Elon Musk is a busy man.
He’s the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, the social media platform, X — and he’s also a father of at least 14 children.
According to Forbes, he’s amassed a fortune worth $491 billion, making him the world’s richest person. Musk has said he didn’t get there by working a typical 40-hour week, and is instead known to have a strenuous schedule that he said has demanded 120-hour workweeks in the past.
Still, the South African mogul shares similarities with the average person in his typical daily routine. Like many of us, Musk enjoys a sweet treat in the morning and spends time scrolling social media.
Here’s how his days usually go, according to interviews and posts by Musk himself over the years.
Musk wakes up around 9 a.m. and says he starts every morning with steak and eggs
Musk told The Wall Street Journal in 2023 that he usually goes to bed around 3 a.m. and sleeps for six hours. So, he’s typically waking up around 9 a.m. each day.
He might’ve been trolling when he wrote a response to a doctor that same year on X saying he eats “a donut every morning,” but a quick search of Musk’s posts reveals he’s quite a fan of the pastry.
Speaking on “The Katie Miller Podcast” in December 2025, he gave an updated glimpse into his morning routine, saying his typical breakfast is “steak and eggs and coffee.”
His mornings usually start with his phone in his hand
Musk said in 2022 that he was trying to break the cycle of checking his phone as soon as he woke up. While on the Full Send Podcast, Musk described it as “a terrible habit” he hoped to escape.
But, as of 2023, he still wakes up and immediately looks at his phone for emergencies, the Journal reported.
If his posts on X are any indication, the habit persists. He has been active on the platform since before he acquired it in a $44 billion deal in 2022, often posting at odd hours and in the middle of the night.
It’s unclear if Musk slots in time to post and respond to others each day, but it certainly looks like he rarely takes a day off from the app.
“Some days I wake up and look at Twitter to see if it’s still working,” Musk told Walter Isaacson in the “Elon Musk” biography.
Showering is an important part of his daily routine
Musk previously credited showering with having the biggest positive effect on his daily life.
During an AMA session on Reddit in 2015, a user asked which of his daily habits impacted his life the most.
“Showering,” Musk responded.
He decides which Tesla to commute to the office in
As the CEO of one of the leading EV makers in the US, it’s no surprise that Musk has more than one option for his daily commute.
When an X user posted a meme about deciding between driving a Cybertruck without autopilot or a Tesla Model S with self-driving technology, Musk responded that it’s a choice he faces “every day.”
The Cybertruck has been in the backdrop of many celebrity paparazzi shots and Instagram posts since its official launch in November.
It’s unclear if Musk is keeping up with the daily lifting routine he spoke about in 2023
Like many, Musk appears to have had ups and downs in his relationship with physical exercise over the years. In 2021, he told Joe Rogan that he’d avoid it altogether if he could.
“I almost never work out, except for picking up my kids & throwing them in the air,” he said on X in June 2023.
But less than two months later, he said he was “lifting hard almost every day.” Around the same time, talk of Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg going head-to-head in a fight swirled online.
He skips lunch but is a foodie, and often dines out for dinner
Musk told Miller during his December 2025 podcast appearance that he often skips lunch or eats something “small” for his midday meal.
Dinner, though, can be “anywhere,” he told the podcast host, who is married to White House advisor Stephen Miller.
“I like the wide range of cuisine,” Musk said, with “American” food like cheeseburgers and pizza being his favorites.
He added, “If I had to say, like, there’s only one thing you can ever have for the rest of time, which admittedly would be a bit monotonous, but it would probably be a cheeseburger, because cheeseburgers are amazing. It’s a genius invention.”
No wonder his Tesla Diner in Hollywood features burgers prominently on the menu.
Sometimes, his work days can last all night
Musk has admitted on several occasions that running more than one company isn’t easy. He splits time between his companies depending on the “crisis of the moment,” the 54-year-old said in 2021.
One X user pointed out in January 2023 that Musk had testified in a lawsuit in the morning, attended an event at a Nevada Tesla factory in the evening, and worked with Tesla on AI at night — all in one day.
Musk responded that he’d also spent time at “Twitter HQ past midnight.”
And then was at Twitter HQ past midnight. Very long day.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 26, 2023
“I go to sleep, I wake up, I work, go to sleep, wake up, work—do that seven days a week,” Musk told the Journal in 2023. “I’ll have to do that for a while — no choice — but I think once Twitter is set on the right path, I think it is a much easier thing to manage than SpaceX or Tesla.”
On the Tesla earnings call in April 2024, Musk said: “Tesla constitutes the majority of my work time, and I work pretty much every day of the week. It’s rare for me to take a Sunday afternoon off.”
Musk goes to bed around 3 a.m. and gets about 6 hours of sleep every night
Although he’s not getting eight hours a night, Musk has upped his sleeping schedule from being nearly nonexistent in the past.
In May 2023, Musk told CNBC that he’s no longer pulling all-nighters. Instead, he said he tries to get at least six hours of sleep.
According to Isaacson’s biography of Musk, the billionaire has spent many nights awake and pondering the issues his companies face. His former partner Claire Boucher — known by her stage name Grimes — also told Isaacson that Musk once stayed up all night playing the “Elden Ring” video game when it first came out.
He has a history of sleeping on the floors of his offices and the Tesla factory.
After purchasing Twitter in 2022, Musk all but moved into its San Francisco headquarters. He said there’s a couch in the library that he would crash on from time to time.
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