There's a particular kind of tightness that creeps in when the world feels unpredictable. We tidy the to-do list, tighten the routine, optimise one more thing, all in an attempt to feel a bit more in control. 

Oliver Burkeman has a word for this: clenching. And he reckons it's squeezing the life out of us, even when it looks a lot like productivity. 

In this episode, I sit down with Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks and Meditations for Mortals, and former writer of The Guardian's This Column Will Change Your Life, to talk about his forthcoming book Aliveness and what he calls unclenching, learning to loosen your grip on certainty rather than white-knuckle your way through it. 

We get into flexible goals, why urgency is so often someone else's agenda in disguise, and how to stop tying your self-worth to your latest achievement. 

If you have ever hit a goal and felt the satisfaction evaporate within minutes, this conversation will change how you think about ambition altogether. 

Oliver and I discuss: 

• What "clenching" is, and why our instinct to grip tighter in uncertain times actually backfires 

• The insecure overachiever trap, and why hitting a goal rarely feels like enough for long 

• How Oliver's open list, closed list approach stops you drowning in fifty half-started things 

• Setting a "no later than" time instead of a strict start time, and why looser goals often get more done 

• Why urgency is so often someone else's agenda in disguise, and how to tell when it is genuinely yours 

• What Oliver actually does with the emails he has not gotten to yet 

Key quotes 

"If you have this feeling of aliveness, even the most difficult challenges are copeable with, and if you don't have this feeling of aliveness, even the most impressive accomplishments are kind of worthless." 

"You will do enough, because you will do everything that it's within your capacities and your energy levels and your talents to do, and that just by definition will be all that you could ever have done." 

Connect with Oliver Burkeman on X (Twitter), LinkedIn and his website. Check out his latest book Meditations for Mortals and look out for his upcoming book Aliveness in 2027. 

If you want more from Oliver, listen back to our earlier conversation on time management, a great companion episode to this one: (https://www.amantha.com/podcasts/want-to-make-time-for-the-things-that-count) 

 

My latest book The Energy Game is out now. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M 

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber) 

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai) 

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/ 

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. 

Get in touch at [email protected] 

Credits: 
Host: Amantha Imber 
Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Before you paste that customer list, that blood test result or that contract into your favourite AI tool, it's worth pausing for a second. Whatever you hand over doesn't just disappear after you get your answer. It sits somewhere, and depending on the tool and the settings, it might be doing more than just answering your question. 

Most people have never actually checked what happens to their data once it goes in or thought about the difference between what's fine to share and what's better redacted first. 

In this How I AI episode, Neo and I work through what's actually safe to give AI and what's better left out. We cover how to check your settings so free tools aren't training on your data, how to de-identify sensitive things like health results and contracts, the rules that change once you're at work, and the one question to ask yourself before you upload anything. 

What you'll learn: 

• How to know if AI is quietly training on the data you give it, and how to switch that off 

• The one question to ask before you upload anything to AI 

• Why work and home should be treated completely differently when it comes to AI 

• What to redact from contracts, spreadsheets and client files before sharing them 

• Where the line sits between using AI as a sounding board and relying on it too much 

• Practical AI tools for productivity and focus 

• Real-world AI workflows used by high performers 

• How to use AI at work without burning out 

• Smart shortcuts for managing time and mental load 

Connect with Neo Aplin on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/neoaplin/) and via inventium.ai (https://inventium.ai), where he leads Inventium's AI training and upskilling work with organisations and teams. 

 

How I AI is a special series within How I Work where Neo and I explore how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm. 

 

My latest book The Energy Game is out now. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M 

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber) 

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai) 

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/ 

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. 

Get in touch at [email protected] 

Credits: 
Host: Amantha Imber 
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is a version of leadership that looks effortless from the outside. The one where the leader always has the answers, always holds the vision, always appears composed. And then there is the version that happens in private, at 5:00 AM, when your mind is rehearsing every possible failure and no one can see it. 

What surprises most people is how often those two versions belong to the same person. 

In part two of my conversation with Christian O'Connell, breakfast radio host heard by hundreds of thousands of Australians every morning, we get into the parts of leadership nobody talks about publicly. Christian opens up about the loneliness of leading a team, the night he finally put his thoughts on a whiteboard and told his people the truth about how he'd been feeling, and why he believes his next book will be about leadership because nobody warned him how hard it would be.  

