0:00 In 2024, over twenty-two hundred CEOs stepped down globally.0:04 That’s the highest number ever recorded.0:06 And the average time they spend in the job is shrinking.0:10 It’s down to just over seven years.0:13 In the first quarter of 2025, it was 6.8.0:15 Last week, in our episode on bold goodbyes, we talked about that exact turning point.0:21 This story… this feels like the blueprint for it.0:25 It’s about a CEO named Mori Nishimura.0:27 He’s 34.0:28 And he was on a very conventional, very successful path in Japan.0:32 One of those paths that’s basically laid out for you from birth.0:37 The right schools, the right companies.0:39 The pressure is immense.0:41 Exactly.0:41 And he’s in this life, succeeding by every external metric.0:45 But he keeps having this memory.0:48 As a kid, he lived in New Zealand, and he’d escape into the woods near his house to build huts.0:54 Just him, the trees, the quiet.0:56 And I'm guessing his office in Japan did not feel like the woods in New Zealand.1:02 Not even close.1:03 He described this moment, this feeling of total disconnect.1:07 He’s surrounded by glass and steel, looking at spreadsheets, and all he can picture is the feeling of wood in his hands.1:15 That was it.1:16 That was the 'enough is enough' moment.1:18 He walked away from all of it.1:20 This is a pattern we're seeing everywhere.1:23 It even has a name now: "job-dropping." It’s not just quitting.1:28 It’s a conscious step down or away from a high-pressure role to reclaim your life.1:33 Seventy percent of people now say they'd prioritize mental health over a bigger salary.1:39 So what did Nishimura do?1:41 He went to the Japanese countryside and started building tiny cabins.1:46 The exact thing he dreamed of as a boy.1:48 He traded the corporate empire for a literal cabin in the woods.1:53 But that’s the part that always gets me.1:55 The "after." Because leaving is one thing.1:58 What you find on the other side is another.2:01 Look at former GE CEO Jeff Immelt.2:04 He stepped down and then wrote about this "bad personal cycle" of sadness and isolation.2:10 He lost his entire identity.2:11 So walking away from the title doesn't magically fix the person.2:16 It’s not a clean escape.2:18 It's never a clean escape.2:19 And what’s happening inside these C-suites right now is… chaotic.2:24 Box CEO Aaron Levie just coined this term, "AI psychosis." He says CEOs are so distant from the actual work, they're overestimating what AI can do and firing people prematurely.2:36 Wait—so they’re disconnected from the work, and also disconnected from themselves?2:41 That feels like the same root problem.2:44 It’s the same disease.2:46 One version leads to mass layoffs, the other leads to a CEO having a breakdown and moving to the woods.2:53 Both come from being in a position so high up you can no longer see the ground.2:58 Which brings up the other side of this simple life fantasy.3:02 Apeksha Jain, a product manager in Bangalore, quit her job to open a café in the Himalayas.3:08 She said she did it to trade "stability for peace." A beautiful story.3:13 But as people pointed out online, running a business in the mountains—dealing with supply chains, weather, finances—is its own special kind of stress.3:23 It might not be corporate, but it's not simple.3:27 Right.3:27 You’re not escaping pressure, you’re just choosing a different kind of pressure.3:32 One that feels more authentic to you.3:35 A former Bloomberg journalist said she realized she had to quit when she threw up in the bathroom from anxiety right after her podcast aired.3:45 She left to become a baker.3:46 She said, "Baking brings me alive." And that’s the core of it.3:51 The CEO of Kickresume, Peter Duris, said it perfectly.3:54 He said that for many people, making a decision for their own wellbeing might look, from the outside, like a step down.4:02 But it’s not a step down.4:04 It’s a step sideways.4:06 It’s choosing a different mountain to climb altogether.4:09 One where the view from the top might actually be something you want to see.4:15 The question is what happens when more people decide the corporate ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.4:22 And what kind of world do we build when the most ambitious people are all trying to build cabins in the woods?
