I get up, walk with my wife, meditate, have breakfast with my son, work out on an elliptical and stretch. Then I head to work.”
How/where are you celebrating your birthday and with whom? “I am celebrating on Whidbey Island Washington with close male friends, then having a family birthday dinner. We are going to have a great time.”
How did you get your interest in sports? “As a kid, I particularly loved baseball – it was full of stats and encyclopedic in the way you follow teams and players. I played sports in high school — freshman basketball, shot put, freshman football – but never particularly stood out. I was always a fan though; I went to every high school game. I got to Harvard and went out for football manager freshman year. It was a job that fueled by my love of stats – I later got a job calling rebounds at Harvard basketball games for $12 a game. I guess in a way I’ve always been ‘front office.’”
What’s an interesting book/article you’re reading now or finished? And why? “I’m rereading the ‘Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes.’ I read them all as a kid; they are light and amusing at bedtime.”
Do you have a morning routine? I do. It’s different than when I worked, but I do. Get up super early — what I thought was super early – and exercise. Running has been my thing for the last 10 to 15 years. It was also working out with a trainer. I got quite heavy around 2000 and I started going to a trainer for kind of a diet-exercise program. … Even when I was heavy, I was a runner. That was my routine – and then dash to work. … Now that I’m in a second phase of life, I get up, walk the dog with my wife, come back, do some meditation. Maybe go get some food, go work out. I generally work out for an hour and a half, or maybe even a little more, from the gym … then dive into the office, maybe 10 or 10:30 a.m. I’m still pretty active on email, even later in the evening and that sort of thing. But I do my best to make sure I don’t feel the same time pressure. I control my time. Now when you run a company, you can say you control your time. … I’ve tried to have USAFacts, the Clippers and our philanthropy even more delegated than (my job at) Microsoft so that I have the time not only to do things I want to do for fun, but for reflection.
Sources:
- https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/playbook-birthday-steve-ballmer-236448
- https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2018/12/27/microsoft-ceo-steve-ballmer-facts-of-life.html