How I Work

**Join the AI Agent Bootcamp here: https://www.inventium.ai/learnvirtually-agents** 

You sit down to research something for work, open a few tabs, type a vague query into AI, and get back something that feels… fine. Technically an answer. Not quite useful. Meanwhile, that report you've been working on probably needs another set of eyes, but getting real feedback takes time you don't have, so you send it anyway and hope for the best. 

There's a better way. In this How I AI episode, Neo and I walk through three agents we think every knowledge worker genuinely needs, including two we're giving away for free. 

What you'll learn in this episode: 

• Why a basic AI research query often isn't enough, and what to do instead 

• What a critical thinking agent actually checks for, and when it earns its place 

• What a cross-functional advisory board agent is, and who it's built for 

• How long it really takes to build agents that work reliably 

• 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. 

Here are links to the free agents mentioned in this episode: 

• Research agent: https://amantha-imber.kit.com/41cec7c48c 

• Critical Thinking agent: https://amantha-imber.kit.com/51dd2a9719 
• Join the AI Agent Bootcamp to access the Advisory Board agent 

How I AI with Dr Amantha Imber and Neo Aplin explores how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm.

Want more practical ways to put AI to work? You can now follow How I AI separately on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode.

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.

**This week I'm sharing a crossover episode from the Humans, being. podcast with the wonderful Lael Stone. It's one of the more personal chats I've done in a while. We talk about my burnout year, the tiny experiments that brought me back, AI and where I think it's headed, and the uncomfortable question of whether being ordinary might actually be enough. I hope you love it as much as I loved having it. You can find the original episode on Humans Being here.**

Amantha calls her AI 'Sunny'. She talks to it on the drive to the gym, like she's chatting to a friend. And it has quietly changed how she works, how she writes, and how she gets the thinking out of her own head.

Dr. Amantha Imber is one of the sharpest, most generous humans I know. An organisational psychologist, the founder of Inventium, host of How I Work, the first Australian to win a Thinkers50 Innovation Award, the author of four bestselling books, and her brand new one, The Energy Game, lands in July.

In this episode, we discuss Amantha's burnout year and the tiny experiments that crawled her back, the ones she calls boosts, rest, and protect. Why "fake rest" (Netflix while you scroll) won't fill the bucket. And we talk about the childhood praise imprint that drives so many of us: what if the goal isn't to be more, but to be okay with being ordinary?

We explore:

• The pressure we accept being human and thinking we must do it all
• The hit-by-a-bus fantasy and what it tells us about how women carry stress
• AI as a thought partner, and how Amantha uses it without losing the human bit
• What we want for our daughters, and the thinking skills we don't want to outsource

Connect with Humans, being™:

• Web: humansbeing.au
• YouTube: @humansbeingwithlaelstone

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.

**Join the AI Agent Bootcamp here: https://www.inventium.ai/learnvirtually-agents** 

There's a question you've answered a hundred times before. You know the one. Someone pings you, you stop what you're doing, dig through a document or two, and type out the same response you've typed a dozen times this month. It doesn't feel catastrophic in the moment, but across a week it quietly eats hours. 

A knowledge agent is built for exactly this problem. It holds the information so you don't have to be the one constantly retrieving it. 

In this How I AI episode, Neo and I unpack what a knowledge agent is, how it works, and how to build one that actually saves you time, whether you're fielding questions solo or trying to help a whole team self-serve. 

What you'll learn: 

• What a knowledge agent actually is and how it differs from other agents 

• The kinds of questions and roles that benefit most from one 

• How to share a knowledge agent across a team without creating problems 

• What makes knowledge good (or bad) for an agent to work from 

• The three things you need to set up a knowledge agent properly 

• 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 with Dr Amantha Imber and Neo Aplin explores how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm.

Want more practical ways to put AI to work? You can now follow How I AI separately on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode.

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.

There's a moment a lot of professionals know well. You put real thought into a LinkedIn post, hit publish, and watch the likes trickle in. Five. Maybe six. One comment from a colleague you personally recruited into the thread. 

