Speaker 1: I have not mastered how to portion out my energy
Speaker 1: in anything that looks like an even way.
Speaker 2: Every year, Holly Wainwright tells herself she won't burn out again,
Speaker 2: and every year she does. When Holly told me that,
Speaker 2: I laughed, not because it's funny, but because I've been
Speaker 2: there too. Last year, I hit my own wall of
Speaker 2: absolute exhaustion so hard that it became the inspiration for
Speaker 2: my next book. In this bonus episode, Holly and I
Speaker 2: talk honestly about the cycles that we fall into, the doing,
Speaker 2: the crashing, the promising it's going to be different next time,
Speaker 2: and why breaking that loop is so much harder than
Speaker 2: it sounds. Holly, who is a best selling author and
Speaker 2: co hosts Mama Mia out Loud, shares how she's still
Speaker 2: learning to protect her time, her focus, and her health
Speaker 2: even when life and work don't make it easy. Welcome
Speaker 2: to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies.
Speaker 3: For optimizing your date.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. Something that you've written
Speaker 2: about over the years is burnout and exhaustion, and it's
Speaker 2: something that I really related to, particularly last year. I've
Speaker 2: spoken and written quite a lot around how twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four was just a year of complete and out of
Speaker 2: burnout for me like I've never ever experienced. And that's
Speaker 2: really what prompted book number five, which is the working title,
Speaker 2: which maybe the real title is the Energy Game, and
Speaker 2: it's about how to get more of it. I would
Speaker 2: love to know for you, where are you at right
Speaker 2: now in terms of your energy.
Speaker 3: It's so funny.
Speaker 1: Need a therapy session with you at manth on this
Speaker 1: because this is something I have not solved. Almost every
Speaker 1: year I say I'm not gonna get myself to that
Speaker 1: place again. And I've made a lot of I have
Speaker 1: made a lot of changes in my working life over
Speaker 1: the past few years in terms of I used to
Speaker 1: manage teams of people. I used to be much more
Speaker 1: corporately involved in Mamma Mia. I used to have a
Speaker 1: million meetings a day and constantly be running to someone
Speaker 1: else's schedule, and that has shifted over the past few years.
Speaker 1: Now my work is mostly content focused, so obviously I
Speaker 1: record Mamma Mia out loud, and I write things and
Speaker 1: do things for Mamma Mea, but I try. I've reorganized
Speaker 1: my life and my time to be more portioned out
Speaker 1: and my dream has always been to be in charge
Speaker 1: of my own time. And I'm not there yet, but
Speaker 1: one day I will be. I'm much I'm certainly much
Speaker 1: closer to it than I was, but burnout and energy,
Speaker 1: I'm still not great at So my word of this
Speaker 1: year was not because the idea was.
Speaker 3: And I always roll.
Speaker 1: My as a tiny bit when successful people say you've
Speaker 1: got to learn to say no to things, because it's
Speaker 1: a position of amazing privilege to be in to be
Speaker 1: asked for things all the time, right, It's a position
Speaker 1: of amazing privilege to be like, no, I don't want
Speaker 1: to go to your event, I don't want to do
Speaker 1: your you know, speak at your thing like I mean,
Speaker 1: these are all really champagne problems. The question I always
Speaker 1: ask myself is am I putting my energy in the
Speaker 1: right place? Or am I just running for the sake
Speaker 1: of that? As I talk to you now, I've just
Speaker 1: come off being really sick. I had influenza A and
Speaker 1: I was absolutely smashed for three weeks, pretty much like
Speaker 1: I had to spend a whole week in bed. I
Speaker 1: lost my voice completely for almost ten days. I got
Speaker 1: completely gone, and it took me a long time to recover. Now,
Speaker 1: influenza A is going around this winter, and it is
Speaker 1: a nasty strain. And I'm not going to like pretend
Speaker 1: that I got that because of this or because of that.
Speaker 1: But what's funny is that the people in my life,
Speaker 1: including my partner Brent.
Speaker 3: He's just like, this happens to you. He's like, you
Speaker 3: don't get sick because I was.
Speaker 1: Really what I was really worried about is early this year,
Speaker 1: when the book came out, I was on tour with
Speaker 1: Mama mir out loud. It was the busiest time I
Speaker 1: can remember for a very long time. I was doing
Speaker 1: big live shows, lots of book promotion, appearances at Riders festivals,
Speaker 1: on planes, off planes, da da da da da. And
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with not getting sick, obsessed sleep, no drinking,
Speaker 1: healthy food, a million armor forced tablets, like just whatever.
