March 5, 2025 • 22 mins
Ever wondered how to recover from burnout, set better boundaries, or even which dating app led me to my fiancé?
In this special Ask Me Anything episode, I tackle listener-submitted questions on everything from managing overwhelm to making mindful career moves. I share practical strategies I personally use—like the ‘Yes, But’ strategy for setting boundaries, the power of cyclic sighing for stress relief, and how hypnosis has been a game changer for me.
In this episode we dive into:
- How I recovered from burnout and some of the tools I now use to maintain balance
- Why setting healthy boundaries is critical and how to politely push back
- The surprising way hypnosis has been a game-changer for my mindset
- My take on meditation, naps, and why I rely on jogging instead
- The dating app I used to meet my fiancé (yes, really!)
Have a question you want me to answer in the next AMA episode? Reach out via email or socials – I’d love to hear from you!
Want to work smarter with AI? Check out Inventium’s Gen AI Productivity System, a self-paced course designed to help you reclaim hours every week by using AI more effectively. Get started at inventium.com.au/GenAI.
My latest book The Health Habit is out now. You can order a copy here: https://www.amantha.com/the-health-habit/
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today, I have something a little bit different, but it's
also something I'm going to be doing more regularly. It's
an Ask Me Anything episode where I am here to
answer listener questions. Today we're going to be covering everything
from how I recovered from burnout through to my thoughts
on meditation and how I politely push back on demands
(00:24):
for my time. Oh and also the dating app that
I use to find my fiance because yes, that was
sent through to me as a listener question. Welcome to
How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies
for optimizing your date. I'm your host, doctor Amantha imber So.
(00:46):
The first question for this Ask Me Anything comes from
Christian and Christian asks if you got distracted due to
a mind overload like company, health status, family affairs, how
do you get out of that? Well, Christian, I've been
in this mind state quite frequently, particularly in twenty twenty four,
(01:09):
and what I find makes the biggest difference is writing
everything down. I literally make a list, and then what
I do with that list is that I add rough
timings to each item on the list. How much time
will this thing take me? Because what our brains often
do is they get quite overwhelmed. They build this really
(01:32):
big list, and it's really easy to overestimate how long
all these things will take. And so I find if
I can contain it, which making a list absolutely does.
It contains things to being on a physical or digital
sheet of paper, and then I can add rough timings
and that will generally give me a sense of reassurance
(01:54):
to go, Okay, I can get through everything that I
need to get through and hit all my deadlines. What
I've started to do as a bit of a ritual
is at the beginning of each month, I will think
about what are my top priorities for this month, generally
like what are those big bits of deep work that
I really need to get done, And I will make
(02:16):
a list, put timings against each one, and I will
continually come back to that list throughout the month. And
I've found that that makes the massive difference. Next question
is from Vadotus. I hope I've pronounced that correctly. So
the question is meditation effects on work life balance? What
(02:39):
does that do? And is having a nap in the
middle of the day good for managing.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Stress at work?
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Okay, So look, I have never really been able to
get into meditation. I've tried it many times. Although my
good friends Sarah Grinberg and Lisa Leong, who've both been
on this show, still I'm only convincing me to, you know,
maybe make it a bit of a habit or think
about it differently. What I have done, though, for most
(03:06):
of my life is I've used hypnosis. So I grew
up with a mum who is still a clinical psychologist,
and she specializes in hypnosis. She uh trains fellow medical
professionals in using hypnosis, And so for me, hypnosis was
never something that I just thought about as what they
(03:27):
do on the Scooby Doo and they you know, wave
the medallion in front of people to send them to
sleep and turn them into chickens. Hypnosis was actually a
tool that I, you know, you heard about my mum
using all the time, and I experienced from quite an
early age as well. And the way I think about hypnosis,
(03:47):
where you're essentially getting someone into a state that feels
like a kind of dream like state, I guess certainly
a very relaxed state, not dissimilar to meditation. During hypnosis,
the person doing the hypnosis will be making suggestions in
terms of the purpose of the hypnosis. Often in my
(04:07):
mum's practice, she works a lot with oncology patients, so
often the hypnosis is to help with pain management. But
for me, I've used it for all sorts of things,
particularly high stress situations like if I've got a high
stakes presentation that I'm making.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
For example, I will.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Often use hypnosis to just calm my nerves and give
suggestions to my mind that I will be in a
peak performance mode. So I think about hypnosis like meditation
on steroids, so that I guess has been my form
of meditation. I do also find jogging pretty good for
getting me into a meditative state. Now, in terms of naps,
(04:46):
if you are someone that does not struggle to get
to sleep at night and stay asleep, so if you
don't have insomnia, naps, well, there's a whole lot of
great stuff about naps. Typically, what most sleep researchers would
recommend is don't nap for more than twenty minutes. So
(05:06):
if I'm having a nap, I generally don't nap, but
occasionally I do. And I generally don't nap because I
have struggled with insomnia. Is I will set an alarm
for thirty minutes from when I lie down in bed,
and I know that it will probably take me a
few minutes to get to sleep. So at the thirty
minute mark, I know that I haven't gone into a
deep sleep. I'm not going to have that groggy feeling,
(05:27):
and that is the best kind of nap to have. Okay,
let's move on to the next question. So from anonymous, Okay,
I'm currently participating in your Thrive Protocol program and loving it.
