- Marc Benioff believes in rest and relaxation.
- The Salesforce CEO spoke about his daily routine in a 2023 interview with GQ.
- Benioff says he tries to get eight hours of sleep every night and set aside an hour a day to meditate.
Some CEOs proudly proclaim that they only sleep a few hours a night, including Marc Benioff.
The billionaire Salesforce CEO recently shared details about his daily routine in an interview with GQ, talking about his sleep schedule and how he uses meditation to get into a more zen state of mind.
Benioff said he averages about eight hours of sleep a night.
While some business leaders claim they can get by on half a night of sleep, Benioff isn’t one of them. When asked about entrepreneurs who claim to sleep just four hours a night, Benioff was quick to shoot down the idea.
“No, I don’t think it’s a good idea in general, based on medical research,” he told GQ.
Other executives, including former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, have previously said they average just four to six hours of sleep a night.
Four to six hours is roughly half of the seven to nine hours of sleep recommended for the average adult, and research shows that lack of sleep can lead to problems like impaired cognitive function and a weakened immune system.
Benioff also told GQ that he has a rigorous meditation routine that he’s been practicing diligently since 1992.
Benioff said he starts his day with 30 to 60 minutes of meditation as a way to manage stress.
He’s such a big fan of meditation that he has set up meditation rooms on every floor of the Salesforce.com building in San Francisco and encourages employees to participate.
Benioff worked closely with the monks and nuns at Plum Village in France, even inviting them to his San Francisco home in 2015. He relies on the monks for guidance and credits them with the idea of building a meditation space into Salesforce.com.
Benioff also spoke about his meditation routine with SFGate in 2005, saying that at the time, Salesforce offered its employees yoga classes twice a week.
“I’m very interested in keeping my mind clear,” he says, “so I enjoy meditating and have been doing it for over 10 years, probably to relieve the stress I felt while working at Oracle.”
Though Benioff seems to have his wellness routine nailed, he’s still open to making changes: He says he still sleeps with his phone on his bedside table. When told in an interview that using his phone right before bed could be damaging to his health, he replied, “I’m going to move.”
