Higher-paying jobs often mean more pressure — think about surgeons working to save someone’s life, or corporate lawyers responsible for multimillion-dollar business deals. 

But you don’t need to take a pay cut to be less stressed at work. There are plenty of low-stress jobs that come with six-figure salaries. 

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET) maintains a database of nearly 900 professions, ranking them by stress tolerance on a scale from 0 to 100, which considers the ability to handle criticism and manage high-stress situations. 

Many of these low-stress, high-paying jobs are found in the sustainability sector. That could be, in part, because of the opportunities and stability such jobs in this field offer, Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, tells CNBC Make It. 

“Looking long-term, areas like sustainability and green technology are poised to experience significant structural growth driven by shifting consumer priorities toward eco-friendly options, policy incentives for clean energy and rapid technological advances,” Pollak says. 

Several green jobs — including solar photovoltaic installers and wind turbine technicians – have been among the fastest-growing jobs in recent years, and are projected to continue to grow quickly in the coming years, she adds. 

Here are 5 in-demand green jobs that pay a median annual salary of more than $100,000 and feature a comparatively low level of stress tolerance (all have a level of less than 70 out of 100):

These scientists collect and analyze data from aircrafts or satellites, for example, to solve problems in fields such as urban planning, homeland security and natural resource management. Most positions require graduate school including a relevant master’s degree, Ph.D, or M.D. and some experience to be considered.

Median annual salary: $112,280 

These economists research topics such as alternative fuel use, soil conservation and pollution, write corresponding academic papers and evaluate the costs and benefits of policies and regulations affecting the environment. This job often requires a master’s degree, Ph.D or law degree.

Median annual salary: $115,730

Water resource specialists (also known as water resource planners) design and help implement programs to improve water conservation efforts, and provide safe, clean water to different communities. Most positions require a bachelor’s degree and technical skills including data analytics and experience with different software systems.

Median annual salary: $157,740

These engineers design, develop and manage the equipment and systems that harness the sun’s power to create clean energy. They’re the brains behind solar panels, figuring out how to place them for maximum efficiency and connecting them to the grid or battery systems. This job typically requires a bachelor’s degree, knowledge of photovoltaic systems and experience with design and simulation software.

Median annual salary: $111,970 

Environmental engineers use math and science to develop solutions that protect the environment and public health. They work on projects like improving water quality, managing waste, and controlling pollution. This job typically requires a bachelor’s degree, knowledge of environmental regulations and proficiency with modeling and design software.

Median annual salary: $100,090

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Matthew McConaughey knows that success can lead to making a lot of money, but the actor says that the two are not the same. 

Appearing on the Modern Wisdom podcast this week, the 55-year-old explained why he believes money and success are not interchangeable, despite people generally associating the two.

“Right now, money, fame, that’s the definition of success,” he said. “Whoever has more, you’re the winner.”

But McConaughey said he’s looking to make a “profit” in his life rather than in his bank account. 

“I think there’s a difference between success and profit,” he says. “Profit does pay you back.” 

“I love money. I’m all for it,” he continued. “I see a lot of one way tickets that are ‘You can be successful and have more money but not be making a profit in your life.’”

He added that he’s known “many very rich men who’ve chased that dollar to be successful and to be relevant for having the most money,” but who aren’t very happy in life. 

″[They] were bewildered. Lost. Had no relationships. They didn’t have purpose. They just chased the dollar,” he said. “They were good at it. They couldn’t necessarily say what they were good at, just good dealmakers who made the right calls.” 

Searching for fulfillment over money is something the actor has spoken about in the past. In 2012, McConaughey described his desire to stop doing romantic comedy films despite them padding his bank account. 

“I enjoyed them. They paid well; they were fun. I didn’t know if I wanted to do any more,” he told The Guardian at the time. “I decided to sit out, and I had to endure for a while. Another one comes with a big old paycheck; I had to say no. I was looking for something to be turned on by.”

McConaughey reportedly turned down a $15 million offer to star in a “Magnum, P.I.” film in 2008. Soon after, he agreed to do “Dallas Buyer’s Club” for less than $200,000. The role would go on to win him an Academy Award and kickstart a new, more fulfilling stretch of his career. 

McConaughey said he doesn’t regret not having the extra millions in his bank account. 

“Would I be any less happy if I had a 50th of what I have right now? No. There’s no way I’d be less happy,” he said. “The residuals decline on quality of life.”

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Starting a business takes dedication. Making it successful requires you to “multiply that by infinity,” says billionaire Raising Cane’s co-founder and CEO Todd Graves.

Graves would know: He worked 90-hour weeks at a California oil refinery and fished for salmon in Alaska just to get his Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based chicken finger restaurant chain off the ground in 1996. Nearly three decades later, Raising Cane’s has more than 800 locations worldwide and could finish this year with nearly $5 billion in sales, a spokesperson says.

“I can’t tell you how many 15, 16-hour days I’ve worked in a row,” Graves, 52, tells CNBC Make It. “I had to miss a lot of stuff.”