Speaker 1: And I did not get sick, Amantha, I did not.
Speaker 1: I was very proud of myself. But then come this August,
Speaker 1: I just almost September. Really, I absolutely smashed for three
Speaker 1: weeks and.
Speaker 3: Says, this always happens to you.
Speaker 1: Says you never get sick a little bit, you don't
Speaker 1: get sick at all, or you get completely stuck to
Speaker 1: the bed sick, and there's me. I'm god, that's not true,
Speaker 1: that's not true.
Speaker 3: What are you talking about. I'm never sick.
Speaker 1: And then I saw another old friend and she was like,
Speaker 1: this always happens to you. She says, you you're doing
Speaker 1: a million things and then you just collapse.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, it's not true. Maybe it's true.
Speaker 1: So I've just I'm rebuilding after this sickness, and you
Speaker 1: know how you do this when you're coming off something
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: I've got to change everything.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're like that too, but I'm like,
Speaker 1: I've got to change everything. I've got a very busy
Speaker 1: October with lots of events too, and lots of travel.
Speaker 1: I need to make sure I'm portioning out my energy.
Speaker 1: I've been a bit disorganized, as you know, because I
Speaker 1: was meant to talk to you last week and I
Speaker 1: managed to forget all about it. So I'm on that
Speaker 1: train at the minute of trying to hold on to
Speaker 1: it again. So I guess this is a very long
Speaker 1: way of saying to you, I have not mastered how
Speaker 1: to portion out my energy in anything that looks like
Speaker 1: an even way, and I still haven't figured out what
Speaker 1: you really need to write a book because you would
Speaker 1: know even though this is this will be my sixth time,
Speaker 1: the book I'm writing now is some uninterrupted focused time.
Speaker 1: I don't mean for days and days, but place where
Speaker 1: you can let your head just go, let have some
Speaker 1: space to think.
Speaker 3: I am still really bad at it.
Speaker 1: I haven't figured it out, and I would like some advice.
Speaker 1: How do I stop myself from crashing?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: I would love to know, like, what are some of
Speaker 2: the changes that you've made over the last few years
Speaker 2: that have made a difference, because it sounds like the
Speaker 2: Holly now is in a better place than say, Holly
Speaker 2: three years ago.
Speaker 3: Is that fair to say?
Speaker 1: That's definitely true. What I try and do now is
Speaker 1: practically because I lived two hours away from Sydney, which
Speaker 1: is where the Mom and Mere studios are, and now
Speaker 1: obviously we record all our podcasts for video and everything,
Speaker 1: so being in studio is very important. I've kind of
Speaker 1: portioned up my week like practically in terms of, well,
Speaker 1: this part of the week is this focus, and this
Speaker 1: part of the week.
Speaker 3: Is that focus.
Speaker 1: Now that generally runs okay until it doesn't. You know how,
Speaker 1: It's inevitable that things will pop up that are on
Speaker 1: different days in different places. But it also means that
Speaker 1: I'm away from the family generally at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the week, which can be quite guilt inducing. But I've
Speaker 1: just Brent and I and the kids have discussed this
Speaker 1: a lot, is that it's actually just better for me
Speaker 1: to do that, to go, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
Speaker 1: I'm often in the city. It's very intensive work time.
Speaker 1: I will work at night, I will get everything, a
Speaker 1: lot of things done, so that then later in the
Speaker 1: week when I'm home, i'm home, you know, I'm more
Speaker 1: present and I can be in charge of my call
Speaker 1: and take the kids to this or that, you know,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, cooked dinner, all those things that
Speaker 1: I couldn't, to be honest, necessarily do when we were
Speaker 1: all living in the city. But I was on a
Speaker 1: much more nine to five schedule that generally works having
Speaker 1: that kind of focus. I'm trying to be much kinder
Speaker 1: to myself about that too, in terms of I know
Speaker 1: it's a bit unconventional, it's not what everybody would do,
Speaker 1: but it works for the moment. I also, in terms
Speaker 1: of my creative time, what works for me, which isn't
Speaker 1: very creative at all, is I have to schedule it.
Speaker 1: Say it's a Friday and I'm writing, and this is
Speaker 1: what happened to us last week. I have to put
Speaker 1: certain things in place to try and make my focus
Speaker 1: be on my creative work, which include devices in the
Speaker 1: house no Internet, because I'm as susceptible to it as
Speaker 1: anybody to be immediately distracted by social media notifications, all
Speaker 1: those things. You know, I forced myself to go, right,
Speaker 1: this is an hour where it's just me and the laptop,
Speaker 1: and the laptop that doesn't have all my connections on it.