And FYI, that is a program that we run at
Inventium to help drive well being, resilience and productivity. So
(05:50):
if that is a thing in your organizations, do reach out,
get in touch. So what is on my mind this
week is creating healthy boundaries and being able to politely
put pish back on requests, demands, expectations by people who
can be very persistent and won't take no for an answer.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So that is the gist of the question. That's a
little bit more there.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
But what I would recommend here is a strategy that
I've heard from a few people. One of those people
was Nicky Sparshot, who she is at Unilever. She used
to head up Unilever Australia. I believe she's now in
a global role. She has a strategy that she told
me about called yes but and I love this strategy.
(06:35):
So when we get some sort of a request for
our time, I mean, for me, I'm quite good at
saying no, but I understand that sometimes this is not
a thing that you can do, particularly when you're in
the system of a large organization. So yes but involves
saying yes but putting some constraints around your answer. So
let me give you an example, because I did actually
(06:56):
use this strategy a few weeks ago with a client
of ours, in Ventium, who asked me if I would
do I think the request was for like a forty
five minute presentation or like fireside chat Q and A
with a large group of their employees. But they didn't
(07:17):
have a budget, and normally I charged money for that
kind of thing. But I wanted to help them. We've
been doing work with them, and you know, we plan
to continue that relationship.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So I said yes.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
But so I said yes, I can absolutely do a
Q and A, but it can only be fifteen minutes.
I'm very happy to do that just as a gesture
of goodwill for our relationship, and my client was really
happy I was able to deliver a lot of value
in that fifteen minutes, but I still set a clear boundary.
(07:50):
So yes, but is an excellent tool. Let's see our
next question here. How do you navigate making organizational change
remaining committed to continuous improvement when you're relying on busy
colleagues making time for the collaboration. Mm, well, I I'm
(08:11):
not the best person at doing this.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Generally, I will just push forward with.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
The change that I want to make and actually forget
to take people along for the journey, which is something
I am trying to work on.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
What though, I have found it's been quite a good tool.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Bit old fashioned, but doing a good old racy r
AC I So if you haven't come across racy, racy
is really great for setting roles clearly at the start
of a project. RACY stands for responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed.
There are a few different models like this, but I
like the racing. So these four roles are the things
(08:49):
that you think about at the start of the project.