Meanwhile, your feed has started to look like it was written by the same person. Polished, vaguely inspirational, and somehow saying nothing at all. 

In this episode, I sit down with Jessi Hempel, senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn and host of the award-winning podcast Hello Monday, to get inside what's actually happening on the platform right now. Jessi has spent 25 years in tech journalism and eight years at LinkedIn, and she has a front-row seat to how AI is reshaping what it means to have a voice, both on the platform and in your career more broadly. 

We talk about why your LinkedIn profile is doing more heavy lifting than any post you'll ever write, how to approach content in a way that builds real conversation rather than chasing reach, and what the rise of AI-generated posts actually means for anyone trying to show up as themselves online. 

If you've been feeling like something's off with how your content is landing lately, this conversation will give you some much-needed clarity. 

Jessi and I discuss: 

• The part of your LinkedIn profile that matters far more than your posts (and that most people ignore) 

• Why Jessi's posting advice runs counter to what most social media gurus will tell you 

• The one habit that has made the biggest difference to how Jessi's own posts find reach 

• What AI-generated content is doing to trust on LinkedIn, and where Jessi thinks it's all heading 

• The creator who has built one of the most engaged communities on the platform, and what makes her strategy work 

• Why Jessi thinks a major career shift is becoming the smarter move for mid-career professionals right now 

• The skill that no bootcamp can teach you, and why it matters more than ever in the age of AI 

Key quotes 

"If I get off of this conversation and I jump onto LinkedIn and I read a post from you and it sounds like an LLM wrote it, I'm gonna really have distaste in my mouth." 

"Success is being in real conversations that matter with people who have the potential to elevate the issues of concern for you in your career." 

Connect with Jessi Hempel on Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out her newsletter and listen to her podcast Hello Monday. 

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: The Podcast Butler 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are interviews, and then there are conversations. The best podcast hosts know the difference, and the gap between the two is harder to close than it looks. 

In this bonus episode, I get to turn the tables. Jessi Hempel (host of the podcast Hello Monday and senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn) and I nerded out on the craft we both love: what it actually takes to walk into an interview prepared, how to stay present when a guest goes flat, and the moment a scripted exchange becomes something neither person planned for. 

If you've ever wondered what goes on in a host's head before and during a recording, this one pulls back the curtain. 

Jessi and I discuss: 

• Why Jessi walks into every interview with no notes, and the preparation habit that makes it possible 

• The AI experiment that went badly wrong, and what it taught Jessi about how not to prepare 

• How to tell whether a podcast host has actually read the book (there's a tell, and writers always spot it) 

• What to do when a guest is giving you nothing and the conversation is going nowhere 

• The hardest interview challenge to crack, especially with big-name guests on book tour 

• The moment an interview tips into a real conversation, and why you can't fake your way there 

Key quotes 

"The process of slowing down and sitting with material and stumbling over it and forgetting a lot of it, but just sort of tracing my own mind to figure out where I feel curious about it, is the process of preparation." 

"The best interviews tip into conversations." 

Connect with Jessi Hempel on Instagram. and LinkedIn. Check out her newsletter and listen to her podcast Hello Monday. 

If you haven't already, listen to the main episode with Jessi - where she gets into what actually works on LinkedIn in 2026. Check it out here. 

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: The Podcast Butler 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

**Join the AI Agent Bootcamp here: https://www.inventium.ai/learnvirtually-agents** 

The word "agents" is everywhere right now. It shows up in product updates, LinkedIn posts, and conversations at work, and yet for a lot of people, it still doesn't quite click. What actually is an agent? Is it the same as agentic AI? And does any of this actually matter for the way you work? 

If you've been nodding along while quietly unsure, you're in good company. The AI industry has done a genuinely poor job of naming things, and it's created a lot of unnecessary confusion. 

What you’ll learn: 

• Why the terminology around AI tools is so confusing, and the key distinction between "agents" and "agentic AI" that actually matters in practice. 

