Arianna Huffington on preventing burnout in the C-suite and beyond
This week on KindredCast, we’re taking a look back at our conversation with Arianna Huffington, namesake of the Huffington Post, which she co-founded in 2005. Arianna went on to become the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, a company that aims to move “beyond raising awareness” of the dangers of hustle culture and “unlock human potential.”
Arianna sat down with us at the 2019 NEXUS:ISRAEL Conference to share her own burnout story, advice from Notorious B.I.G., and how we can use “microsteps” to shape a more balanced relationship with the workplace and the technology we use there. Here’s what we learned:
1. Arianna’s own experience with burnout led to the creation of Thrive Global.
Arianna started Thrive Global after she left the Huffington Post in 2016. “I collapsed from burnout and exhaustion two years into building Huffington,” she says. “We had so much data and science about how [chronic stress] was affecting performance, productivity, and business metrics like attrition, retention, and healthcare costs.” Arianna notes that despite our world being so data-driven, she and others were “ignoring the data and continuing to live under the delusion that in order to succeed you have to burnout. That somehow burnout was the price of success.”
One key factor in her recovery and key to being better at the job? Sleep. “…[F]ull growth of the Huffington Post came after I started getting eight hours,” she says. “I can see the difference in my decisions, because it’s all about decisions. It’s all about looking ahead. I looked ahead and saw that we had to be global. We had to prioritize video. We had to prioritize building a community.”
2. The new digital divide will be those who can take a break from tech versus those who cannot.
In this episode, Arianna discusses the telling nature of Silicon Valley executives, aka “digital masters of the universe,” who put major limits on their own children’s screen time. After all, we’re all wired to be using Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and Snapchat and all these great products, but when you actually go visit the executives that have created and run those products…their families are playing with chickens and Legos.
Arianna ruminates on this thought, noting her experience at industry parties, where social media is conspicuously barred. “Increasingly, I think this is going to become the new digital divide,” she says. “While the divide used to be about internet access, now it’s about “the need to set boundaries to our relationship with technology so that we can connect with ourselves and can have deep relationships with others.”
3. Thrive Global is helping companies reduce rates of depression and burnout.
For Arianna, it’s all about microsteps. She emphasizes that Thrive’s platform is built on offering people a manageable system based on incremental but consistent change. “Tiny change… have big ripple effects,” she says. “We have over 700 micro steps at Thrive that we’ve developed with our scientific advisors. Everything is totally science-based. Just by practicing these micro steps, you pick one to start with. You can begin to change outcomes in your life.”
Arianna closes by inviting contributions to Thrive. “We have 35,000 contributors now. You can email me directly. AH@ThriveGlobal.com and tell your stories because when we share our stories, we accelerate that culture shift.”
—
Check out Episode 55 of KindredCast, featuring our interview with Ariana Huffington, founder and CEO of Thrive Global, embedded below or available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