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At times, Graves worked so much that his wife would bring their two kids to his office for dinner and playtime — after which he’d go back to work, he says. Today, he runs a company reportedly worth billions: Much of his estimated $9.5 billion in net worth is due to his 90% ownership stake in Raising Cane’s, according to Forbes.

As such, he’s still busy — but he’s configured his workload to make time for family and friends anyway, he says. During vacations, for example, he’s occasionally woken up at 4:30 a.m. to work so he could join his family by 11 a.m. and spend the rest of the day with them, he notes.

“I’m as busy as anybody I know, I travel as much as anybody I know, but I can work my schedule where I can make most of the things I need to be at with kids, family or important friends,” says Graves.

Few entrepreneurs expect to have a healthy work-life balance in a business’ early days. That’s not necessarily bad: Trying to balance your work and life can add extra stress to an already-busy schedule, according to Jackie Bowie, a managing partner at financial risk management firm Chatham Financial.

“If you’re doing something that’s really worthwhile to you, and you enjoy it, you just accept that sometimes it’s going to be really hard work and you have to make sacrifices,” Bowie told CNBC’s “My Biggest Lessons” last year.

When Graves opened the restaurant’s first location, he rented an apartment behind the storefront and had a coordinated nap schedule with co-founder Craig Silvey to maintain their long workdays: 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. the next day, he told the “How I Built This” podcast in 2022.

You need that level of commitment as long as you’re trying to grow your business, Graves says. If you ever become comfortable with your company’s level of success, you can hire people to take some work off your plate, he adds.

That’s easier said than done: The act of delegation can be difficult for anyone used to working long hours or covering a wide range of responsibilities, from CEOs down to first-time managers. Trust the people around you to do their jobs, especially if you hired them — and remember that other people can effectively complete tasks in ways that differ from your approach, career experts recommend.

“It can certainly be tempting to get lost in the details of your team’s work, especially if you enjoy that discipline and genuinely find it interesting,” career expert Amanda Augustine told CNBC Make It in 2017. “However, don’t get so wrapped up in the little details that you neglect your management duties, such as setting the strategy and developing your people, and delay a project because you just can’t let go.”

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Ashley Sankar works 10 to 12 hours per day at her day job, comes home and spends another six to eight hours trying to build her side business.

On Friday’s episode of ABC’s “Shark Tank,” some of her extra work seemingly paid off.

The founder of Phoenix-based clothing startup NineteenTwenty pitched her company’s attire on the show, alongside her husband and part-time COO Zach Sankar. NineteenTwenty sells garments like puffer jackets, windbreakers and skirts that can convert into functional items like tote bags, pillows or blankets.

The pair started selling clothes in December 2022, and brought in $269,000 in annual revenue last year, Zach Sankar said. They’ve sold out each quarterly batch of apparel they’ve ordered from their manufacturer, and would’ve earned more if they could afford larger inventory purchases, added Ashley Sankar, an ex-U.S. Army logistics officer who now works as a senior program manager at Amazon, according to her LinkedIn profile.

“That’s all we can afford,” Ashley Sankar said. “One drop per quarter.”

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Ashley Sankar started the company to help her and her husband, who’ve been together since high school, supplement their income while he pursued his dream of becoming a pilot, he said. But when the business grew larger than they’d expected, they put those aspirations on hold — and decided to reinvest NineteenTwenty’s profits back into the business instead of keeping the extra cash for themselves.

The duo asked the show’s investor judges for $250,000 in exchange for 10% equity stake in NineteenTwenty. They quickly ran into three obstacles: a messy financial presentation, the competitive apparel industry and Ashley Sankar’s status as a part-time CEO.

As the Sankars discussed their startup’s finances, panelist Mark Cuban seized on a small detail: The Sankars said NineteenTwenty had made $97,000 in lifetime profit, and that they’d spent some of that money on expenses like research, development and shipping.

“The shipping comes before your profit is calculated,” Cuban told the Sankars. “One of the biggest challenges is fully understanding accounting and managing your cash flow. Because you want to say here that you’ve made $97,000 because it sounds good, but in reality, you didn’t make more than 82 [thousand], and it’s probably a lot less than that.”

Ashley Sankar disputed Cuban’s assessment, saying that NineteenTwenty works with financial consultants to arrive at its calculations — but the snafu was enough to keep Cuban from making an investment offer. Fellow panelist Daniel Lubetzky also declined to make an offer, citing the clothing industry’s “competitive environment.”

Kevin O’Leary, meanwhile, offered the Sankars $250,000 for 30% of their company — but only if Ashley Sankar quit her day job and worked on the business full time. “You’re not 100% committed because you’ve got other jobs,” O’Leary said.

Robert Herjavec, another investor, bristled at the suggestion. “That’s crap and it’s unfair,” he said. “I started my first business — I didn’t know if it was going to work. I had to work a full-time job for six months.”

The rest of the investors said they agreed with Herjavec. And when O’Leary said “none of my CEOs” worked other jobs, Ashley Sankar retorted: “They work 100% of the time, but they don’t work as much as I do.”