If you have ever found yourself carrying something heavy at work and deciding the most responsible thing to do as a leader is keep it to yourself, this conversation will make you question whether that instinct is actually protecting your team or just protecting you. 

Christian and I discuss: 

• Why confidence is the wrong thing to aim for before you speak in public 

• What happened when Christian finally stopped pretending everything was fine with his team 

• The one thing that does more for a team than any solution or action plan 

• Why 5am is the worst possible time to trust your own thoughts 

• The David Letterman line that changed how Christian thinks about taking risks 

• Why Christian considers himself an accidental leader, and what he's doing about it 

Key quotes 

"Confidence is something that catches up. Momentum is more important." 

"It's a beautiful thing, leadership. If you get it right, it's a path of aliveness and transformation. If you get it wrong, it's the opposite." 

Connect with Christian O'Connell on Instagram, X (Twitter), LinkedIn and his website. Tune in to The Christian O’Connell Show and check out his latest book Unscript: The Radical Act of Being Yourself. 

 

My latest book The Energy Game is out now. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M 

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber) 

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai) 

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/ 

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. 

Get in touch at [email protected] 

Credits: 
Host: Amantha Imber 
Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The AI world has has done a spectacularly bad job of naming things. Agents, GPTs, gems, notebooks, projects, skills - you'll find a completely different word for what is essentially the same kind of tool. Agents in one place, GPTs in another, gems somewhere else. Different names, similar ideas - and no handbook to tell you that. 

But the tools themselves are not that complicated. Once you know what each one is built to do, knowing which to reach for becomes straightforward. 

In this How I AI episode, Neo and I cut through the jargon and map out what Agents, Projects, and Skills actually are, how they differ from each other, and which one to reach for depending on what you need to do. 

How I AI is a special series within How I Work where Neo and I explore how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm. 

What you'll learn: 

• Why agents, GPTs, and gems are the same kind of thing (just with different names) 

• When a project is the right choice over an agent 

• What makes a skill different from a long prompt 

• Practical AI tools for productivity and focus 

• Real-world AI workflows used by high performers 

• How to use AI at work without burning out 

• Smart shortcuts for managing time and mental load 

Connect with Neo Aplin on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/neoaplin/) and via inventium.ai (https://inventium.ai), where he leads Inventium's AI training and upskilling work with organisations and teams. 

 

My latest book The Energy Game is out now. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M 

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber) 

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai) 

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/ 

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. 

Get in touch at [email protected] 

Credits: 
Host: Amantha Imber 
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

** Grab tickets for The Energy Game Melbourne launch (29 July, 6:30pm) here and order The Energy Game book here.** 

What if the stories you're most afraid to tell are the ones people most need to hear? 

Christian O'Connell has spent 28 years pulling stories out of strangers on live radio. He's had two number one breakfast shows on opposite sides of the planet. And yet off-air, he still catches himself at dinner with his family thinking he hasn't said anything funny in a couple of minutes, and that inner critic starting to spiral. 

In part one of our two-part conversation, I sit down with Christian to explore what he's learned from nearly three decades of live storytelling - and why most of us are telling our stories all wrong. 

Whether you tell stories for a living or you just want to hold a room for 30 seconds at a dinner party, this conversation will give you a completely different way to think about why some stories land and others don't. 

Christian and I discuss: 

• The woodshed: the note-taking habit Christian uses so he's never stuck for something to say 

• Why the stories you least want to tell are usually the ones that land hardest 

• The two levels inside every story, and why most of us only ever tell one of them 

• The physical test Christian uses to decide if a story is worth sharing 

• Why the best storytellers relive rather than retell, and what that looks like in practice 
• How speaking anxiety comes down to one thing, and it's not what most people think 

Key quotes 

"Vulnerability is the currency of great storytelling. If there's no vulnerability in here, there's no real connection in it." 

"The more you dial into the particulars of a story, somehow it becomes more universal." 

Connect with Christian O'Connell on Instagram, X (Twitter), LinkedIn and his website. Tune in to The Christian O’Connell Show and check out his latest book Unscript: The Radical Act of Being Yourself. 

 

My latest book The Energy Game is out now. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M 

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber) 

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai) 

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/ 

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. 

