Mark Cuban wakes up every morning at 6:30—here's the first thing he does

Self-made billionaire Mark Cuban packs a lot into each day. The father of three stars on ABC's "Shark Tank," owns the Dallas Mavericks and still finds time to read daily and to work out for at least an hour. 

Cuban, 60, recently shared the details of his day with Vanity Fair, including his morning routine, which starts at 6:30 a.m.

"The first thing I do when I'm laying in bed still is, I'll grab a phone and start going through my email," he says. "Whatever the stressful things are, I try to get those out of the way in the morning."

There's value to tackling high-priority items right away, even if they're unpleasant. As author Brian Tracy, who has studied time management for more than 30 years, writes in his book "Eat That Frog!": "Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long. Your 'frog' is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don't do something about it."

He continues: "The key to reaching high levels of performance and productivity is to develop the lifelong habit of tackling your major task first thing each morning. You must develop the routine of 'eating your frog' before you do anything else."

After tackling the most stressful tasks on his to-do list, the rest of Cuban's day includes catching up on the news, dropping his 15-year-old daughter off at school, playing pick-up basketball and dealing with a lot of email.

He prefers to conduct his business over email, in part because he dislikes meetings, he tells Vanity Fair: "I get 700 emails a day. You may think that's a lot, but you know what I'd rather do? I'd rather do 700, even 1,000 or more, emails than sit in long and tedious and boring meetings."

In any given day, Cuban estimates, he spends three to four hours reading through and responding to emails.

While some productivity experts recommend disconnecting from the internet at night, Cuban checks his inbox one final time at 11:00 p.m. before going to bed. He's asleep between 11:30 p.m. and midnight, he tells Vanity Fair, and then up again at 6:30 a.m. for more emails.

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