Speaker 3: And that's what happened to us last week.
Speaker 1: When I was meant to talk to you, I'd forgotten,
Speaker 1: and then I wasn't at my calendar all my anyway, so.
Speaker 3: I tried to put Holly.
Speaker 2: I got to say, I actually find that quite impressive
Speaker 2: that you are able to just unplug, because I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people talk about it, but you had
Speaker 2: literally just unplugged last Friday, like there was no way
Speaker 2: I could have contacted you, and you are obviously very
Speaker 2: in the zone, which I actually think is quite admirable.
Speaker 2: I've in the fact that I wanted to speak to
Speaker 2: you last week, but I was actually quite impressed as well.
Speaker 1: Well, it's if you'd have had my phone number, you
Speaker 1: could have got me, because I do still I would
Speaker 1: see text messages if they popped up from on my watch. Unfortunately, however,
Speaker 1: I have to do it partly for my other professional work,
Speaker 1: for my mum and mere work. I can justify the
Speaker 1: fact that being on social media, being across everything that's happening,
Speaker 1: being connected is work, and it is in a way.
Speaker 1: But what I've learned is that I can schedule that
Speaker 1: check in time I have to, because otherwise I will
Speaker 1: be sitting at my laptop trying to get through a
Speaker 1: difficult part of a book, because writing is a lot
Speaker 1: of problem solving, and as we all know, when you
Speaker 1: come up against something that's tricky and difficult, I immediately
Speaker 1: reach for the distraction. And if the distraction is to hand,
Speaker 1: and it's Instagram on my browser or you know, news
Speaker 1: headline on my phone, I'll lose myself in that, and
Speaker 1: then that'll be an hour gone, and then I'll feel
Speaker 1: kind of grubby about that. I'll get to the end
Speaker 1: of the day and I won't have made any progress.
Speaker 1: And it's not to say I can't very easily procrastinate
Speaker 1: without a screen because I can, Like.
Speaker 3: I'll be like, oh that shelf needs cleaning.
Speaker 1: Oh the flowers outside my shed, like they really need
Speaker 1: But I do I have to go on Fridays in particular,
Speaker 1: I'd say to the muma mea team who if they
Speaker 1: do need me for anything, text me. I'm not checking
Speaker 1: my slack, I'm not looking at my you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just not because otherwise I just won't get it done.
Speaker 1: My focus is terrible. I know I'm not alone in this.
Speaker 1: I know it's a massive topic of conversation for you,
Speaker 1: and I do genuinely believe and again not an original thought,
Speaker 1: that our phones have killed our focus. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: I do have to unplug. And then the other thing
Speaker 1: I do is I give myself little rewards. So as
Speaker 1: lots of people know, I love my garden, my veggie
Speaker 1: beds have become my complete opposite. So if I'm at
Speaker 1: home and i'm writing, I'll be like, if i get
Speaker 1: this number of words done, or I've done two hours,
Speaker 1: I'm allowed to go and fiddle around in my worm
Speaker 1: farm for a while, or go and steak my tomatoes
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, Like, I'm allowed to do that.
Speaker 1: But if I haven't, then I'm not like I'm not allowed,
Speaker 1: you know, So I have to kind of gain a
Speaker 1: fire to a point.
Speaker 2: I love that worm farms a reward for you. For me,
Speaker 2: that would be punishment.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: Burnout doesn't always look like falling apart. Sometimes it's just
Speaker 2: saying yes over and over until you realize there's nothing
Speaker 2: left in the tank. Coming up, Holly talks about her
Speaker 2: year of NAP and the ways she's trying and sometimes
Speaker 2: failing to put her energy where it matters most. If
Speaker 2: you're looking for more tips to improve the way you
Speaker 2: work can live. I write a short weekly newsletter that
Speaker 2: contains tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally. You
Speaker 2: can sign up for that at Amantha dot com. That's
Speaker 2: Amantha dot com. Coming back to your word of the year, nup,
Speaker 2: Where did that go wrong? Like have you found yourself
Speaker 2: saying yes instead of no? Or like what has happened there?