So who is responsible, who is actually responsible for doing
the work? Who is ultimately accountable? Like if the project fails,
who is the person that is actually going to be
accountable for what happens. Who is consulted along the journey,
(09:09):
like who do we collaborate with a little bit, and
who is simply informed? And this is a really key
distinction because often we can confuse informed for consulted and
informed are just people that we just need to communicate with,
keep them updated along the journey of the project. So
if we can define this upfront, we can we can
(09:31):
circumvent a lot of unnecessary collaboration. If you like, next question,
how do you set up a nurturing environment for those
on your team with neurodiverse brains so that they can
be set up for success in the workplace?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Good question?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
So you know what they say, if you've met one
person with ADHD, you've met one person with ADHD. I
think this is so important. Trying to group neurodiverse brains
into the one bucket is a big mistake. So the
best thing that you can do is just ask them,
ask them, like what do you need? But other than
(10:12):
asking them, I would say, one easy thing to start
thinking about, well not necessarily easy, but one thing to
start thinking about is the sensory environment. So a lot
of neurodiverse brains are quite sensitive to things like loud noises,
bright lights, lots of chit chat and interruptions.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
The brains just don't like that.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
So think about what is the physical environment that you
have set up for your teammates at work, particularly where
it's in your control, Like what is the lighting light?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Can people adjust the lighting?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
You know, bright lights, generally speaking, are not great for
neurodiverse brains.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Lots of noise not great. Can you set up quiet zones.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Or quiet pods where people with differently fired brains can
go to get away from the noise. They are certainly
some good things to start thinking about initially.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Also, we have a bunch.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Of different tools that we use to help to help
with collaboration and just getting the most out of all
sorts of brains. So one of those tools that we
teach to a lot of our clients at Inventium is
a tool called shifting. So shifting involves in any kind
of a meeting where you're asking for people's thoughts or inputs,
which is hopefully any kind of a meeting because ideally
(11:29):
you're not using meetings just for information sharing. Is getting
people to think about the question.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Or the problem on their own.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
First, give them five to ten minutes and then shift
back as a group, taken in turns to share your
thoughts and then build on each other's thoughts, and then
you can repeat and repeat and repeat for however many
times that you want. That's a tool called shifting that
we find is very good because typically how most meetings
and brainstorms are run is that they're set up to
(12:00):
really favor people that are highly extroverted and great at
thinking on the spot, which is really the minority of us.
So a good way to take into account all our
different brains is to give people time to think on
their own and then take it in turns to share
as a group. We will be back soon with strategies
(12:23):
that I personally used to help recover from burnout. Okay,
this is a very specific question, and this comes off
the back of one of the newsletters that I recently shared,
which I think was titled my three non negotiables for
(12:44):
health Habits or something like that. If you don't sign up,
if you don't get my newsletter, there is a link
in the show notes. So I did talk about how
one of my non negotiables is having twenty to thirty grams,
not that I'm actually using scales to measure things, although
I have done in the past, but you know, I
can eyeball things and know how much protein I'm having.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So I do that with every meal.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Because that is a huge, huge benefit and has a
huge impact on blood gluecose levels, which you want to
try and have as stable as possible throughout the day
for your energy levels. So the question is from Kelly
regarding your protein powered meals. If cereal is off the
table at breakfast, what is on the table?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Thanks? Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
So I typically have the same breakfast every single day.
I'm a big fan of trying to reduce decisions wherever possible,
and deciding what to have for breakfast every day is
a decision that I try to remove from my life.
So what I have is I get one and you
(13:48):
might have seen these at your local supermarket. Is it's
like a big carton of pure egg whites. It's typically
in the freezer section, and I defrost overnight and I
make myself an egg white omelet with spinach and tomato.
I make sure I use a good amount of olive
(14:08):
oil so I'm getting a good amount of healthy fats
as well, and if I'm not full after that I
will also have some yogurts, so thinking about, you know,
making sure I've also got some fermented food good for
your gut, and also again just thinking about, you know,
a different source of protein and fats. So that is
my typical breakfast that I have almost every single day. Okay,
(14:33):
the next question is from Elise. When you're feeling overwhelmed,
what do you do?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
How do you help yourself?
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Oh? Man, I have played around with a lot of
different strategies because I feel like I spent a lot
of twenty twenty four and even parts of twenty twenty
three feeling quite overwhelmed about certain things. So the strategies
that have worked best for me. Firstly, cyclic sighing. If
you don't know what I'm talking about, Cyclic sighing is
(15:04):
a great breathing strategy to immediately calm your nervous system.
It involves taking a breath in I don't know if
you can hear that through the microphone, and then when
you feel like you've taken a really big breath in,
taking another quick breath in to really fill your lungs,
(15:25):
and then sighing out, so gradually sighing out through your
mouth and if you repeat that for five minutes. I
mean I would even do it just for one minute
and I would find a difference. But repeating that for
five minutes has been shown to really reduce that state
of arousal and calm us down. So I reckon I
(15:47):
was doing that probably most days of twenty twenty four.