Get in touch at [email protected] 

Credits: 
Host: Amantha Imber 
Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You see another article. "This platform just changed everything." And suddenly, the AI platform you've been using for months feels completely inadequate. You wonder if you're behind. You wonder if you should switch again. 

Neo and I have had this conversation more times than we can count, and it's one of the questions we get asked constantly at Inventium AI. Which of the four major AI platforms, Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, should you actually be using? 

In this How I AI episode, Neo and I walk through the three questions you should ask yourself before committing to any platform, then go through each one in turn to unpack where it shines and where it falls short. By the end, you will have a clear enough picture to make a call, or at least know which one to try next. 

How I AI is a special series within How I Work where Neo and I explore how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm. 

What you'll learn: 

• The three questions to ask before committing to any AI platform 

• Why your data's location could rule out certain options entirely 

• Which platform actually plugs into your daily work apps 

• How pricing models are shifting in ways that could blindside your budget 

• What to weigh before moving your whole company over 

• Practical AI tools for productivity and focus 

• Real-world AI workflows used by high performers 

• How to use AI at work without burning out 

• Smart shortcuts for managing time and mental load 

Connect with Neo Aplin on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/neoaplin/) and via inventium.ai (https://inventium.ai), where he leads Inventium's AI training and upskilling work with organisations and teams. 

My latest book The Energy Game is out now. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M 

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber) 

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai) 

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/ 

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. 

Get in touch at [email protected] 

Credits: 
Host: Amantha Imber 
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

** Grab tickets for The Energy Game Melbourne launch (29 July, 6:30pm) here and order The Energy Game book here.** 

If you're someone who keeps saying yes when you should say no, or who has never once thought of rest as a skill worth building, this conversation will give you a starting point that doesn't require overhauling your life. 

This is part two of a two-part crossover with the This Is Work podcast, hosted by Shelley Johnson. In this episode, Shelley and I go deep into the science-backed strategies from my new book, The Energy Game, covering all three categories: boost strategies that take less than five minutes, rest strategies that are genuinely restorative (not just fake rest on the couch), and protect strategies that stop your energy leaking in the first place. 

Because knowing you're burning out is one thing. Knowing what to actually do about it is another. 

Shelley and I discuss: 

• A surprisingly simple post-meal habit that stabilises your energy for hours 

• Why the thing most of us do to wind down at night is not actually rest 

• The acupressure technique from cancer recovery research that changed how I think about fatigue 

• What happened to my creativity when I stopped filling every quiet moment with podcasts 

• The tapping technique I used to conquer a phobia, and why it works for stress too 

• A three-question filter for deciding what to say yes to, inspired by Adam Grant 

• The worst speaking gig of my life, and the list I started that night 

Key quotes 

"Have you ever woken up in the morning and thought, 'I'm too busy to scroll Instagram today'? No. There you go. So you've got time to rest." 

"You don't have to overhaul your life to get your energy back." 

Connect with Shelley via LinkedIn, or through Boldside’s Instagram and website. For more conversations on meaningful work, sustainable success, and showing up as your best self – check out Shelley’s podcast this is work. 

 

If you're jumping in fresh, part one is waiting for you. We cover the warning signs of burnout, the four energy types, and why "I'm tired" isn't actually telling you much. Listen here. 

 

My latest book The Energy Game is out now. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M 

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)  

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)  

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha-imber.ck.page/subscribe  

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.  

Get in touch at [email protected]  

  

Credits:   

Host: Amantha Imber   

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You've probably seen Cowork mentioned inside Claude, or perhaps you clocked the headlines when Microsoft folded it into Copilot a couple of weeks ago. Either way, the question people keep asking is simple: how is this actually different from just chatting with Claude? 

The answer comes down to files, time and money - three things that change quite dramatically once you move from chat to Cowork. 

In this How I AI episode, Neo and I unpack exactly what Cowork can do that regular chat can't, how to know which one to reach for, and what the new Microsoft version means if you're a Copilot user. 

How I AI is a special series within How I Work where Neo and I explore how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm. 

What you'll learn: 

• What actually changes when Claude can touch files on your own computer 

• The simple test for deciding between Chat and Cowork for any task 

• How Cowork differs from Claude Code, and who each one is really built for 

• Three lesser known Cowork features worth exploring 

• What Microsoft's version of Cowork does differently, and what it costs 

• Practical AI tools for productivity and focus 

• Real-world AI workflows used by high performers 

• How to use AI at work without burning out 

• Smart shortcuts for managing time and mental load 

Connect with Neo Aplin on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/neoaplin/) and via inventium.ai (https://inventium.ai), where he leads Inventium's AI training and upskilling work with organisations and teams. 

