Tim Cook's daily routine: The schedule of the Apple CEO who wakes up at 4 a.m. and reads hundreds of customer emails a day

"I get up really early, I'm an early bird," Cook said on an episode of the "Dua Lipa: At Your Service" podcast that aired in November, noting that he generally wakes between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m.

He's said that at that early hour, he has the freedom to spend his time as he sees fit.

"I can control the morning better than the evening and through the day. Things happen through the day that kind of blow you off course," he told The Australian Financial Review in 2021. "The morning is yours. Or should I say, the early morning is yours."

"I spend my first hour doing email, and I'm pretty religious about doing this," he said on Dua Lipa's podcast. "I read emails from a lot of customers and employees, and the customers are telling me things that they love about us or things that they want changed about us. Employees are giving me ideas. But it's a way to stay grounded in terms of what the community is feeling, and I love it."

Cook told ABC News in 2014 that he was getting 700 or 800 emails a day and read "the majority of those," including customer feedback.

"I cannot read all of them, no. I'd not admit to doing that," he told the Australian Financial Review. "But I read an extraordinary number of them. It keeps my hands on the pulse of what customers are feeling and thinking and doing."

Employees, too, have experienced Cook's early-morning emails.

"I spend an hour in the gym, usually doing strength training, and I've got somebody to really push me to do things I don't want to do," he told Dua Lipa. "I do no work during that period of time at all, I never check my phone, I'm just totally focused on working out."

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2014 that Cook didn't work out on Apple's campus, opting instead for a gym where he was less likely to run into his employees.

Cook told Axios in 2018 that working out helps "keeps my stress at bay."

A 2012 Time article reported that there, he'd read through more emails before heading to the office.

It's not clear whether Cook regularly eats breakfast, but he dug into scrambled egg whites, sugar-free cereal, unsweetened almond milk, and bacon during an interview with the New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin in 2017.

The Journal's 2014 article reported that Cook's weekly operations meetings could last five or six hours and that he was known to relentlessly question employees.

"'Talk about your numbers. Put your spreadsheet up,' he'd say as he nursed a Mountain Dew," the Journal wrote.

Mike Janes, the former head of Apple's online store, told CNN Money in 2008 about an afternoon meeting with Cook.

"A number of us had tickets to see the Mets that night," Janes said. "After hours, he was still drilling us with question after question while we were watching the clock like kids in school. I still have this vision of Tim saying, 'Okay, next page,' as he opened yet another energy bar. Needless to say, we missed the Mets game."

He also has no problem sitting in silence until he gets a suitable answer.

"In meetings, he's known for long, uncomfortable pauses, when all you hear is the sound of his tearing the wrapper of the energy bars he constantly eats," CNN Money reported.

As a result, the Journal said, employees had learned to be prepared, cramming for the meetings as if they were tests.

The Journal reported in 2014 that besides the energy bars he was snacking on throughout the day, he stuck to meals such as chicken and rice for lunch.

Cook is known to eat his lunch in the cafeteria with employees, unlike his predecessor Steve Jobs, who would typically eat with the design chief, Jonathan Ive.

"I'll divide the day in terms of spending time with product teams or spending time with marketing teams or spending time with the executive team, and we're either handling issues of the day or hopefully our balance is more on working on future stuff, and thinking about what's next," he said on Dua Lipa's podcast.

When he was COO, he was known for being one of the first people in the office and one of the last people to leave.

We don't know much about how Cook spends his weekends and evenings, though he's outdoorsy and enjoys rock climbing and cycling.

The Journal reported his favorite vacation spots included the Yosemite and Zion national parks.

He has also vacationed at the Canyon Ranch resort in Arizona, where guests spotted him keeping to himself, often dining alone and reading on his iPad, Fortune's 2012 profile of Cook said.

Áine Cain contributed to an earlier version of this story.