Another strategy that I find very helpful at Inventium we
call it scar sc is to firstly spot the stressor
s Spot the stressor, so identify what is the thing
that is making me stressed? Then see check your control,
(16:11):
So how much control do I have about this stressor
is it something that I have direct control over? Is
it something that I can influence or is it something
that I have no control over?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And then a is accept or act.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
So I will act if I have direct control or
some influence over and if I have no control over it,
which sadly is most of the stresses in our life,
I will try to accept it and not try to
change it. I use that a lot when I'm identifying stresses.
The final thing that I found very effective is making
(16:47):
a state change. So if for example, I'm at my
desk and I'm feeling stressed, a state change might be
going for a walk around the block, or it might
be you know, more extreme, like water has very calming effects,
so maybe I'll just I'll jump in the shower. I
remember when I was on holidays last year and I
(17:09):
was lucky enough to be staying at a place that
had a pool. I was having a really stressful day.
I was meant to be on holidays, but I had
been hit with a couple of work emergencies. It got
me into quite a state of stress, which I was
trying to work through apply scar to SCA. But then
I just thought, I'm just going to go for a swim,
and I went for like a ten minute swim in
(17:31):
the pool, and by the time I was done in
the pool, my state how I was feeling had completely
changed and I was no longer feeling overwhelmed. So that
they are a few techniques on what I do. I
do also find actually hypnosis that I talked about earlier
is very very effective. Next question a bit of a
(17:53):
random one. After I heard you on the mid podcast.
I want to know which app you found a knee on?
Who Neo is my fiance and the mid podcast is
by Mum and Me. I will put a link to
that in the show notes. It is a different kind
of interview that I gave where I talk about finding
(18:14):
love after getting divorced, which happened five and a half
years ago. Now, so how I met Neo. The app
that I found Neo on was on Hinge.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
There you go. That was over three years ago.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
So I don't know what state Hinge is in now,
but certainly at the time it was worked out well
for me and Neo. Okay, I'm interested in learning more
about professional jealousy and the impact is can have on
career growth and progression in organizations and how to deal
with this. Oh ah, that's such a meaty question, and
(18:47):
you know what, I reckon. I might take that to
a future Ask Me Anything episode because I have so
much to say about that. I've thought so much about it,
you know, very quickly. I do try to think about
my own sort of my own goals and sense of
achievement for myself as just thinking about personal bests and
(19:11):
what can I do, because ultimately that there's always going
to be people that we can do upwards. Comparisons too,
in terms of social comparison theory, so people who are
doing better than us and we can also make downward
comparisons people that are doing worse than us. We're always
going to have both in our life no matter where
we are. I do find that quite helpful to remember.
Funnily enough, it was a concept that I researched in
(19:33):
my honors thesis in psychology many many years ago.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
But I reckon I'll get.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
More into that in a future episode. But also I
do recommend checking out the interview that I did with
Sarah Greenberg that came out a week or two ago.
We do talk about some topics around that final question.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
I'm interested in.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Learning more about you recovering from burnout and what tools
you put into place to maintain this, especial considering your
role as a business leader with a stressful schedule ongoing.
I'm finding this challenging in my own life, so would
love to hear from someone who has been through it
and continued to balance both a high performing role and
a healthy, balanced life. Okay, great question, and again I'm
(20:15):
gonna I'm gonna get into more content around this and
more strategies around this as the year progresses. But in short,
I made some small changes, like some of the things
that we've spoken about ay that I've spoken about cyclic siging,
applying scar state changes, They've all been things that have
worked incredibly well. I lean very heavily on my amazing
(20:39):
support networks, my partner NEO, my close friends, some of
whom are in HR and offer particularly wise advice, you know,
when it comes to all sorts of sort of people
and culture and other kinds of you know, challenges that
I think pies a lot of leaders lives. My family
(21:04):
are great, and also I've got some amazing peers who
are also founder CEOs. So I leant heavily into support networks.
And then I also asked myself this question a lot.
What part did I play in creating the circumstances that
contributed to my burnout? You know, who did I attract
(21:25):
into my life? Like, how was I complicit in that?
