For many CEOs, the workday begins before sunrise. Leaders like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Disney’s Bob Iger have all said punishingly early mornings and rigid routines are their preference—and essential to running a global company. Life360 CEO Lauren Antonoff takes a different approach.
Rather than adhering to a tightly scripted daily schedule, Antonoff’s workdays are best described as “organic”—shaped less by the clock than by the flow of her month.
“I really think about my routine less in terms of what the morning tonight is, and really what the rhythm is over the course of a month,” she told Fortune.
On a typical day, that means starting work around 8:30 a.m.—a leisurely pace by some CEO standards. From there, her schedule is dictated largely by her first meeting of the day.
“Every day for me is very different,” she said. “I have probably a lot of meetings, but I try to also get time to read and reflect and communicate with people on my team.”
That flexibility, Antonoff noted, isn’t accidental—and wouldn’t have been possible without help at home. While she climbed the ladder to now lead a tech company with an over $7 billion market cap and took care of her household’s finances, her husband took the lead at home. Though he has worked as a real estate broker and entrepreneur, he was largely a full-time stay-at-home parent while their children were growing up.
Antonoff calls it a “1950s family structure in reverse.”
“Our children are now officially adults, but [my husband] did all the child care and all the cooking and cleaning and all of that stuff, and I do, the making the money and paying the taxes and that kind of stuff,” she added.
She encourages families—particularly working parents—to access what actually works for them, rather than defaulting to tradition.
“Giving yourself permission to depart from tradition can be incredibly freeing,” she said. “I feel incredibly lucky to have a career that supports our unusual arrangement, and an amazing husband who takes care of our family and me (and doesn’t make me do dishes).”
Forget work-life balance, Antonoff is a ‘workavert’
Not having an overly regimented work schedule doesn’t mean Antonoff isn’t putting in the time at work—if anything, it’s the opposite.
“I don’t have work-life [balance]—they’re not separate to me,” she said, adding that she describes herself not as an introvert or extrovert—but rather a “workavert,” meaning she is energized by the work grind.
Even when she’s off the clock, she finds ways to feed her curiosity about business, whether that means hearing about an interesting company or unpacking a problem raised by a family friend.
Antonoff isn’t alone. A number of high-profile business leaders have openly embraced work-centric lives.
For Emma Grede, the idea of work-life balance isn’t possible for those seeking wide-reaching success.
“If you are leading an extraordinary life to think that extraordinary effort wouldn’t be coupled to that somehow is crazy,” Grede told The Diary of a CEO podcast.
Thasunda Brown Duckett, president and CEO of the Fortune 500 financial services company TIAA, has repeatedly echoed this sentiment, calling work-life balance a “lie.”
Instead, she takes an active approach in dividing out her days to ensure she can effectively juggle responsibilities at home and in the office.
“The truth is I only have 100% of me, not 110%. Understanding that I am not 100% allocated to being a mom, they only get 30%, allows me to be more intentional,” Duckett told LinkedIn News in 2024. “So my children don’t get 100% of all of me. But within that allocation, they get 100%.”
Others take it even further. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to answer emails and is always thinking about work—even while washing dishes or watching a movie. He’s also said he never takes a day off, working seven days a week, including holidays.
