Why the 34-year-old CEO of P.F. Chang's likes to wake up at 4:30 a.m. daily to work out

• Damola Adamolekun is the 34-year-old CEO of the restaurant chain P.F. Chang's.
• He says early morning runs help him stay mentally sharp and give him a "conquest" to start the day.
• After his runs, he prioritizes "low-intensity" tasks before he commutes to P.F. Chang's headquarters.

The CEO of restaurant chain P.F. Chang's says early morning runs help him stay sharp at work and build mental discipline. 

Damola Adamolekun, 34, told Fortune he rises at 4:30 a.m. daily to run seven to eight miles.

"You'll feel better the whole day," he told the magazine. "You'll be smarter, you'll be sharper, you'll be more energetic." 

The runs also give him a "conquest" to start the day, he said.

"I like the routine precisely because it's hard," Adamolekun told MarketWatch. "It builds a level of discipline and a level of deal-with-it-ness. Like, 'Here's a problem, deal with it. You got to be up, go do it.' There's a mental benefit to that sort of conquest to start the day. So I do enjoy it. Now, do you ever really want to [do it]? No, and that's precisely the point."

After his runs, Adamolekun gets some work done in his home office, as he's previously told Insider. He first reviews daily flash reports, which recap the previous day's restaurant operating performance. Then he reads his email and prioritizes "low-intensity items," or tasks that require little time and energy, so teams waiting on his sign-off can move forward with their work. 

Then he commutes into the corporate headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona — often arriving by 7:30 a.m. — and won't schedule meetings before 8 a.m.

Adamolekun is much younger than the average chief executive at a restaurant chain — especially one like P.F. Chang's, which has about 300 locations globally. In addition to his CEO role, he's also a partner at the hedge fund Paulson & Co., which partnered with TriArtisan Capital Advisors to acquire P.F. Chang's in 2019.

Adamolekun told MarketWatch his youth may help him connect with younger consumers. But he said his willingness to listen to them is more important.

"There's something about empathy and listening to people and relating to them, even if it's not your own experience, that I think is helpful in life generally, and certainly in business," he told Marketwatch. "Because you can't speak for all the consumers. There's a lot of consumers that I won't personally relate to, but their opinions are just as valid as a consumer that I do relate to."