What business decisions did I make? So I do think
a lot about what do I need to own because
I think it's very easy when you're burnt out to
place the blame externally. So I will be expanding on
those answers in future episodes. But that is it for
today's Ask Me Anything episode. I hope you found it
(21:49):
useful and if you have more questions that you would
like me to answer, Please drop me an email or
you can find me on the socials. I love getting
listener questions, so please send them through and I hope
that you've taken at least one gem out of today's episode.
If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow
(22:10):
on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
the warrangery people, part of the Cool And Nation. A
big thank you to Martin Nimma for doing the sound mix.
Today, I have something a little bit different, but it's
also something I'm going to be doing more regularly. It's
an Ask Me Anything episode where I am here to
answer listener questions. Today we're going to be covering everything
from how I recovered from burnout through to my thoughts
on meditation and how I politely push back on demands
(00:24):
for my time. Oh and also the dating app that
I use to find my fiance because yes, that was
sent through to me as a listener question. Welcome to
How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies
for optimizing your date. I'm your host, doctor Amantha imber So.
(00:46):
The first question for this Ask Me Anything comes from
Christian and Christian asks if you got distracted due to
a mind overload like company, health status, family affairs, how
do you get out of that? Well, Christian, I've been
in this mind state quite frequently, particularly in twenty twenty four,
(01:09):
and what I find makes the biggest difference is writing
everything down. I literally make a list, and then what
I do with that list is that I add rough
timings to each item on the list. How much time
will this thing take me? Because what our brains often
do is they get quite overwhelmed. They build this really
(01:32):
big list, and it's really easy to overestimate how long
all these things will take. And so I find if
I can contain it, which making a list absolutely does.
It contains things to being on a physical or digital
sheet of paper, and then I can add rough timings
and that will generally give me a sense of reassurance
(01:54):
to go, Okay, I can get through everything that I
need to get through and hit all my deadlines. What
I've started to do as a bit of a ritual
is at the beginning of each month, I will think
about what are my top priorities for this month, generally
like what are those big bits of deep work that
I really need to get done, And I will make
(02:16):
a list, put timings against each one, and I will
continually come back to that list throughout the month. And
I've found that that makes the massive difference. Next question
is from Vadotus. I hope I've pronounced that correctly. So
the question is meditation effects on work life balance? What
(02:39):
does that do? And is having a nap in the
middle of the day good for managing.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Stress at work?
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Okay, So look, I have never really been able to
get into meditation. I've tried it many times. Although my
good friends Sarah Grinberg and Lisa Leong, who've both been
on this show, still I'm only convincing me to, you know,
maybe make it a bit of a habit or think
about it differently. What I have done, though, for most
(03:06):
of my life is I've used hypnosis. So I grew
up with a mum who is still a clinical psychologist,
and she specializes in hypnosis. She uh trains fellow medical
professionals in using hypnosis, And so for me, hypnosis was
never something that I just thought about as what they
(03:27):
do on the Scooby Doo and they you know, wave
the medallion in front of people to send them to
sleep and turn them into chickens. Hypnosis was actually a
tool that I, you know, you heard about my mum
using all the time, and I experienced from quite an
early age as well. And the way I think about hypnosis,
(03:47):
where you're essentially getting someone into a state that feels
like a kind of dream like state, I guess certainly
a very relaxed state, not dissimilar to meditation. During hypnosis,
the person doing the hypnosis will be making suggestions in
terms of the purpose of the hypnosis. Often in my
(04:07):
mum's practice, she works a lot with oncology patients, so
often the hypnosis is to help with pain management. But
for me, I've used it for all sorts of things,
particularly high stress situations like if I've got a high
stakes presentation that I'm making.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
For example, I will.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Often use hypnosis to just calm my nerves and give
suggestions to my mind that I will be in a
peak performance mode. So I think about hypnosis like meditation
on steroids, so that I guess has been my form
of meditation. I do also find jogging pretty good for
getting me into a meditative state. Now, in terms of naps,
(04:46):
if you are someone that does not struggle to get
to sleep at night and stay asleep, so if you
don't have insomnia, naps, well, there's a whole lot of
great stuff about naps. Typically, what most sleep researchers would
recommend is don't nap for more than twenty minutes. So
(05:06):
if I'm having a nap, I generally don't nap, but
occasionally I do. And I generally don't nap because I
have struggled with insomnia. Is I will set an alarm
for thirty minutes from when I lie down in bed,
and I know that it will probably take me a
few minutes to get to sleep. So at the thirty
minute mark, I know that I haven't gone into a
deep sleep. I'm not going to have that groggy feeling,
(05:27):
and that is the best kind of nap to have. Okay,
let's move on to the next question. So from anonymous, Okay,
I'm currently participating in your Thrive Protocol program and loving it.