Herjavec offered the Sankars $250,000 for 25% of NineteenTwenty. “You strike me as the kind of people [who are] going to figure it out,” he said. Ashley Sankar countered with 20%, which Herjavec declined.

Ultimately, the Sankars decided against haggling over 5%, agreeing to Herjavec’s terms.

“I’d rather have 70, 72% of something than have 100% of nothing,” Ashley Sankar said. “We came to make a deal.”

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Many entrepreneurs will say that building a successful startup is costly — both financially and emotionally.

Just ask Jeffrey Tiong. The 40-year-old is the founder and CEO of intellectual property and research and development startup Patsnap, a Singapore-based unicorn company that has surpassed an annual recurring revenue of $100 million, Tiong said in a statement in June.

Tiong’s journey in building Patsnap has been far from easy. He started the company straight out of college at age 24, and has been working on it ever since, for the past 17 years.

“Up until now, Patsnap is my first and only job,” he told CNBC Make It. “Let me put it this way: For the last 17 years, building the business, there have been many dark times [and] low times. I will not want to go through it again, but I’m grateful for this experience.”

“I have really [learned that] what cannot kill you will make you stronger,” said Tiong.

Tiong was born and raised in a relaxed coastal city in East Malaysia called Kota Kinabalu. Growing up in a typical Southeast Asian household, he thought he would become a doctor, engineer, lawyer or accountant.

At 18, he moved to Singapore, where he attended the National University of Singapore and studied bioengineering. During his studies, Tiong was accepted into an overseas program by his university, which granted him the opportunity to study abroad in the U.S. while working full time for a year.

As part of the program, Tiong moved to Philadelphia in 2005 to study business at The Wharton School while working at a local medical devices startup. During his time at the startup, he helped handle research and development, as well as intellectual property due diligence.

That meant digging through free public databases for information in old patents, which contained the “secret sauce” on how inventors created their inventions, he said.

After months of patent research, Tiong realized that the process was highly time-consuming and “messy,” which made the research more difficult than it had to be, he said. He wanted a better tool, so he thought: Why not try to make it myself?

In one of his business classes, which involved learning how to write up business plans, he decided to check if there was a market for a new kind of patent database that would be more streamlined and easy to use. As it turned out, there was.

“I was really thinking to myself, these patents are so useful. If I … learn how to read, decode, extract the key information [and] make this patent information available to as many people as possible, I think that will be really useful,” he said.

So, he took the idea and ran with it.

In 2007, Tiong returned to Singapore and started Patsnap with the help of a government grant worth 55,000 Singapore dollars (about $42,000), as well as some incubation support from the National University of Singapore.

However, he encountered many challenges when starting the business.

“I remember I pitched to many people, and imagine… someone like myself, a fresh grad, no track record — it was just impossible to raise,” said Tiong. It didn’t help that he was introverted, and was trying to find investors during the height of the 2008 financial crisis, he added.

It wasn’t until 2010 that Tiong raised his first $1 million for Patsnap. That year, he grew his team from 15 people to about 50 people. But because of his inexperience with hiring and leading a team, Tiong had to layoff two-thirds of the company within half a year.

“Back then, I didn’t know how to properly interview and hire a person… so a lot of issues happened, and the product broke down,” he said. Within about six months, Tiong spent about half of the funding he had raised — half a million dollars — and thought about closing down the business.

“I definitely had a lot of self-doubt,” he said, “I [was] thinking: Should I just return the money to our investors and call it a day?” But he was motivated to see things through and continued to raise funds.

For about a month, Tiong and his investor traveled between major cities in Europe, Asia and the U.S. to try to gain investor support, but to no avail.

“We couldn’t get any interest, so I remember, we were in a meeting room and he just banged on the table and criticized me and said: ‘Hey, [you’re] not fit to be CEO,’” Tiong said. “So that was one big setback, because I respected him a lot, and it’s true, I didn’t have enough conviction or confidence back then.”

“That was a personal low point,” said Tiong.

It was only after years of overcoming challenges and developing his own leadership style that Tiong found more confidence as a business owner.

He discovered that he wasn’t the outgoing “rah rah” type of leader, but “you can still lead a team even if you are an introvert,” Tiong said.

“Throughout the years… because I went through so many dark times, low times, and still persisted — that is really when I look back [and realize] there was really great drive in me,” he said. “I just wanted to build something great that leaves something with the world.”

Today, Patsnap employs over 1,000 people globally and is backed by the likes of Tencent, Sequoia China and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Some of their clients include Disney, NASA, Tesla, Adobe and more.

Tiong’s biggest dream for the company is to help make innovation easier for the world.

“In a nutshell, I think what we are doing by democratizing patent information, is we [are] actually [helping to] accelerate making innovation in the world easier and better,” he said.

“For any aspiring entrepreneurs out there, if you strongly believe in something, then just give it a try. Just go for it, because we only live life once.”

Want to earn more money at work? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Negotiate a Higher Salary. Expert instructors will teach you the skills you need to get a bigger paycheck, including how to prepare and build your confidence, what to do and say, and how to craft a counteroffer. Sign up today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 50% off through Nov. 26, 2024.

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