How I Work

**REPLAY** 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.    ** Free your team from time-consuming procurement tasks. Discover smart business buying, where unmatched selection meets AI-driven tools to simplify complex processes so you can focus on what matters most. Learn more at Amazon.com.au/howiwork **   In this episode, 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.  More from How I Work 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.  If you want to get better at prioritising what matters, saying no to things that don't, and making more intentional choices about how you spend your time, I've put together a Spotify playlist of my favourite How I Work episodes on exactly that. Listen to the playlist 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.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.

Twenty minutes doesn't sound like much. Multiply it by ten sales calls a week and it adds up to more than three hours spent on a task that someone, or something, else could be doing.  Now think about how many tasks like that are hiding in your own week, repeated so often that you no longer notice them.  In this Work Edit, I sit down with Stephen, an organisational transformation advisor with more than 20 years of experience. Stephen uses Claude every day for client research, interview synthesis, first-draft deliverables and thought leadership, but he knows his approach has been sporadic. He wants a deliberate setup without signing up for 12 different tools.  I share how I'd restructure his projects, how I catch the writing habits that make readers suspect AI wrote the whole thing, and the tools I rely on every day. Then we zoom out to a simple one-week exercise that reveals which tasks AI should be taking off your plate for good.  If you use AI daily but suspect there's far more value on the table, this conversation will show you where to look.  Stephen and I discuss:  Why very specific projects, GPTs and skills tend to outperform one big, broad project  How to train an AI on your voice using your best work, and why a separate anti-AI writing skill adheres better than one long instruction set  Why I always write the first draft myself, and how I use AI as an editor afterwards  The AI tells that make readers switch off, and why even writers with their own genuine style can get caught by them  The tools in my daily stack, including Granola, Whisperflow and Superhuman, and how I handle disclosure when AI is taking notes in a meeting  The one-week task log that shows you what to automate, and how a 20-minute pre-call task turned into a skill my EA now runs  How recurring tasks, like a weekly actions recap or a daily AI news researcher, can run without you prompting them    If you would like more tips on getting more value from AI, check out How I AI. Every week, my co-host Neo Aplin and I share practical ways to get more out of whichever AI tool you use. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.   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.

