sports or any sport for that matter. Who do you think enters these competitions?

this is really the key line

   However strenuous the workout, it is often combined with other tasks.

If you can combine it with other tasks, it isn't strenuous at all. I mean really, is the person on the other end of that phone call just listening to someone breathe hard or pant? If not, he or she isn't exercising even moderately hard.

I think many of these stories are akin to Pat Robertson, televangelist, bragging that he could leg press 2000 pounds. http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/pat_robertson_can_leg_pres... For those of you who don't spend much time in a gym, Ronnie Coleman brags about leg pressing 2300 lbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vWgSTdkc2A One of those two men is a noted bodybuilder who got his start powerlifting, weighed probably 350 lbs in that video, and is on a teeny little bit of celltech =P.

It's fairly obvious that either the person who said that or the journalist who interpreted it that way doesn't know much about correctly working out.

I frequently am bothered by people able to talk (a lot) during their cardio, I'm thinking they could do a lot better. It's like they're just sitting there ticking a box (I did half an hour of exercise! woo!). Still, better than nothing I guess.

These guys probably aren't really working all that hard. If you have time to read emails and surf the web then you should exercise harder.

True if you’re doing cardio exercise. If you’re doing some kind of weight program for strength / muscle building then you get best results in terms of results achieved / time expended (according to r/bodyweightfitness & r/fitness FAQs) by resting for 5 minutes or so in between each set of an exercise so that your muscles can replenish their stored energy reserves. You can use some of that time to do a different exercise, but you probably still have some downtime left: The r/bodyweightfitness program leaves 90s inbetween each set of paired exercises. That’s time to read a few emails, surf the web etc.

Yeah, but they aren't going for heavy levels of muscle building. If they're doing 5 min intervals they're not doing it for exercise reasons.

1min/90s should be just fine.

I wouldn't be surprised if it were mostly due to journalists exaggerating these stories, I'm always amazed by what gets written after I talk to a journalist ;)

It would make sense that a "day in the life" story would be assembled from activities actually occurring over the span of a week.

> Results don't matter, it's how much effort you appear to be putting in. This is what is valued. CEOs need to appear like they are valuable.

This is truly sagacious statement. Modern CEOs represent almost none of the value generation for the companies described except for the part where things are sold or money is solicited. Perhaps that is a cruel and thoughtless quantification of corporate leadership, but I've worked for some truly bad and even gross leaders. People who offered me hard drugs for performance. People who revealed company secrets to sound good in interviews. People who proudly posted about their underage sex tourism on facebook. Bad people. So I don't put much stock in it.

So, I suspect that this is a compensation for the other fact: CEOs are hiring and then selling that team. CEOs claim to recruit, lead and inspire their talent. They're all too aware of what's actually critical to the functioning of a company. They're all too aware of who they can't lose.

So maybe they're actually doing this for themselves? To say, "See? Maybe I am not as smart or creative or talented in a way that directly benefits our business, but I work as hard as everyone else put together because I care more."

But all the same I should start trying to wake up early to exercise. It's not like there is any other time I could do it. ;)

>>Because what is described is either a bunch of lies or something pretty amazing. I've never met anyone that could function like this for sustained periods and be useful in any way.

Probably a lie. The article mentions "pre-dawn sex" as a way of connecting with their spouse, but a lot of these high performers are either divorced or single. Elon Musk is a good example.

This isn't a value judgment, by the way. It's just that the types of high performers described in the article rarely have time for family.

Getting up at an early time of day isn't uncommon though. I mean look at the military. It's all about discipline, and of course going to bed earlier (the article doesn't say what time they go to bed).

But besides that, it has to be your thing. There's morning and evening people; these are apparently mostly morning people. I know there's a significant amount of people that rolls up at work at 10 or even later, and those that prefer to work in the evening / night as well. To each their own.

Maybe you're right, but I know a couple of people irl who get so much done, it's like they have more than 24 hours in a day. I asked one of them where he gets the time (despite having 4 kids), and it mainly just seems he sleeps less. Some people really manage to get by on 5 or 6 hours of sleep.

You should try it sometime. I find that somewhere between 5 1/2 and 6 hours of sleep keeps me at peak performance, but 8 or 9 hours of sleep leaves my groggy and tired throughout the day. Paradoxical? Maybe, but our bodies are complicated machines.

This happens to me to, although it changes depending on the season. In winter I need more sleep and I'm just less productive. In the summer 5 hours of sleep and breakfast can keep me going all day.

But we need to be carrefull, the amount of sleep you need is mostly genetic(apparently). Here is a link: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3kj669/science_ama...

Meh, I don't think it's extreme to get up early every morning and exercise, though I do agree with the gist of the article. My 63yo father wakes up at 5am every morning to get to the gym and into the office by 630 and he is by no means a high-performing CEO.

When I was 30-32, I got up at about 04:30 - 05:00 every day. For the first few years, I ran 9km every other day, but I switched to using an elliptical trainer for 30 minutes every morning (including weekends) after I started getting shin splints from running. In both cases, I would do some work with free weights every other day.

That was when I had a systems engineering job with very consistent, predictable hours. It's a lot harder to maintain that kind of schedule when there are crunches and other factors that interfere with a routine.

It's certainly possible that some or all of the CEOs in question are distorting the facts, but it's not out of the question that they're accurately describing their day.

FWIW, my original motivation was the Air Force general who said something to the effect of "maybe these people can't run 5 miles with a pack on their back, but if they can hack SCADA systems, we need them." I figured I wasn't interested in working for the Air Force, but I'd prove that there was at least one hacker who could run 5 miles with a pack on his back :).

Why is it amazing? Go to bed at 9pm, wake up at 4:30 and exercise on the treadmill (or whatever) for a bit. Seems pretty basic.

As someone else said, if you're checking email while exercising it's probably not all that difficult of a workout.

Write your novel for an hour, or paint, and you're out the door by 6am. Work until 5ish, rinse, repeat.

I can't imagine a CEO or even a regular white-collar worker going to bed at 9pm. Most regular employees are encouraged to stay late, often until 7 or 8pm, meaning they have to stay up until 11pm or later to have any sense of "free time" to relax and unwind, not to mention family time. For CEOs, they are never really off the clock so to speak, and depending on the culture at their company they will often work until midnight, then they are back up at 6am or earlier to do it all again.

I'm actually glad that I went back to government work; set schedules with very little need for overtime or staying late, and taking a vacation is pushed to the point of nearly being mandatory. I have more free time and family time, and that's important for mental health.

If you can't imagine a CEO going to bed at nine you don't have much of an imagination. I'll just leave it at that.