• What an agent is versus what agentic AI is 

• How individuals can use agents for tasks they repeat regularly 

• How teams can use agents to standardise outputs like reports, reduce the burden of repetitive questions, and let people self-service answers using a knowledge agent  

• What the best starting question is to know if a problem can be solved by an agent 

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

How I AI with Dr Amantha Imber and Neo Aplin explores how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm.

Want more practical ways to put AI to work? You can now follow How I AI separately on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode.

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.

What would you do with four extra hours a day? Probably say you don't have them. But according to Laura Vanderkam, one of the world's leading thinkers on time, they're already there. You're just not seeing them. 

Laura has tracked her own time for 11 years. She's run large-scale time-tracking studies with hundreds of participants. And what she keeps finding is the same thing: the stories we tell ourselves about our time are almost always wrong. The tasks we dread feel longer than they are. The free time we insist we don't have keeps showing up in the data. 

In this How I Work episode, I sit down with Laura to dig into what 11 years of time diaries actually reveal, why tracking your time for just one week can make you feel dramatically better about your life, and how to reclaim those post-dinner hours that most of us write off as dead time. Laura is a bestselling author of many books on time and productivity, and her latest, Big Time, is one of the most practical and perspective-shifting reads I've come across in a long time. 

If you've ever ended a weekend convinced you had no time to yourself, this conversation will change how you see the week ahead. 

Laura and I discuss:

• Why tracking your time for a single week raises time satisfaction scores by nearly 18%, and what's actually driving that shift 

• The gap between how people think they spend their time and how they actually do, particularly for those who work flexibly or check email on weekends 

• The concept of "golden hours" and why the four to five hours between dinner and bedtime are far more valuable than most of us treat them 

• How to tell the difference between a complex life and a chaotic one, and the circus metaphor that reframes what a well-run household actually looks like 

• The weekly planning ritual Laura swears by, including the three rings of the circus she reviews every Thursday morning 
• Three surprisingly small changes that can make your workday feel genuinely better, without changing jobs 

Key quotes 

"Four to five hours is a lot of time to just write off as unusable. The day is not over after dinner." 

"Complexity and chaos are not the same thing. We're aiming for controlled complexity." 

Connect with Laura Vanderkam on Instagram, X (Twitter), and LinkedIn and her website, and check out her latest book Big Time: A Simple Path to Time Abundance wherever you get good books. 

And if this episode resonated, I recommend my conversation with Oliver Burkeman on how to make time for the things that actually count. Check that out here. 

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: The Podcast Butler 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You've bought the licenses. You've made the announcement. And a few months later, you're staring at a workforce either ignoring the tools entirely or churning out AI-generated fluff that nobody's reading. The ROI? Nowhere to be found. 

The problem isn't AI. It's how organisations are rolling it out. 

In this How I AI episode, Neo and I share a recording from a live webinar we ran on why AI rollouts fail and what it actually takes to set yours up for success. We cover the most common mistakes we're seeing on the ground, the research that should change how you think about training, and the question every leadership team needs to answer before spending another dollar on licenses. 

Neo and I cover: 

• Why an unclear AI strategy at the leadership level creates confusion across teams, with some departments using the tools freely and others too uncertain to try. 

• The leadership credibility problem: when CEOs and senior leaders don't use AI themselves, the rest of the organisation takes it as a signal that they shouldn't either. 

• Why buying licenses without training can actually reduce productivity, producing a flood of low-quality, AI-generated work that slows people down rather than speeding them up. 

• The surprising finding from HBR research that the average time saving from AI is just 2.5%, and why vanity metrics like daily logins and token usage tell you almost nothing about real value. 

• The agent proliferation trap: why having everyone in your organisation building agents independently leads to duplicated, inconsistent, and unowned tools that create more confusion than clarity. 

• The cultural barrier of AI fear, and why people won't genuinely adopt a tool they believe is there to replace them. 

• AI brain fry, a distinct form of cognitive fatigue caused by constant context-switching and vigilance when managing multiple AI tasks simultaneously. 

• Why training to tasks rather than features is what actually shifts behaviour, and the research-backed minimum dose of five hours of hands-on training required to see any meaningful benefit. 

