By Brett Phillips, MPH | October 21, 2026
Earlier this year, Fortune Magazine hosted their Brainstorm Tech and Workplace Innovation conferences, bringing together executives from some of the world's most recognizable organizations.
As part of these events, Fortune filmed leaders answering a series of rapid-fire questions about their work habits for social media posts.
Pay close attention to how they answered.
Q: How many hours do you work each day? (1)
"If I'm awake, I'm basically working."
"At least 12."
"I'm online by 5:00 AM every morning. My staff hates it."
Even when executives described time away from work, many immediately qualified their answers by explaining that they were still checking Slack, answering emails, or keeping up with work in the background.
Next question.
Q: How many unread emails are sitting in your inbox? (2)
“18,000.”
“150,000.”
“325,000.”
"Tens of thousands."
Executives laughed as they answered. Others admitted the number was so large they didn't even want to say it out loud.
Q: How many meetings do you have per day? (3)
“Too many.”
“10 to 15 on a good day.”
“8 to 20.”
You get the idea, right?
These executives’ willingness to share these answers so publicly and pridefully reflects a serious and pervasive problem facing the corporate world: executive overload and overwhelm are being glorified instead of vilified.
We need to ask ourselves: Is busyness really something to celebrate? Does being stretched impossibly thin somehow make you a better executive – or make you more worthy of membership in this elite class of leaders? Whether you’re the executive, one of their colleagues, or someone responsible for the organization’s performance, the answer should be the same.
Packed calendars, overflowing inboxes, and around-the-clock availability are not evidence of success; they suggest the opposite.
Executives are Racing to the Bottom
Most leaders work for 30-plus years before earning executive-level roles (4). But after decades of climbing the corporate ladder, is their dream job worth the wait?
The data says no. According to research from Deloitte and Workplace Intelligence, 75% of C-Suite executives have considered quitting their jobs for a role that better supports their well-being (5). That is not a typo – three out of every four executives surveyed had considered walking away in search of something more sustainable.
So, although executives joke publicly about their circumstances, privately many recognize that their work environment is uncomfortable, unsustainable, and potentially harmful to their well-being and longevity.
Why, then, do executives so often shrug their shoulders and laugh off their busyness? One explanation is that they have little room to complain.
Executive roles are too prestigious and privileged to expect sympathy from people who may be working just as hard with far fewer rewards. Joking about long hours and an impossible workload offers a more acceptable presentation of their reality and might even earn them some credit, signaling they are working at a pace that justifies their position and pay.
Another explanation is the interpersonal connection these exchanges create among executives. Comparing hours worked, unanswered message counts, and meetings per day can turn a casual conversation into an impromptu executive support group. Beneath the laughter is a shared acknowledgment: this is hard, but at least we’re not alone.
Understanding these behaviors does not mean accepting their consequences. Even when the comments are intended as self-aware humor or a way to connect over shared struggles, they reinforce the idea that overload is an expected - and even admirable - part of executive leadership. Executives may not enjoy the conditions they are joking about, but their willingness to normalize them perpetuates a culture whose consequences extend far beyond their own calendars and inboxes.
Everyone Else is Paying the Price
When I hear executives talk about sending early morning emails, showing up late for meetings, or sitting on thousands of unread messages, I immediately think about the people who work with them every day.
There is an obvious double standard here.
Imagine a lower-level staff member proudly announcing that they have 325,000 unread emails that they don’t plan on responding to. My guess is that their boss would be more likely to put them on a Performance Improvement Plan than a social media highlight reel like the one we saw from Fortune.
I’d ask executives: If you wouldn’t accept this behavior from your staff, why is it OK for you to do it?
The problem is bigger than mismatched standards though. A far more impactful issue is related to overall organizational efficiency.
When an executive is stretched too thin, meetings start late, decisions take longer, emails and messages sit unanswered, and employees end up spending valuable time chasing responses, rescheduling meetings, or waiting for approvals that only the executive can provide.
The executive’s capacity crisis creates secondhand inefficiency for everyone else.
This slows the pace of work and lowers the ceiling for what the team and company can accomplish. The executive should be driving organizational growth, not becoming the bottleneck that holds it back.
The Company is Wasting Money and Missing Opportunities
The other perspective worth considering is that of the Board of Directors and the broader organization.
Executives are expensive, and for good reason. They are paid a premium for skills and attributes that are rare even among accomplished leaders - including their judgment, strategic thinking, creativity, and decisiveness. Yet those are precisely the capabilities that become harder to access when an executive is chronically overloaded or burnt out.
Under that pressure, getting more done can become more important than doing the right work well. Executives may spend their days answering a flood of routine emails and addressing their overflowing to-do list, while the strategic work they were hired to do gets pushed aside. The organization ends up paying a $150-an-hour executive to do $50-an-hour work—getting less of the judgment, creativity, and strategic attention that justify the premium.
