When Arianna Huffington Reminded Me That Burnout Isn’t a Badge of Honor
When I sat down (virtually) with Arianna Huffington, I thought we’d talk about “wellness” in the soft, fuzzy way corporate posters sometimes do.
Instead, we talked about broken cheekbones, collapsing from exhaustion, pandemic-era grief, and how burnout quietly burns through people, companies, and—in her words—the planet.
And we also talked about microsteps, mental resilience, and why caring for your energy is now a hard business metric, not a nice-to-have.
If you’re building a business, leading a team, or simply trying to stay human in a tech-heavy, AI-everywhere world, this conversation still hits home. This article is my reflection on that hour with Arianna, and how I’m connecting her wisdom to the way we use technology and AI today.
By the way if you haven’t had a chance to meet Arianna in person, I need to tell you what a joy she is to chat with. In fact, she and I continued our conversation in a series of emails after the Zoom webinar. I’m incredibly grateful to have known her and interviewed her one-on-one through Women Leaders Association.
The Moment Everything Cracked (Literally)
Arianna’s wake-up call came in 2007. Two years into building The Huffington Post, she was living the story many of us quietly glorify:
- Always on
- Little sleep
- Trying to be both “great founder” and “great mom”
- Treating rest like a luxury, not a requirement
Then she collapsed from exhaustion, hit her desk, and broke her cheekbone.
That fall became the moment she stopped treating burnout as “just how life is” and started looking at it as a global crisis. She began writing about it, then ultimately left The Huffington Post in 2016 to build something different: Thrive Global—a behavior change tech company focused on ending the stress and burnout epidemic.
Her core belief:
Stress is unavoidable.
Cumulative stress is not.
That’s where habits and microsteps come in.
Microsteps: “Too Small to Fail”
The part of our conversation that stayed with me most is surprisingly simple: the power of tiny, repeatable moves.
Arianna talked about how we overestimate willpower and underestimate design. We announce big resolutions, then abandon them a few weeks later.
Thrive’s solution:
Microsteps. Tiny, science-backed actions that are “too small to fail,” repeated daily until they become part of who we are.
Two examples she gave that anyone can try immediately:
1. How you start your day
Most people (about 72%, she said) wake up and grab their phone before their feet hit the floor.
Instead, she suggests:
- Take 60 seconds before you touch your phone
- Set an intention for the day
- Take a few deep breaths
- Remember one thing you’re grateful for
Just one minute. No app required.
2. How you end your day
Most adults end their day like overloaded servers:
- Clearing inboxes
- Answering messages
- Doomscrolling
- Then collapsing into bed
But that’s not how we treat kids. We create a bedtime ritual. Story. Soft landing. Transition.
Adults need that too. Arianna recommends:
- Saying goodnight to your phone (literally)
- Charging it outside your bedroom
- Doing something unrelated to work before bed
- Reading a physical book (she loves poetry, novels, history)
- Anything that puts your own problems in perspective
She even wrote a parody of Goodnight Moon called Goodnight Smartphone. I love that visual: putting the day’s notifications to bed so your brain can rest.
Sleep Isn’t Lazy. It’s Brain Detox.
We also dove into The Sleep Revolution, her book about how sleep transforms your life.
If you grew up on sayings like “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” or “you snooze, you lose,” you’re not alone. Our culture equates less sleep with more ambition.
Arianna called that out gently but firmly:
- Unless you’re in the tiny percentage of people with a specific genetic mutation, you need 7–9 hours of sleep
- Her “golden number” is 8 hours
- Sleep is like running your brain through the dishwasher
If you pull your “brain cycle” out early, you’re left with mental “laundry” that’s still damp and dirty—unprocessed toxins, including amyloid proteins linked to dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Sleep isn’t a reward you earn after productivity.
It’s the precondition for thinking clearly, creating, leading, and even using technology wisely.
Well-Being Is Now a Business Strategy
One of the most practical parts of our conversation: how this all shows up at work.
Pre-pandemic, well-being and mental health were often treated as HR perks—nice slides, maybe a meditation app discount.
Now, they’re core to business strategy. Arianna sees this in the companies Thrive works with: Accenture, Pfizer, Walmart, and others. Leaders are recognizing that:
- Burnout isn’t just “someone having a rough week”. It drives turnover, disengagement, and healthcare costs
- Employees don’t leave jobs as much as they leave managers
- The CHRO is now one of the most critical roles in the C-suite
- Employee experience is a primary stakeholder consideration, alongside shareholders and the planet
I loved her idea of shifting from exit interviews to entry interviews.
Instead of waiting until people leave to ask what mattered, start on day one with:
“What’s important to you outside of work, and how can we support you?”
Answers might sound like:
- “I want to take my daughter to school at 7am.”
- “I’m caring for an elderly parent.”
- “I need to protect my physical therapy appointments.”
You learn who they are as humans, not just roles. That’s culture activation, not just onboarding paperwork.