And FYI, that is a program that we run at
Inventium to help drive well being, resilience and productivity. So
(05:50):
if that is a thing in your organizations, do reach out,
get in touch. So what is on my mind this
week is creating healthy boundaries and being able to politely
put pish back on requests, demands, expectations by people who
can be very persistent and won't take no for an answer.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So that is the gist of the question. That's a
little bit more there.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
But what I would recommend here is a strategy that
I've heard from a few people. One of those people
was Nicky Sparshot, who she is at Unilever. She used
to head up Unilever Australia. I believe she's now in
a global role. She has a strategy that she told
me about called yes but and I love this strategy.
(06:35):
So when we get some sort of a request for
our time, I mean, for me, I'm quite good at
saying no, but I understand that sometimes this is not
a thing that you can do, particularly when you're in
the system of a large organization. So yes but involves
saying yes but putting some constraints around your answer. So
let me give you an example, because I did actually
(06:56):
use this strategy a few weeks ago with a client
of ours, in Ventium, who asked me if I would
do I think the request was for like a forty
five minute presentation or like fireside chat Q and A
with a large group of their employees. But they didn't
(07:17):
have a budget, and normally I charged money for that
kind of thing. But I wanted to help them. We've
been doing work with them, and you know, we plan
to continue that relationship.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So I said yes.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
But so I said yes, I can absolutely do a
Q and A, but it can only be fifteen minutes.
I'm very happy to do that just as a gesture
of goodwill for our relationship, and my client was really
happy I was able to deliver a lot of value
in that fifteen minutes, but I still set a clear boundary.
(07:50):
So yes, but is an excellent tool. Let's see our
next question here. How do you navigate making organizational change
remaining committed to continuous improvement when you're relying on busy
colleagues making time for the collaboration. Mm, well, I I'm
(08:11):
not the best person at doing this.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Generally, I will just push forward with.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
The change that I want to make and actually forget
to take people along for the journey, which is something
I am trying to work on.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
What though, I have found it's been quite a good tool.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Bit old fashioned, but doing a good old racy r
AC I So if you haven't come across racy, racy
is really great for setting roles clearly at the start
of a project. RACY stands for responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed.
There are a few different models like this, but I
like the racing. So these four roles are the things
(08:49):
that you think about at the start of the project.
So who is responsible, who is actually responsible for doing
the work? Who is ultimately accountable? Like if the project fails,
who is the person that is actually going to be
accountable for what happens. Who is consulted along the journey,
(09:09):
like who do we collaborate with a little bit, and
who is simply informed? And this is a really key
distinction because often we can confuse informed for consulted and
informed are just people that we just need to communicate with,
keep them updated along the journey of the project. So
if we can define this upfront, we can we can
(09:31):
circumvent a lot of unnecessary collaboration. If you like, next question,
how do you set up a nurturing environment for those
on your team with neurodiverse brains so that they can
be set up for success in the workplace?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Good question?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
So you know what they say, if you've met one
person with ADHD, you've met one person with ADHD. I
think this is so important. Trying to group neurodiverse brains
into the one bucket is a big mistake. So the
best thing that you can do is just ask them,
ask them, like what do you need? But other than
(10:12):
asking them, I would say, one easy thing to start
thinking about, well not necessarily easy, but one thing to
start thinking about is the sensory environment. So a lot
of neurodiverse brains are quite sensitive to things like loud noises,
bright lights, lots of chit chat and interruptions.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
The brains just don't like that.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
So think about what is the physical environment that you
have set up for your teammates at work, particularly where
it's in your control, Like what is the lighting light?
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Can people adjust the lighting?
