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In an extensive interview Thursday with Dave Ruberstein, the co-founder of the private equity juggernaut The Carlyle Group, Amazon CEO and president Jeff Bezos opened up about an array of topics–from business practices, to how he structures his day, to why enough sleep is so important.
The richest man on the planet spoke for about 70 minutes at the Washington Hilton. Here are some interesting revelations revelations Bezos made about personal habits and daily life at Amazon.
Bezos on sleep:
“I prioritize it. I think better. I have more energy. My mood is better.”
“As a senior executive, you get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions,” he said. “Your job is not to make thousands of decisions every day. Is that really worth it if the quality of those decisions might be lower because you’re tired or grouchy?”
“I go to bed early and I get up early. I like to putter in the morning. So I like to read the newspaper. I like to have coffee. I like have breakfast with my kids before they go to school.”
Bezos on decision-making:
“All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition, guts, … not analysis.”
“If you can make a decision with analysis, you should do so. But it turns out in life that your most important decisions are always made with instinct and intuition.”
“If I make, like, three good decisions a day, that’s enough.”
On work meetings:
“I do my high-IQ meetings before lunch. Like anything that’s going to be really mentally challenging, that’s a 10 o’clock meeting.”
“By 5 p.m., I’m like, ‘I can’t think about that today. Let’s try this again tomorrow at 10 a.m,'” he said.
Bezos on Trump chastising the media, including the Bezos-owned Washington Post:
Bezos called it a “mistake” for an elected official to “attack media and journalists.” What Trump “should say (of criticism) is, ‘This is right, this is good. I am glad I am being scrutinized,’ and that would be so secure and confident,” Bezos said. “But it is really dangerous to demonize the media. It is dangerous to call the media lowlifes, it is dangerous to say that they are the enemy of the people.”
You can watch the full interview with Bezos and Ruberstein below:
[h/t Axios]