An AI exec is stepping down, citing workload and stress. Here's how 10 business leaders stave off burnout.

Lilian Weng, a cofounder of Thinking Machines Lab and erstwhile OpenAI information executive, announced her resignation from her role on Tuesday.

In a statement to colleagues, later shared connected X, she wrote that 7 months of recurring illness, made worse by the relentless gait of startup life, had near her incapable to springiness the occupation the afloat effort she felt it demanded.

"After reasoning astir it for respective months, I yet person to admit that the magnitude of accordant accent and workload person pushed maine beyond what my wellness tin prolong physically," Weng wrote. She said she hopes to return successful a much scoped domiciled astatine a calmer workplace.

Weng's resignation is simply a reminder that burnout stalks moreover the astir accomplished operators.

Here's really 9 different business leaders person said they support it astatine bay.

Evan Spiegel, Michael Dell, and Jamie Siminoff: build guardrails into the grind

Some leaders support grinding but obstruction disconnected pieces of their lives.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, who calls his seven-day-a-week schedule "completely insane," says Sundays are non-negotiable: church, brunch, and an day pinch his 4 kids.

Michael Dell's guardrail is levity. The Dell Technologies laminitis has said there's a diminishing return connected hours worked successful a day, and anyone successful it for the agelong haul needs a operation of working, playing, and relaxing.

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff opts for what he calls "work-life fusion," folding family into the job, for example, by bringing them on connected business trips.

Arianna Huffington and Jeff Bezos: Treat remainder arsenic an asset

Others dainty remainder itself arsenic the strategy.

Two years aft founding The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington collapsed from exhaustion astatine her desk, breaking her cheekbone. She said successful a LinkedIn post successful 2014 that the autumn convinced her that equating occurrence pinch burnout is simply a "collective delusion." She later group up a company, Thrive Global, focused connected well-being.

Jeff Bezos frames remainder arsenic a fiduciary duty. "Eight hours of slumber makes a large quality for me," the Amazon laminitis told Huffington's Thrive Global, arguing that an executive is paid to make a fewer high-quality decisions, and shortchanging slumber conscionable yields much tired, lower-quality ones.

Indra Nooyi and Sheryl Sandberg: judge the trade-offs

Some leaders sidestep burnout by abandoning an intolerable standard.

"I don't deliberation women tin person it all. We dress we tin person it all," Indra Nooyi, past the CEO of PepsiCo, said successful 2014. Her reply was to extremity pretending: to dainty each time arsenic a bid of definitive trade-offs among CEO, wife, and mother, and to co-opt family and colleagues to capable the gaps.

Former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg made a akin lawsuit successful "Lean In," calling "having it all" possibly the top trap ever group for women. She has besides defended leaving the agency astatine 5:30 p.m. for family dinner.

Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and Lloyd Blankfein: life's excessively short

A fewer notable business leaders person said they garbage to fto activity swallow everything else.

At Berkshire Hathaway's 2023 yearly meeting, Warren Buffett and his precocious partner, Charlie Munger, contrasted themselves pinch Elon Musk, whom Munger said succeeds by insisting connected unreasonably utmost goals. "Warren and I are looking for the easy job," Munger said. "We don't want that overmuch failure."

Munger warned graduates distant from grinding careers, too, saying that winning a pie-eating title conscionable intends eating much pie, and "life is excessively short to conscionable do thing but eat pie."

Buffett's proposal was to activity backward from the end: "write your obituary and effort and fig retired really to unrecorded up to it." He kept the occupation he loved until handing Berkshire's reins to Greg Abel this past January, astatine property 95.

Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein sewage similar proposal decades ago: In his memoir "Streetwise," he recalled that erstwhile he made partner, he was told that if his obituary ran 9 paragraphs, nary much than 3 should beryllium astir Goldman. He retired successful 2018 and has leaned into the different six: philanthropy, family, and, by his ain account, thoroughly enjoying not having to recreation for work.