Thought Load: Overthinking, Overfunctioning & Exhaustion with Liane Davey | 413

About this episode

Nicole Kalil and Dr. Liane Davey discuss the concept of 'thought load' and its impact on high-achieving women in the workplace.

We talk a lot about burnout, overwhelm, and productivity — but not nearly enough about the invisible mental gymnastics happening behind the scenes. The remembering, anticipating, overthinking, emotional labor, and “just handling it” that so many women carry every single day. Not just at home, but at work too. In this episode, Nicole sits down with Dr. Liane Davey — known as the Teamwork Doctor — to unpack the concept of “thought load” and why high-achieving women are especially vulnerable to carrying way too much of it. Liane is a New York Times bestselling author, leadership advisor to Fortune 500 companies, and author of the book Thought Load: Manage the Madness and Free Your Team to Do Great Work. Together, they explore how over-functioning gets rewarded in workplaces, why busyness and productivity can become traps, and how to stop becoming everyone else’s emotional support system and human reminder app. In This Episode, We Explore: What “thought load” actually is — and why it’s draining women at work Why high-achieving women often become the default problem-solvers for everyone else The difference between being busy, productive, and actually impactful How to determine what…

People in this episode

Host: Nicole Kalil

Guest: Liane Davey

Topics covered

• thought load
• burnout
• overthinking
• emotional labor
• boundary-setting
• productivity
• leadership

Keywords

• thought load
• burnout
• overfunctioning
• emotional support
• productivity
• boundary-setting
• leadership

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: New York Times, Fortune 500

Books & works: Thought Load: Manage the Madness and Free Your Team to Do Great Work

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