How much sleep and exercise do Fortune 500 CEOs get? (2024)

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How much sleep and exercise do Fortune 500 CEOs get? ›

While not a scientific study, the Expert Reviews Sleep Survey claims to dispel the stereotype that CEOs thrive on a few hours' sleep. Yet the tide may already have been turning; a 2022 poll of Fortune 500 CEOs revealed these business leaders sleep an average of 6.3 hours a night.

CEOs of major companies can have pretty extreme sleep schedules. They're often getting up early in the morning and going to bed late to manage their busy work days. Still, there are a handful that aim for 8 hours or more of sleep a night.

The Job Is All-Consuming. CEOs are always on, and there is always more to be done. The leaders in our study worked 9.7 hours per weekday, on average. They also conducted business on 79% of weekend days, putting in an average of 3.9 hours daily, and on 70% of vacation days, averaging 2.4 hours daily.

Most had years of prior business roles. Insider data puts the average odds of a graduate trainee eventually becoming a Fortune 500 CEO at around 1 in 2,500.

26 percent: the portion of each work day the typical Fortune 500 CEO spends on the phone. 50 percent: the portion of a senior manager's typical workday dedicated to meetings.

Zuckerberg also prioritises sleep and makes sure that he gets proper eight hours of sleep to recharge himself and prepare for the next day's challenges.

Polyphasic and biphasic sleepers break up their sleep into multiple sessions so that they can sleep less and still function normally. Kobe broke his sleep into two two-hour sessions, giving him a total of around 4 hours of sleep a night.

In the past 10 years, CEO pay at S&P 500 companies increased by more than $5 million to an average of $16.7 million in 2022. Meanwhile, the average U.S. worker saw a wage increase of $15,460 over the past decade, earning on average just $61,900 in 2022. Blackstone Inc.

Really early: 6am is good, but 5am is better. And CEOs don't hit snooze: most of them claim to leap out of bed in the morning (even though it's basically still night) and more than one said that "life is too exciting" for sleep.

Take Zelnick, CEO of the maker of acclaimed video games, Take-Two Interactive. His fiscal 2021 pay package of $138,347, including his salary of $1, makes him the lowest paid CEO in the S&P 500. That's not a great deal higher than the company's median employee total pay of $72,046.

Can a CEO take $1 salary? ›

A number of high-profile execs have reduced their paycheck to a single dollar. But the gesture isn't as altruistic as it seems. In the last few decades, a curious trend has emerged: A small but growing number of prominent CEOs have reduced their cash salary to $1.

The average compensation for S&P 500 company CEOs in 2021 was $18.3 million, according to AFL–CIO. This includes $9.9 million on restricted stocks, $3.1 million on non-equity incentives, $2.98 million in stock options and $1.19 million in salary.

Of the 500 CEOs on the list, seven or eight had no undergraduate degree, more than the combined degrees from any other college in the pool, according to Kang, who is now a professor of international relations and business at the University of Southern California.

The average leader dedicates about 25 minutes of their morning to strategizing and planning. During that time, they tackle important tasks and projects while holding off on emails, calls, and texts until lunchtime.

New American Fortune 500 companies employ 14.8 million people. These companies are a strong driver of job creation. Each New American Fortune 500 company employs 66,192 workers on average.

Fortune 500 CEOs have overwhelmingly been white men, but in recent years, executive boards have been becoming more diverse. For instance, in 1980, all of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies' CEOs were white men. In 2023, 37 of the top 50 companies' CEOs were white men.

A good night's sleep — roughly seven to eight hours, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine — can yield tremendous benefits for an entrepreneur, as sleeping has a major impact on mental health and overall well-being.

Musk revealed in an interview with The Full Send podcast that he tends to sleep for around six hours every night and immediately checks his phone upon awakening.

Yes, there are plenty of examples of CEOs who keep the post for 30 years or more. But the average tenure for a chief executive is just five years, according to PWC, and there's a reason for that. At some point, every CEO faces the question of whether it's finally time to take the off-ramp and leave the company.