One surgeon takes his boat out onto a lake, screams until he can't scream anymore, and then cries. It is how he recovers from a job where patients die and he can't fall apart in front of his team.  That is what emotional rest can look like for one person, and it is only one of seven types of rest that most of us have never thought to separate. Which raises this possibility: you might be resting effectively in one area while a completely different part of you runs on empty.  In this episode, I sit down with Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith, the doctor behind the seven types of rest framework and author of Sacred Rest, to unpack what each type of rest actually is and how to tell which one you are missing. I share how I scored on her Rest Quiz, and we test the theory against my own life, from a joyful community singing night to nature walks with a friend.  If you keep waking up tired after a decent night's sleep, this conversation will help you work out what is really missing.  Saundra and I discuss:  The three-question morning energy check-in Saundra uses herself, and how some of her clients set an AI up to ask it for them  The seven types of rest  Why mental and emotional rest are the two areas where people score highest for depletion, and the gender pattern Saundra sees  The signs of a mental rest deficit  How suppressing emotions at work drains your energy, and what an emotional rest deficit can look like in everyday life  How one activity can restore several types of rest at once, from yoga to a phone-free dinner table  Saundra's annual rest retreat weekend with girlfriends  How mirror neurons help explain why some people leave you drained  Two simple sensory rest snacks you can do today, including one that involves your phone settings  Key quotes  "We don't recognize how much energy it takes to suppress emotions."  "Creative rest at the very heart of it is the rest that helps to awaken awe and wonder inside of us."  Connect with Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith on Instagram, LinkedIn and her website, take her rest quiz at restquiz.com, and check out her book Sacred Rest.    More from How I Work  If managing your energy and burnout is something you want to go deeper on, I have put together a Spotify playlist of my favourite How I Work episodes on exactly that. Listen to the playlist here.  And if you enjoyed this episode, a great companion listen is my conversation with Shelley Johnson, where we go deep into the science-backed strategies from my book The Energy Game. We cover how to boost your energy in under five minutes, what actually counts as rest versus fake rest, and the protect strategies that stop your energy leaking in the first place. Listen to the episode 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.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 read the books. You've locked the phone in a drawer. You've set a hard cut-off at 8 PM. And none of it has lasted more than two weeks.  That's exactly where Shaun found himself. By day he's a senior corporate strategy leader at Bupa, and by night he's the volunteer operations manager for a junior footy club responsible for 450 kids across eight teams. The systems he runs at work are tight. The systems he runs at home? Nowhere to be seen.  In this Work Edit, I sit down with Shaun to figure out why the productivity habits that protect him in his corporate role have never made it home, and what it would actually take to change that. We get into AI knowledge agents, ghost mode, setting expectations as an act of generosity, and a specific gratitude practice I think is worth trying even if you find most of them a bit naff.  If you've ever been brilliant at boundary-setting for everyone else and terrible at it for yourself, this one's for you.  Shaun and I discuss:  Why Shaun's corporate productivity systems work flawlessly at Bupa but have never crossed over into his volunteer role or home life  The AI knowledge agent idea: how building a self-serve FAQ for 450 families could cut the stream of evening messages and remove Shaun as the constant bottleneck  Staying in your lane: why context switching between work mode and parent mode leaves you doing neither well, and the simple question that helps you catch yourself doing it  Ghost mode: the difference between locking your phone away and actually choosing to be fully present, and why that reframe matters  Setting expectations as an act of generosity: how a simple autoresponder or comms window can relieve the guilt of not responding instantly, without making you seem rigid  Three good things: a specific gratitude practice, grounded in research, that quiets a busy work brain at night, and why doing it with your kids makes it even more powerful    More from How I Work  If you related to Shaun's struggle with an always-on role that never quite lets you clock off, I think you'll love my conversation with Katie. She's 18 months into a consulting portfolio career, and saying no is a muscle she's still building. Requests were multiplying faster than she could field them, which is honestly just the same problem wearing a different outfit.  Listen to Katie's episode 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.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.

Hiring someone is one of the highest-stakes decisions a founder makes. Get it wrong and you can lose time, money, and momentum. And after 16 years of building Showpo from her parents' garage into a nine-figure business, Jane Lu is the first to admit they still do not always get it right.  But across all those hires, she has landed on one single biggest red flag she screens for, and it is probably not what you would expect.  In this episode, I sit down with Jane Lu, founder of Showpo, to talk about what that red flag is, how she structures interviews to surface it, why she has built her whole leadership philosophy around being a lazy CEO, and the distinction between dopamine tasks and dividend tasks that explains why so many of us feel busy but stuck.  Jane and I discuss:  How Jane treats her calendar as her external brain, scheduling everything from supplements to podcast links to make good habits frictionless  The difference between dopamine tasks (inbox zero, Slack notifications) and dividend tasks (the work that compounds but offers no immediate reward) and how to stop letting the former crowd out the latter  Jane's content creation workflow and how she gradually built a small team of offshore editors to take the process off her plate  What 16 years of hiring has taught her about misaligned values and ego as the biggest red flags to screen for, and the specific interview questions she uses to uncover them  The accidental lesson in delegation that came from leaving her business to go to a music festival, and how it revealed what systems and a trusted team can do when the founder steps back  The case for being a lazy CEO: building the right culture, setting up strong systems, recruiting well, and then genuinely getting out of the way  Key quotes  "Being lazy is setting up the right systems and processes and really trusting your team."  "The biggest red flag I personally look for when it comes to the wrong people is ego."  Connect with Jane Lu on Instagram, LinkedIn and her website.  More from How I Work  Check out last week's conversation with Cyril Peupion, a great companion listen for anyone wanting a framework for protecting time for the work that actually matters. Listen here.  And if you want to get clearer on what deserves your time and get better at saying no to the rest, we have pulled together a Spotify playlist of our favourite How I Work episodes on exactly that. Find it 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.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'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.

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 ButlerSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.