But HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan knows no such feeling, she said in an episode of The Grit podcast. That’s because she uses Sundays as her own personal work day. 

“I’m not scared of Sundays. I enjoy it because it’s my time,” said Rangan, who helms the $20 billion software company. “I get to decide what I’m learning, what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, what I’m writing. It is completely my schedule.”

Instead, Rangan—who said she struggles to sit still and take time away from work—carves out Friday night and all of Saturday to take a break. She spends this time going on walks with her husband Kash (a managing director with Goldman Sachs), doing yoga, meditating, and reading. 

“Saturdays are precious to me,” Rangan said. “When I didn’t take breaks, I got burned out pretty quickly.” 

HubSpot employees know Rangan won’t look at or respond to emails on Saturdays, but she’ll spend time on Sundays scheduling emails that hit inboxes in the wee morning hours on Mondays. 

Rangan, who’s been with HubSpot for about five years now, typically starts her weekdays around 6 a.m. and is on work calls by 7 a.m. She says she will work as late as 11 p.m. 

She joined the marketing software company right before the pandemic began as chief customer officer. The pandemic actually boded well for HubSpot as more and more companies started digitizing more of their processes and procedures. The company’s revenue more than doubled, said Rangan, who became CEO in September 2021. HubSpot was also recognized on Fortune’s Future 50 list in 2024 for companies that are likely to adapt, thrive, and grow. HubSpot didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment about Rangan’s worth ethic and how she’s impacted the company.

Rangan built her 25-year-plus tech career serving in leadership positions at other large software companies including Dropbox, Workday, and SAP. But the tech powerhouse came from humble beginnings. 

Rangan was born and raised in South India, where she grew up in a 350-foot apartment with her parents and older sister. She says her mother inspired her to become a woman pioneer—whether it was becoming the first woman in India to win a major case, the first woman engineer to “do something really cool,” or becoming a doctor who would do something amazing, Rangan said. 

She ended up studying computer engineering at Bharathiar University in India, and moved to the U.S. at age 21 to earn her MBA from the University of California—Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. She used her combined experience of engineering and business to become a successful salesperson, eventually climbing the ranks in the tech industry. 

Although Rangan is successful—and has a near-$26 million salary to match—she reminds her two teenage sons they’ll have to work hard like she did in order to earn the lifestyle they live now. Rangan is one of the highest-paid Indian-origin CEOs in the U.S., alongside Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks.

She takes her sons to India every couple of years to show where she and her husband grew up and takes her sons to see a local orphanage they sponsor to “give them a sense of what your responsibility is in society,” Rangan said. 

“[It’s] not just for you to make money and live in the Bay Area,” she said. “It is to figure out how you can actually have a broader impact.”

A version of this story published on Fortune.com on May 12, 2025.

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The Grammy Award–winning artist turned tech entrepreneur revealed to Fortune that he maxes out the 5-to-9 after the daily grind of his 9-to-5, and he advises Gen Zers to forget about work-life balance if they want to emulate his success.

“If you’re trying to build something that doesn’t exist, it’s about dream-reality balance,” he says. “Work-life balance means that you’re working for somebody else’s dream. You just have a job supporting somebody else’s dream, and you want to balance your work and your life.

“But if it’s dream-reality balance, then it’s not work. It’s a dream that you’re trying to put into reality, and you’re ignoring your current reality.”

For example, after working on his tech venture from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Will.i.am says that he goes back to work on his creative business until 9 p.m. But before his AI company was a reality, his day was flipped. He’d work on music first before dipping into his tech side hustle well into the evening. 

It’s why he advises young people to reframe how they think of their time off work and their current 9-to-5 reality.

“I’m not really paying attention to this reality,” he explains. “I’m trying to bring that one [a new business venture or idea] here and focusing on how do I get people who believe in this dream to help me materialize it? So for that, you have to make some type of sacrifice to bring this thing that doesn’t exist here.

“From that perspective, work-life balance is not for the architects that are pulling visions into reality. Those words don’t compute to the mindset of the materializers.”

Will.i.am doesn’t even take time out for his birthday—and goes to work in China on Boxing Day

Of course, many young people already put in hours to their side hustles and personal development after work. Millions of Gen Zers and millennials are tuning into people’s 5-to-9 evening routines on TikTok. 

But Will.i.am says chipping away at your dream when most people are off work extends to weekends, birthdays, and holidays.

“I didn’t party. I was always a square, meaning, ‘You work too much, man, let’s go out.’ Like what? Go out. I don’t want to go out. I just always worked,” the rapper says. “It’s your birthday what are you gonna do? Work. You ain’t gonna celebrate?”

The multimillionaire says he’s always saved the celebrating for the stage, where he can finally enjoy the fruits of his labor.

“There’s nothing that’s ever gonna feel that glorious than when you’re actually at a festival. But how do you get to headline a festival? You’ve got to work. My friends would go out and party, hanging out with chicks, doing drugs, drinking. I was just in the studio working, writing songs.”

To this day, he says that he hasn’t gone out and celebrated a birthday—including his most recent one, which was just last week on March 15.

“Like on Christmas for the past 12 years: I could celebrate Christmas with my family, and then on the 26th, I fly to China because that’s dream maker heaven. Anything you want to make is there.”

Will.i.am was speaking to Fortune in Rome for the rollout of Raidio.FYI radios in Mercedes-Benz cars.

Will.i.am’s daily work routine

7 a.m.: Will.i.am is not a part of the CEO-approved 5 a.m. club. Instead, he told Fortune he wakes up at around 7 a.m., and he sticks to this routine whether he’s living in L.A. or London. 

8 a.m.: “I walk, do my calls, and get to work,” he says, with the aim to start work at 9 a.m. 

9 a.m. to 5 p.m.: “I get a lot done from nine to 12, do my little lunch, then back to work at one, finish at five, and that’s all my tech, like entrepreneurial activities.”

5 p.m. to 9 p.m.: “The night hours are creativity,” he says, adding that specifically between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. is when he gets the best ideas. “That’s the juicy bits, [when] I’m freaking soaking in emotion, to where I just rinse it out in the phone.” 

9 p.m. onward: When Will.i.am was in his late twenties, he says going to sleep at 4 a.m. (and waking up at noon) was the norm. But now, at 50 and balancing both his tech and music ventures, he starts unwinding for bed after 9 p.m. and is asleep by 11 p.m. 

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on March 23, 2025.

Join us at the Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit May 19–20, 2026, in Atlanta. The next era of workplace innovation is here—and the old playbook is being rewritten. At this exclusive, high-energy event, the world’s most innovative leaders will convene to explore how AI, humanity, and strategy converge to redefine, again, the future of work. Register now.