Executive wellbeing
Nick Jonsson on Protecting Health When Work Fills Every Hour
On Andrea Samadi's podcast, the EGN Singapore co-founder explained the daily habits he uses to manage stress: short breaks, tracked sleep, gentle training and a clear conscience before bed.
Nick Jonsson on "Strategies to Overcome Isolation, Stress, Anxiety and Depression in the Workplace"
Video from Andrea Samadi.
Generated from the canonical interview transcript and validated against source data by Guests on Air.
What daily habits help executives manage stress and loneliness?
Nick Jonsson starts with small, repeatable steps: take short breaks and a proper lunch, use annual leave, breathe, and ask someone for help. He tracks his sleep against an average of about seven and a half hours, skips training when he is short of rest, keeps most exercise at low intensity, and settles the day's conflicts before going to bed.
Senior leaders are told to be agile, resilient and strong through constant change, mergers and job cuts. Nick Jonsson argues that this pressure, together with the fear of looking weak, leads many executives to hide their stress behind a confident face until their health gives way. He calls it smiling depression, and he sees it well beyond the boardroom.
Nick Jonsson is one of the co-owners of EGN in Singapore, a network that runs confidential peer groups for senior executives, and he also works as a life coach. He speaks openly about his own experience of isolation, anxiety and depression, and about the support that helped him recover and rebuild his life.
Speaking with host Andrea Samadi at the start of 2022, he described the habits he relies on to keep stress in check: protecting time in a crowded calendar, taking regular breaks, tracking his sleep and training at a gentle pace. He also explained why asking for help remains the first step for anyone who feels overwhelmed.
Key takeaways
- Short breaks during the day, a proper lunch and full use of annual leave are the starting point for an overwhelmed leader.
- Saying how you feel to one person, whether a partner, a doctor or a support group, is the step Jonsson stresses most.
- He tracks his sleep over a rolling seven days, aims for about seven and a half hours, and skips training when he falls short.
- Settling the day's conflicts before bed, such as apologising to a colleague, helps him sleep well and wake up rested.
1. Why busy calendars push leaders toward burnout
Jonsson traces much of the pressure on executives to insecurity. Technology keeps changing, companies merge and get acquired, and a leader who has done a good job can still be let go. With the promise of a long, secure career gone, he says many people respond by being first in the office, last to leave and never saying no to the boss.
The extra effort rarely stops at the job. Leaders join associations, sit on speaker panels, study at weekends and polish their LinkedIn profiles to set up their next role. Jonsson describes this as working yourself to the hospital bed, and he has watched friends end up there with panic attacks, stress and burnout.
He saw the pandemic split people into two camps. Some used the time saved on commuting to exercise and blocked it out in their calendars. Others filled the freed hours with more meetings, to the point that some companies banned meetings on Fridays or closed laptops at 6pm on Mondays. Jonsson wants leaders in the first camp.
2. Breaks, breathing and asking for help
For someone who already feels overwhelmed, Jonsson's starting point is a break. That can mean a short walk, a trip to the coffee machine, five or ten minutes of meditation or a proper lunch, even when working from home. Longer breaks matter too: he urges people to use their annual leave and, if they are unwell, to talk to their supervisor about time off.
The first step, he says, is to take a breath. Regular meditation makes slow breathing a habit, so it returns during a walk or a busy working day, when people tend to tense up. Once someone catches that breath, the next move is to ask for help, because talking to a friend, a family member or a support group already halves the problem.
His own recovery followed that path. Sharing how he felt with his wife gave him the confidence to see a doctor, and then to talk to someone who had been through the same thing. That person pointed him to an anonymous support group, where hearing ten or twelve other executives tell similar stories showed him he was not alone.
3. Tracking sleep and training at a gentle pace
Jonsson measures his training and rest with a basic Garmin watch and its app, which records heart rate, resting heart rate and sleep. He reviews sleep over a rolling seven days and knows he needs about seven and a half hours on average to feel rested and positive. When the average slips, he goes to bed earlier, and when he is short of sleep he does not train at all.
Most of his training is high in volume but low in intensity. A weekly bike ride of around 100 kilometres with friends, with two coffee stops along the way, doubles as social time and time outdoors. The rest is mainly swimming and slow running, chosen to be easy on the body and to get him away from screens.
Samadi pointed listeners to his book, Executive Loneliness: The 5 Pathways to Overcoming Isolation, Stress, Anxiety & Depression in the Modern Business World, which sets out his steps to recovery. His closing advice was simple: do not go to bed with a problem on your shoulders. If you snapped at a colleague, apologise or send a message that same day, so you can sleep well and wake up refreshed.