When a Board of Directors sees an executive operating this way, it should prompt an uncomfortable question: is this really the best use of the organization’s most expensive resource?
But focusing exclusively on the salary value of executive work dramatically understates the true cost to the organization.
Imagine mid-flight you notice that the pilot left the cockpit to serve drinks, collect trash, and help a passenger find their missing AirPod. The real problem isn’t that the airline is losing money on the pilot’s pay. It’s that no one is flying the plane.
Every hour an executive spends slogging through low-value work or trying to mentally recover from their chronic exhaustion is an hour they aren't thinking strategically, building critical relationships, making decisions, or identifying the next threat facing the organization. This opportunity cost can compound quickly. What partnership wasn't pursued? What business line didn't receive enough attention? What emerging competitor wasn't noticed? What strategic pivot happened six months too late?
Those missed opportunities won't appear neatly as a line item on a financial statement, but that doesn't make them any less expensive.
This is why executive overload should concern Boards as much as executives themselves. The organization isn't just getting a poor return on an expensive investment; it is losing the strategic leadership value that the executive was hired to provide.
It doesn’t have to be this way…
To this point, we’ve talked about overload and overwhelm as a universal experience for executives. But it doesn’t have to be.
Some of the most successful executives in the world have rejected the idea that being perpetually overwhelmed is part of the job.
During an interview at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Jamie Dimon (Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase) offered proof that there are ways to battle back against this broken system. When asked how he manages his own productivity, Dimon didn’t laugh about being pulled in different directions or brag about being impossibly busy. He calmly and confidently said the opposite:
“I’m never harried, I’m never late, I’ve always done my pre-reads.” (6)
Let that answer marinate for a second. The CEO of one of the largest and most complex companies in the world said that he is never late. And he isn't alone in this.
Brian Moynihan, Chairman and CEO of Bank of America, takes an equally uncompromising view, quoting his company’s maxim for meetings in a 2026 NBC News interview, “if you’re late, you’re selfish.” (7)
So, what’s the secret? How do these executives pull it off?
Both of them specifically highlight that they are able to accomplish these standards because they have high-performing executive support teams.
In the same conversation about managing his time, Dimon specifically acknowledged the support of his office and Chief of Staff. When Moynihan was asked for the trick that keeps his day on track, his answer was even more direct: “I have a great assistant, and that’s number one.” (7)
And that's the point. The answer to executive overload isn't expecting executives to become sustainably superhuman or asking them to accept overwhelm as a condition of the job. The answer is building the right environment around them that manages chaos and protects time for them to do the things that only the executive can do.
If the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America can run the largest financial institutions in the world without accepting chronic lateness, constant distraction, and perpetual overwhelm as unavoidable parts of executive leadership, the rest of us need to stop pretending those behaviors are simply the price of admission.
Let’s Change the Standard
What if we imagined a new standard for executive excellence?
One where boards evaluate not just what executives accomplish, but whether their time and energy are being spent on the priorities that justify their roles. Where leadership teams actively challenge the meetings, processes, and expectations that consume executive capacity. Where organizations invest in well-trained, empowered Executive Assistants and Chiefs of Staff as essential components of effective leadership.
And where executives themselves take responsibility for monitoring how they work. Challenging their own habits, relinquishing responsibilities that are better suited for others to carry, and investing the time necessary to build trusting, effective partnerships with their support teams.
In this new standard, these practices wouldn’t be considered exceptional. They'd be expected.
Executives would be less overwhelmed, teams would be less dependent on their every move, and organizations would be stronger for it.
We’d stop celebrating the executive who works the longest hours, attends the most meetings, or answers the most emails and instead celebrate the executive who has time to think, arrives prepared, makes timely decisions, and enables others to move forward.
The first step towards this new standard is simple and clear: stop glorifying executive busyness.
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Citations
Fortune. “How Many Hours Are Top Execs Working Per Day?” YouTube Shorts.
Fortune. “How Many Unread Emails Do Top Executives Have?” Fortune Magazine, Facebook video.
Fortune. “How Many Meetings Do C-Suite Execs Have Per Day?” Fortune Magazine, Facebook video.
Korn Ferry. “Age and Tenure in the C-Suite: Korn Ferry Study Reveals Trends by Title and Industry.” January 21, 2020.
Deloitte Insights & Workplace Intelligence. “Advancing Workplace Well-being.” 2023.
Stanford Graduate School of Business. “Leading in a Time of Change: Jamie Dimon.” YouTube, 2024.
NBC News. “Bank of America CEO Shares Leadership Advice.” Business in America, interview with Brian Moynihan by Christine Romans, 2026.