My latest book The Energy Game is out now. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M 

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber) 

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai) 

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/ 

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. 

Get in touch at [email protected] 

Credits: 
Host: Amantha Imber 
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

** Grab tickets for The Energy Game Melbourne launch (29 July, 6:30pm) here and order The Energy Game book here.** 

 

What does it take to realise you've hit burnout? For me, it wasn't a dramatic collapse. It was a fantasy about being hospitalised just so no one could contact me, and the hardest decision I'd face would be lime or raspberry jelly. 

When I shared that thought with a friend who is also a clinical psychologist, she told me she'd heard it so many times she had a name for it. That moment of recognition, equal parts relief and horror, was the beginning of understanding just how depleted I had become. 

This is part one of a two-part crossover with the This Is Work podcast, hosted by Shelley Johnson. Shelley asked me all about my year of burnout, the early warning signs I missed, and what I found when I went looking for a way out that didn't require completely overhauling my life. We also get into The Energy Game, my new book, and the framework behind it, including the four energy types, the three energy accounts, and why the phrase "I'm tired" is actually making it harder to solve the problem. 

Shelley and I discuss: 

• The "getting hit by a bus" fantasy: what it signals about how depleted you really are, and why a clinical psychologist says she hears this constantly in private practice 

• The three early warning signs of burnout that I missed for months, covering the physical, mental, and emotional dimensions 

• The push through paradox: why working 60 or 70 hours a week can make you progressively less productive until everything goes on strike 

• Why the four energy types (achievement addict, over-committer, perfectionist, and people pleaser) are seasonal, not fixed, and what it means when you take any of them to the extreme 

• Why thinking of energy as one big concept makes burnout harder to solve, and how splitting it into three separate accounts (physical, mental, emotional) gives you somewhere to actually start 

• The minimum viable dose philosophy behind The Energy Game, and why the 53 challenges in the book were designed for people who are too exhausted for anything that takes real effort 

Key quotes 

"When you're in the depths of exhaustion, that advice just doesn't cut it." 

"Clarity is always the first step to problem-solving." 

Connect with Shelley via LinkedIn, or through Boldside’s Instagram and website. For more conversations on meaningful work, sustainable success, and showing up as your best self – check out Shelley’s podcast this is work. 

 

Find out your energy type here: Energy type assessment  

 

My latest book The Energy Game is out now. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M 

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)  

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)  

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha-imber.ck.page/subscribe  

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.  

Get in touch at [email protected]  

  

Credits:   

Host: Amantha Imber   

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If your organisation has moved its AI licenses onto a per-use plan, every single chat thread your team sends is now adding to a bill. Some companies are already burning through their entire IT budget for AI within the first couple of months of the year, and most staff have no idea their usage is costing anything at all. 

It doesn't have to be a mystery. There are simple habits, from which model you default to, to what time of day you send your first message, that change how far your usage actually stretches. 

In this How I AI episode, Neo and I unpack tokenomics, the economics of how you actually use your AI. We get into how usage limits work across the major platforms, why the timing of your first chat each day matters more than you'd think, and what changes once you move from a personal plan to an enterprise one. 

How I AI is a special series within How I Work where Neo and I explore how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm. 

What you'll learn: 

• What tokenomics actually means and why it's suddenly everywhere 

• How Claude's usage window works differently to ChatGPT and Copilot 

• The simple morning habit that changes how far your usage window stretches 

• Why enterprise billing is shifting, and what that means for your team's budget 

• What managers should be doing before token usage gets out of hand 

• Practical AI tools for productivity and focus 

• Real-world AI workflows used by high performers 

• How to use AI at work without burning out 

• Smart shortcuts for managing time and mental load 

Connect with Neo Aplin on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/neoaplin/) and via inventium.ai (https://inventium.ai), where he leads Inventium's AI training and upskilling work with organisations and teams. 

My latest book The Energy Game is out on July 7, 2026. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M 

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber) 

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai) 

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/ 

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. 

Get in touch at [email protected] 

Credits: 
Host: Amantha Imber 
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.