• The case for training close to license rollout to prevent bad habits forming before people know how to use the tools well. 

• A three-stage framework for AI adoption: access, literacy, and leverage (individual then organisational), with literacy positioned as an ongoing capability rather than a one-off event. 

• Why planning where time savings will actually go matters as much as achieving them, otherwise people simply fill the space with more work. 

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 with Dr Amantha Imber and Neo Aplin explores how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm.

Want more practical ways to put AI to work? You can now follow How I AI separately on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode.

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.

What if the thing you spend the most time on at work won't matter at all when you're gone? 

It's a confronting question, but it's the kind Tom Rath lives with deliberately. He walks past a 10,000-headstone cemetery near his home in Washington DC and has never once seen a grave mention social media followers, email response times, or job titles. Yet these are the things most of us spend our days chasing. 

In this episode, I sit down with Tom Rath, one of the most widely read authors in the world of work and wellbeing and the man behind StrengthsFinder 2.0, How Full Is Your Bucket?, and his just-released book What's the Point? Tom challenges the "follow your passion" narrative head-on and makes the case that purpose isn't a grand discovery waiting for you someday. It's what you do for other people, hour by hour, throughout the day. 

We get into the single question Tom uses every morning to reprioritise his time, how to escape the comparison trap that platforms like LinkedIn are designed to pull you into, and why he believes the so-called initiators are the ones who will thrive in the age of AI. 

Tom and I discuss: 

• Why "follow your passion" is misguided advice, and what Tom recommends doing instead when thinking about work and career 

• The statistics on how much of our career path we unconsciously inherit from our parents, and what to do about it 

• How strengths only really come to life when they're turned outward in service of another person 

• Tom's "what's the point?" question and how to use it daily to reprioritise your time and cut through distraction 

• Why resume virtues and eulogy virtues are so different, and how walking through cemeteries has sharpened Tom's thinking on what matters 

• Social comparison as the single biggest tax on your sense of progress at work, and how to reduce its grip 

• What a "shoulder hunter" is and how to find people whose thinking you can build on 

• Why initiators will have a significant advantage over responders as AI continues to reshape the workforce 

Key quotes: 

"Passion is inherently more self-serving, where purpose is by definition anchored in what it does for other people." 

"Stop sleepwalking through your days and lives. The people who are continuing to do that day after day are in for a very rude awakening." 

Connect with Tom Rath on Instagram, X (Twitter), and LinkedIn, visit his website at https://tomrath.org/, and check out his latest book What's the Point?. 

If you enjoyed this episode, I'd recommend going back and listening to my chat with educator and parenting expert Lael Stone, who talks about the power of understanding our imprints — the stories we tell ourselves that we learned in childhood — and how they shape how we show up in the world, and importantly, what we can do to rewrite them. Check out part 1 and part 2. 

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: The Podcast Butler 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sign up for Inventium’s AI Agent Bootcamp virtual or in-person.

Your organisation hit its AI adoption target. Eighty percent of staff have a licence, onboarding is done, and the usage dashboard looks great. So why does the work feel the same, or worse? Hitting an adoption target and actually getting value from AI are two completely different things, and most organisations are confusing one for the other.

The truth is that a team using AI badly can actually perform worse than one not using it at all. Buried in mediocre output, drowning in documents nobody reads, and no closer to a better result for their customers.

In this How I AI episode, Neo and I dig into what actually separates high-performing AI-augmented teams from the average ones, and why so many organisations are measuring the wrong things.

Neo and I cover:

• Why adoption metrics are almost always vanity metrics, and what to measure instead.
• The difference between AI literacy and AI leverage, and why teams need both but rarely get past the first.
• How poor AI training can actually make teams less productive.
• Why slotting AI into an existing process is only ever an interim step, and what it looks like to genuinely re-engineer workflows.
• The role of AI champions within functional teams, and why workflow architecture is a distinct and critical skill most people do not yet have.

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 with Dr Amantha Imber and Neo Aplin explores how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm.

Want more practical ways to put AI to work? You can now follow How I AI separately on Spotify or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode.

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 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.