Speaker 1 (10:47):
You know, bright lights, generally speaking, are not great for
neurodiverse brains.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Lots of noise not great. Can you set up quiet zones.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Or quiet pods where people with differently fired brains can
go to get away from the noise. They are certainly
some good things to start thinking about initially.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Also, we have a bunch.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Of different tools that we use to help to help
with collaboration and just getting the most out of all
sorts of brains. So one of those tools that we
teach to a lot of our clients at Inventium is
a tool called shifting. So shifting involves in any kind
of a meeting where you're asking for people's thoughts or inputs,
which is hopefully any kind of a meeting because ideally
(11:29):
you're not using meetings just for information sharing. Is getting
people to think about the question.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Or the problem on their own.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
First, give them five to ten minutes and then shift
back as a group, taken in turns to share your
thoughts and then build on each other's thoughts, and then
you can repeat and repeat and repeat for however many
times that you want. That's a tool called shifting that
we find is very good because typically how most meetings
and brainstorms are run is that they're set up to
(12:00):
really favor people that are highly extroverted and great at
thinking on the spot, which is really the minority of us.
So a good way to take into account all our
different brains is to give people time to think on
their own and then take it in turns to share
as a group. We will be back soon with strategies
(12:23):
that I personally used to help recover from burnout. Okay,
this is a very specific question, and this comes off
the back of one of the newsletters that I recently shared,
which I think was titled my three non negotiables for
(12:44):
health Habits or something like that. If you don't sign up,
if you don't get my newsletter, there is a link
in the show notes. So I did talk about how
one of my non negotiables is having twenty to thirty grams,
not that I'm actually using scales to measure things, although
I have done in the past, but you know, I
can eyeball things and know how much protein I'm having.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So I do that with every meal.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Because that is a huge, huge benefit and has a
huge impact on blood gluecose levels, which you want to
try and have as stable as possible throughout the day
for your energy levels. So the question is from Kelly
regarding your protein powered meals. If cereal is off the
table at breakfast, what is on the table?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Thanks? Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
So I typically have the same breakfast every single day.
I'm a big fan of trying to reduce decisions wherever possible,
and deciding what to have for breakfast every day is
a decision that I try to remove from my life.
So what I have is I get one and you
(13:48):
might have seen these at your local supermarket. Is it's
like a big carton of pure egg whites. It's typically
in the freezer section, and I defrost overnight and I
make myself an egg white omelet with spinach and tomato.
I make sure I use a good amount of olive
(14:08):
oil so I'm getting a good amount of healthy fats
as well, and if I'm not full after that I
will also have some yogurts, so thinking about, you know,
making sure I've also got some fermented food good for
your gut, and also again just thinking about, you know,
a different source of protein and fats. So that is
my typical breakfast that I have almost every single day. Okay,
(14:33):
the next question is from Elise. When you're feeling overwhelmed,
what do you do?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
How do you help yourself?
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Oh? Man, I have played around with a lot of
different strategies because I feel like I spent a lot
of twenty twenty four and even parts of twenty twenty
three feeling quite overwhelmed about certain things. So the strategies
that have worked best for me. Firstly, cyclic sighing. If
you don't know what I'm talking about, Cyclic sighing is
(15:04):
a great breathing strategy to immediately calm your nervous system.
It involves taking a breath in I don't know if
you can hear that through the microphone, and then when
you feel like you've taken a really big breath in,
taking another quick breath in to really fill your lungs,
(15:25):
and then sighing out, so gradually sighing out through your
mouth and if you repeat that for five minutes. I
mean I would even do it just for one minute
and I would find a difference. But repeating that for
five minutes has been shown to really reduce that state
of arousal and calm us down. So I reckon I
(15:47):
was doing that probably most days of twenty twenty four.
Another strategy that I find very helpful at Inventium we
call it scar sc is to firstly spot the stressor
s Spot the stressor, so identify what is the thing
that is making me stressed? Then see check your control,
(16:11):
So how much control do I have about this stressor
is it something that I have direct control over? Is
it something that I can influence or is it something
that I have no control over?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And then a is accept or act.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
So I will act if I have direct control or
some influence over and if I have no control over it,
which sadly is most of the stresses in our life,
I will try to accept it and not try to
change it. I use that a lot when I'm identifying stresses.