Naming Your Stress Type (and Your “Obnoxious Roommate”)
Mental health came up a lot—especially the idea of preventing crises instead of only reacting to them.
Thrive worked with Stanford to develop a “thriving mind” curriculum, helping people identify their stress biotype before stress becomes depression or anxiety.
Two that came up in our conversation:
- Ruminators – replay mistakes, self-criticize, mentally beat themselves up
- Anxious avoiders – feel overwhelmed by uncertainty and avoid dealing with it
Arianna’s own stress type is rumination. She calls that harsh inner voice the “obnoxious roommate” in her head.
Her advice: treat that voice like a toddler having a meltdown. With humor. With distance. Not as your identity.
Once you name the pattern, you can invite your team, your partner, or your kids into the conversation too. Sharing biotypes isn’t just “interesting” – it improves communication and support.
Women, Caregiving, and the Oxygen Mask
Near the end, we turned to women—especially those who were already stretched thin before the pandemic.
Arianna said something that made me think of my own mom, and honestly, my own patterns:
- Much of the caregiving burden still falls on women
- You can run on empty for a while, but it always has a cost
- That cost eventually hits your body, mind, relationships, and work
She emphasized (again) that putting your own oxygen mask on first is not selfish:
“Life is shaped from the inside out.
If we don’t take care of ourselves, it’s very hard to take care of anyone else sustainably.”
I thought of all the women in our Feisworld community who are:
- Running businesses
- Caring for parents, kids, partners
- Showing up at work like everything’s fine
This is your (gentle) permission slip: your energy matters, not just your output.
Where AI and Tech Fit In (Without Taking Over)
You know Feisworld leans heavily into tech and AI. So how does all of this connect?
Arianna’s work lives right at that intersection: Thrive is, at its core, a behavior change tech company. They embed microsteps, resets, and stories directly into tools people already use: Teams, Slack, Zoom, Webex.
That’s where I see the healthy side of tech and AI:
- Meeting people where they are, instead of asking them to adopt “one more app”
- Delivering small nudges at the right time: a 60-second reset, a breathing reminder before a big call, a gratitude pause in the middle of chaos
- Giving data and insight (like stress types, usage patterns, recovery trends) that help people spot trouble earlier
But we also talked about the darker side—phones as stress amplifiers.
It’s not just the phone itself; it’s how we use it:
- Doomscrolling
- Checking work apps in bed
- Treating notifications like oxygen
This is where I see AI and humans needing a shared responsibility:
AI can:
- Summarize long documents so you don’t stay up until midnight reading them
- Help you prioritize what truly needs your attention
- Draft emails, notes, and plans so your brain isn’t doing all the heavy lifting at 11pm
You can:
- Decide when AI is allowed into your day (not the first or last thing)
- Set boundaries (no notifications after X time, phone outside the bedroom)
- Use AI to protect your energy, not deplete it
AI can save time.
Only you can decide how to spend that time.
Rest, play, connection, and deep thinking are still human jobs.
My Own Microsteps After Talking to Arianna
After our conversation, I didn’t overhaul my life overnight. That would go against everything Arianna teaches.
Instead, I chose a few microsteps to practice consistently:
- 60 seconds before my phone
I sit on the edge of the bed, take a few deep breaths, and choose my intention before I check anything. - Phone sleeps outside the bedroom
Not perfect yet, but on the nights I stick to it, I feel the difference the next day. - Phone-free last 30 minutes of the day
No email, no social apps. I read something that has nothing to do with work, often about history or art. - Micro resets between meetings
Instead of jumping straight into the next call, I:- Stand up and stretch (trust me, I have chronic lower back pain, this is a game-changer)
- Take 5–10 deep breaths
- Recall one thing I’m grateful for
- Using AI to lower cognitive load, not raise it
- Letting AI help me summarize long PDFs and policies
- Asking AI to turn my messy thoughts into a short checklist for doctor visits, client calls, or family logistics
- But also closing it, guilt-free, when my brain and body need a break
Small things. But like Arianna says: too small to fail.
If You Read This Far, Choose Just One
If you’re still here (thank you!), here’s my invitation:
Don’t try to implement everything.
Don’t turn this into another performance project.
Just pick one microstep:
- 60 seconds before you touch your phone
- Charging your phone outside your bedroom
- A 20-minute power nap after a bad night
- One reset a day: stretching, breathing, or listing three things you’re grateful for
- Using AI to summarize something instead of forcing yourself to read it when you’re exhausted
Then, if you lead a team or a company:
- Share one thing you’re personally changing
- Be honest about your own stress type or “obnoxious roommate”
- Bring science and compassion into the same conversation
That’s what I love most about Arianna’s work: it’s not about becoming superhuman. It’s about becoming sustainably human in a world that keeps asking for more.
And as AI and tech keep accelerating, that grounding becomes even more important. We don’t need more speed for its own sake.
We need more wisdom about where we’re going—and enough sleep, resilience, and perspective to enjoy the journey.
