Jeff Bezos says procrastination is often the wrong response when life feels chaotic, stressful, or difficult to manage. The Amazon founder has argued that anxiety frequently grows when a person is not taking action on the problem causing it.

“I find if I’m stressed about something it’s usually because I’m not doing anything about it,” Bezos said in 2017 during a visit to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. “I’m listening to my body as a signal that something is wrong, and I find that the stress goes away the second I take the first step.”

Bezos, whose net worth is $257 billion and who is the world’s third-richest man, faced significant pressure while building Amazon into what is now the No. 1 company on the Fortune 500. He founded the company in a rented garage and, in the mid-1990s, had to take 60 meetings to raise the first $1 million in seed capital for the young business.

Rather than allowing stress to stall him, Bezos has said he tries to treat anxiety as a prompt to act. The point is less about eliminating pressure than about converting it into a concrete next step, a habit that can matter in leadership roles where unresolved problems often affect teams as well as individuals.

“If I’m stressed about something, I’m trying to figure out why [I am] stressed,” Bezos said. “I’m listening to my body as a signal.”

Bezos has also recommended addressing stressful situations by talking with other people and finding allies who can help solve the problem. He said that kind of collaboration can turn a source of anxiety into something “fun.”

“If you can find friends who are interested in similar things or want to help you solve a problem, problem-solving is inspiring for me all by itself,” he added. “There’s nothing more fun than getting in a room with a group of inventors and saying: ‘Look, here’s the problem. Let’s invent a solution to it.’ And as soon as you start doing that, I find that it turns from something that might create stress into something that creates fun.”

Inside Amazon, senior leaders also have Bezos’ 16 leadership principles as a framework for problem-solving and decision-making.

“The leadership principles are something you have to constantly work at,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in the company’s Leadership Principles Explained video series. “When they’re applied well, they’re powerful.”

How other CEOs approach stress

Bezos has described action and problem-solving as central to handling stress, while other chief executives have described different methods for managing anxiety and burnout. Taken together, their comments show how stress management has become part of the public leadership playbook, spanning personal routines, emotional discipline, communication, and workplace policy.

Former Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan told Fortune in a 2023 interview that he relies on three nonnegotiables to avoid burnout: daily meditation, regular exercise, and protected family time.

“I’m very disciplined about balance,” said Narasimhan, who now serves on the boards of the Brookings Institution and Verizon.

Red Lobster CEO Damola Adamolekun has said he practices emotional control so that his team does not see him stressed, he told Business Insider.

“Practicing emotional control means taking a moment to pause, assess the situation, and respond thoughtfully, rather than reacting impulsively,” Adamolekun, the 37-year-old CEO, said. “When you model emotional control, you create a stable environment where your team feels supported and motivated, even in the face of adversity.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has described an approach that is somewhat similar to Bezos’ in that it involves confronting adversity directly. For Nadella, that includes encouraging open communication and building flexibility into workplace policies so employees do not burn out, which can also reduce leadership stress.

“The notion of having work-life harmony in a highly competitive economy is a first-class topic,” Nadella said. “The key is to make sure you’re engaging in a dialogue with your employees. There also needs to be flexibility in all the [workplace] policies that someone like me sets and propagates. You cannot have people burn out. It’s bad for your company, and it’s bad for society.”

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on February 25, 2026.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.