Whole Foods' CEO key to work-life balance

Fortune

Whole Foods’ 46-year-old CEO doesn’t believe in skimping on PTO. Instead, Jason Buechel emphasizes taking time off, and even changed the PTO policy to ensure staff are taking vacations away from work.

Transcript

00:00I'm probably very abnormal here. I pretty much am in the grocery store at least twice a day,

00:05every single day. So it's about 14 times a week, I guess, which is probably typical.

00:09And in some weeks it might even be a bit more. I typically am up no later than six o'clock central

00:15time. If I'm traveling in on the West Coast, sometimes I'm waking up a little bit earlier.

00:19The first thing I do is I do look at my phone, ultimately checking to see what emails might

00:24have come in, sort of any key updates that might be taking place. I like to run in the morning,

00:29so I also like to run when there's at least a little bit of light. I try to run somewhere

00:34between five and six days a week. I run anywhere between four and 10 miles. What I eat in the

00:40morning and even sometimes how often I eat in the morning depends upon what my workout routine is.

00:46Lately, I've been really loving blending together some mushroom, vegan, vanilla protein mix with

00:53oatmeal, with bananas and peanut butter, and then some chia seeds. It is absolutely delicious.

01:00Most of my meetings will typically start between eight and 830 every morning. On a typical day

01:06where I'm not traveling and visiting stores, I probably have about 10 meetings, but I do a lot

01:10of travel. One of the things I'd love to do is actually pick out my own lunch. And I happen to

01:15work above one of the best places to eat in Austin, which is our flagship store. I typically

01:20am having our salad bar as one of the things I have just about every single day for lunch. I would

01:25say I'm usually done by six. I like to sort of unwind after work, and it could be a walk. I'm

01:31sort of someone who's a little bit of a night owl, but I've really come to appreciate making sure that

01:37I'm well rested. I find I can work with six well. I think when I'm doing more strenuous activities

01:46and maybe a long run, that's where I'm looking for a few extra hours of sleep.

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