Lauren Sánchez says Jeff Bezos set a rule for her morning routine

“The children haven't woken up yet. And we don't use our cell phones. That's one of the rules,” Sánchez said.

The couple has a blended family. Sánchez has three children, one with her ex-boyfriend Tony Gonzalez and two with her ex-husband Patrick Whitesell. Bezos has four children with his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. It is not confirmed which children live with them.

Sánchez, a former news anchor, said she would probably use her phone if it were up to her. Bezos “definitely made that rule,” she said, adding, “It wasn't me. But the mornings are just for us as long as possible.”

During a speech in 2018 at the Washington Business ClubBezos said he spends his mornings reading the newspaper, drinking coffee and eating breakfast with his children. He called it his “dawdling time,” adding that the routine energizes him and improves his decision-making.

In a December episode of Lex Fridman's podcast, Bezos defined “putter” as walking around slowly. “I'm not as productive as you might think,” Bezos, the world's second-richest man, said with a laugh.

“I move pretty slowly for the first few hours. I get up early, just naturally. And then, you know, I train most days,” he said.

CEOs have different morning routines

While Bezos stays away from his phone, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, said he does the opposite.

“The first thing I do is look at my phone. I look at Facebook to see what's going on in the world,” Zuckerberg said in a live Q&A on Facebook in 2016.

“Honestly, it’s a pretty sad situation,” he said of the habit.

Zuckerberg said his morning routine often includes Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MMA training and that he wears the same outfit to reduce his brain power.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told Dua Lipa on her podcast in November that he wakes up before sunrise — between 4 and 5 a.m. — and then spends the first hour of his day answering emails.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel is similar in that he says he gets up at 4:45 a.m.

“I get up very early because that's the only time that's 'Evan Time' for me, when people aren't really awake yet. I have a couple of hours between 5 and 7 in the morning to do whatever I want,” he said in a 2018 interview published in the Entrepreneurship Handbook.

But not all CEOs rise at the crack of dawn. Elon Musk, the CEO of Space X and Tesla, told the Wall Street Journal in February last year that he works late into the night and usually gets up at 9 a.m.

And while it hasn't been confirmed whether he was serious or just joking, Musk once responded to a doctor's post on X by saying, “I eat a donut every morning. I'm still alive.”

Bezos did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside of business hours.