The final thing that I found very effective is making
(16:47):
a state change. So if for example, I'm at my
desk and I'm feeling stressed, a state change might be
going for a walk around the block, or it might
be you know, more extreme, like water has very calming effects,
so maybe I'll just I'll jump in the shower. I
remember when I was on holidays last year and I
(17:09):
was lucky enough to be staying at a place that
had a pool. I was having a really stressful day.
I was meant to be on holidays, but I had
been hit with a couple of work emergencies. It got
me into quite a state of stress, which I was
trying to work through apply scar to SCA. But then
I just thought, I'm just going to go for a swim,
and I went for like a ten minute swim in
(17:31):
the pool, and by the time I was done in
the pool, my state how I was feeling had completely
changed and I was no longer feeling overwhelmed. So that
they are a few techniques on what I do. I
do also find actually hypnosis that I talked about earlier
is very very effective. Next question a bit of a
(17:53):
random one. After I heard you on the mid podcast.
I want to know which app you found a knee on?
Who Neo is my fiance and the mid podcast is
by Mum and Me. I will put a link to
that in the show notes. It is a different kind
of interview that I gave where I talk about finding
(18:14):
love after getting divorced, which happened five and a half
years ago. Now, so how I met Neo. The app
that I found Neo on was on Hinge.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
There you go. That was over three years ago.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
So I don't know what state Hinge is in now,
but certainly at the time it was worked out well
for me and Neo. Okay, I'm interested in learning more
about professional jealousy and the impact is can have on
career growth and progression in organizations and how to deal
with this. Oh ah, that's such a meaty question, and
(18:47):
you know what, I reckon. I might take that to
a future Ask Me Anything episode because I have so
much to say about that. I've thought so much about it,
you know, very quickly. I do try to think about
my own sort of my own goals and sense of
achievement for myself as just thinking about personal bests and
(19:11):
what can I do, because ultimately that there's always going
to be people that we can do upwards. Comparisons too,
in terms of social comparison theory, so people who are
doing better than us and we can also make downward
comparisons people that are doing worse than us. We're always
going to have both in our life no matter where
we are. I do find that quite helpful to remember.
Funnily enough, it was a concept that I researched in
(19:33):
my honors thesis in psychology many many years ago.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
But I reckon I'll get.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
More into that in a future episode. But also I
do recommend checking out the interview that I did with
Sarah Greenberg that came out a week or two ago.
We do talk about some topics around that final question.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
I'm interested in.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Learning more about you recovering from burnout and what tools
you put into place to maintain this, especial considering your
role as a business leader with a stressful schedule ongoing.
I'm finding this challenging in my own life, so would
love to hear from someone who has been through it
and continued to balance both a high performing role and
a healthy, balanced life. Okay, great question, and again I'm
(20:15):
gonna I'm gonna get into more content around this and
more strategies around this as the year progresses. But in short,
I made some small changes, like some of the things
that we've spoken about ay that I've spoken about cyclic siging,
applying scar state changes, They've all been things that have
worked incredibly well. I lean very heavily on my amazing
(20:39):
support networks, my partner NEO, my close friends, some of
whom are in HR and offer particularly wise advice, you know,
when it comes to all sorts of sort of people
and culture and other kinds of you know, challenges that
I think pies a lot of leaders lives. My family
(21:04):
are great, and also I've got some amazing peers who
are also founder CEOs. So I leant heavily into support networks.
And then I also asked myself this question a lot.
What part did I play in creating the circumstances that
contributed to my burnout? You know, who did I attract
(21:25):
into my life? Like, how was I complicit in that?
What business decisions did I make? So I do think
a lot about what do I need to own because
I think it's very easy when you're burnt out to
place the blame externally. So I will be expanding on
those answers in future episodes. But that is it for
today's Ask Me Anything episode. I hope you found it
(21:49):
useful and if you have more questions that you would
like me to answer, Please drop me an email or
you can find me on the socials. I love getting
listener questions, so please send them through and I hope
that you've taken at least one gem out of today's episode.
If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow
(22:10):
on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.
How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
the warrangery people, part of the Cool And Nation. A
big thank you to Martin Nimma for doing the sound mix.
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