Bosses do more.
Why are they less tired?

The full narration of the video.

The boss has more on their plate than you. So why aren't they as tired? You sat through meetings all day, squeezed onto the subway, too drained to talk. Your boss is still in the group chat, answering message after message. People say they're just born with more energy. But someone actually measured it.

Researchers gathered people who run things: military officers, government officials, plus ordinary people who manage no one, and tested their stress hormones. It came out backwards: the leaders had lower stress hormones, and felt less anxious too. The more people they led and the more they had the final say on, the lower it went.

Much of that gap came down to one thing: the feeling that I'm the one calling the shots. Anyone who's ridden in a car knows this feeling. Same mountain road, same car. The driver rarely gets sick, while the passenger turns green first.

Same curves, same bumps. The only difference is who holds the wheel. The driver knows when the next curve is coming, and the body gets ready ahead of time. The passenger doesn't, so every jolt is a surprise. Someone tested it: spinning the exact same way, the person holding the switch felt less sick than the one just along for the ride.

Being busy works the same way. What to do first, when to do it, who to hand it to: the boss mostly decides that. Your tasks often get pushed onto you. When they show up and how urgent they are isn't your call. Same amount of work. One is driving, one is riding along.

Psychologists call this feeling a sense of control. That stress hormone is cortisol, and one spit of saliva is enough to measure it. The wheel is the part you get to decide: what comes first, when you do it, and how far you take it. They also have help you never see.

A big-company boss has a whole team. Most things get handled before they reach the top; what lands on the boss's desk are the few calls only they can make. One study tracked top bosses' time: on average they slept nearly seven hours a night, and still found forty-five minutes a day to exercise. And what you see is the picked version. On stage or on camera, anyone perks up.

People who make it to that seat were mostly tough to begin with. In one survey of top executives, nearly seven in ten said they were thinking of moving to a job that's easier on their well-being. Bosses get tired too; you just don't see it. A sense of control isn't the whole story, but it's the part people miss most.

Even holding a small piece of it, like picking what you do first today, means you get to drive for a while. The least tiring hour of your day: what are you doing in it?