For the 73-year-old Fortune 500 leader, that means getting an early start and taking care of his physical and mental health to ensure he has the stamina to get through the day.
Iger, Disney’s repeat CEO, said one of the most important requirements for his role is energy—working out and eating healthy are one way of ensuring that.
“You have to bring—for the most part—energy to your job every moment of the day, every waking hour, because it’s motivating,” Iger told the In Good Company podcast recently.
On where he gets his energy from, Iger added: “Some of it is how you’re wired, it’s genes, some of it is how you have prepared.
“Staying in shape and having stamina is critical for me—that’s eating well and exercising. Just taking care of my body and my mind is really important, I could not do this job if I were not in some form of physical and mental health.”
The man who returned to Disney in 2022 on a $27-million-a-year contract works out for between 45 minutes and an hour most mornings, irrespective of whether he’s at home or in a hotel abroad.
“I like to say that it’s for sanity and vanity purposes,” he told host Nicholai Tangen—the CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management.
“It enables me to clear my head … and prepares my mind and my body for the job at hand, but there’s a vanity side to it there too.”
While Iger prioritizes his health, so far, he hasn’t followed in the footsteps of other high-profile leaders by quitting alcohol entirely.
“I like a good glass of wine,” he added. “I drink less this age—maybe it has to do with my age—but a good glass of wine relaxes me. I’m moderate when it comes to most things.”
4am wake-up call
Iger, a father of four, said an argument could be made that he doesn’t get enough sleep. After all, he wakes up just after 4am and goes to bed at between 10pm and 11pm.
“That morning time is rejuvenating for me actually,” he explained. “First of all it’s meditative, it’s quiet, the stimulation that exists in my life when it’s still dark out and no one else is up is toned down.
“I get a chance to be alone with my thoughts and that gives me an opportunity to order things, meaning to figure out an order and a set of priorities. It gives me the opportunity to think creatively—I’m not saying I’m a creator—but just in terms of speeches I’m going to give, discussions I’m going to have with my people.
“I begin the day with more purpose. Instead of waking up and suddenly being bombarded by all the incoming that comes my way, I can attack the world and the day with a little bit more organization.”
Iger’s outlook on balancing mental and physical health is a far cry from how others in his generation were behaving early on in their careers.
Bill Gates, for example, notoriously benchmarked himself against his peers based on how little they slept.
“In my thirties and forties, when there would be a conversation about sleep it would be like ‘Oh, I only sleep six hours,’” Gates said in a 2023 episode of Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates. “And the other guy says, ‘Oh, I only sleep five,’ then ‘Well, sometimes I don’t sleep at all.’”
As a result Gates would try and cut back on rest, saying he felt he needed “to try harder because sleep is laziness and unnecessary.”
Dealing with tiredness
Of course with hundreds of thousands of employees under his watch and business interests all over the world, even Iger gets tired.
When this happens, the Disney CEO makes sure to let those around him know.
“I’m a human being, so I’m really tired from global travel and long hours, and who knows what, I’m not afraid to show that to my people,” he said. “I think it’s sort of a way of being relatable.
“They feel that too, it’s human nature sometimes to feel overworked and tired.”