Speaker 1: So the idea about nupp was about this thing about
Speaker 1: putting your energy, which is sounds very much where your
Speaker 1: book is. You're putting your energy on the things that matter,
Speaker 1: you know. So there are things for my work, my career,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, that are very important and will move
Speaker 1: things forward, and that's worthy of energy, right. But then
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of stuff that's just nice to have,
Speaker 1: nice to do, or someone else wants you to do
Speaker 1: it more than you want to do it, that you
Speaker 1: can say yes to, and suddenly your calendar fills with
Speaker 1: things that are taking you, in my case, literally taking
Speaker 1: me away from my family that are really not that important, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, well, important is the wrong word, not that
Speaker 1: crucial to the main aim. So the idea of KNAP
Speaker 1: was to say no, but with lightness, like I don't
Speaker 1: want to be you know I again, as I say,
Speaker 1: I recognize the privileged position to be in somewhere where
Speaker 1: somebody wants you to do something. So I don't want
Speaker 1: to be like no, everything's no. It's just more like.
Speaker 3: No, that's not for me this week.
Speaker 1: Where has fallen down is that there are lots of
Speaker 1: things that I want I like doing, you know, like
Speaker 1: so for example, and this is not in any if
Speaker 1: I get asked to go and interview somebody exciting, but
Speaker 1: it's going to take me away from home for a
Speaker 1: couple of days, and it's going to take me away
Speaker 1: from the book for a couple of days and it's
Speaker 1: not going to pay particularly well or it's not gonna
Speaker 1: Like in the theory of NUP, I should say no.
Speaker 1: But in the theory of Holly who likes to do
Speaker 1: fun stuff, and also I would say yes. So I
Speaker 1: still find myself looking at the month of October, for example,
Speaker 1: looking at the calendar across the month of October and
Speaker 1: being like, whoa, I did not say no to anything,
Speaker 1: and I'm barely here.
Speaker 3: I mean a lot.
Speaker 1: It'll all be fun and it'll all be great, But
Speaker 1: is it really true to the mission of Nope.
Speaker 3: No, it's not.
Speaker 1: But I'm also trying to be kind to myself, and
Speaker 1: I'd love to know what you think about this is
Speaker 1: that some months are just like that, right, So what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do instead, because what I'll do is
Speaker 1: I'll look at the calendar for here for the next month,
Speaker 1: and it's crazy, and I'll be.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, Holly, you're an idiot. Why did you do that?
Speaker 3: Why did you say yes, it's going to be this,
Speaker 3: it's going to be that. And instead I just need.
Speaker 1: To go that's October, Like November will be great and
Speaker 1: I'll be back with the family and it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's your advice.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that one of my favorite strategies for
Speaker 2: people that think that they should say no more but
Speaker 2: they're overloaded and they want to be generous and they
Speaker 2: want to do fun things is a strategy and I
Speaker 2: heard it on How I Work many years ago.
Speaker 3: It's the yes but strategy.
Speaker 2: And so when you're asked to do something, you say
Speaker 2: yes because it sounds like you want to say yes
Speaker 2: because you're getting a lot of fun things presented to you.
Speaker 2: But then the butt is the boundary. So it might
Speaker 2: be yes, I can do an in conversation live with you,
Speaker 2: but it has to be on a Tuesday night when
Speaker 2: I'm going to be in Sydney anyway.
Speaker 3: Or yes, I can.
Speaker 2: Help brainstorm this project or this new podcast idea that
Speaker 2: you've got, you know person at Muma Mea, But I've
Speaker 2: only got twenty minutes and it has to be at
Speaker 2: this time, and so it's yes, but boundary. So I
Speaker 2: would love for you to try that maybe during October
Speaker 2: that we're heading into and see if that can create
Speaker 2: a less chaotic November for you.
Speaker 3: Can you do that and report back to me, Holly,
Speaker 3: I will.
Speaker 1: I will, because that's great, because I think that that's
Speaker 1: exactly it is. That it's not about this hard like
Speaker 1: I just don't do things. It's about I will do that,
Speaker 1: but it has to fit in with the master plan,
Speaker 1: whatever the master plan is, which is to protect the
Speaker 1: part of my life life that is about my family
Speaker 1: and my creative work. Because and I think that for
Speaker 1: a lot of and I might be generalizing here, for
Speaker 1: a lot of women, there's a guilt about the fact
Speaker 1: that somehow often the most important things to me are
Speaker 1: the ones that slide to the bottom of the priority list.
Speaker 1: Like if I really think about it, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: being home for the kids, you know, and being able
Speaker 1: to do that, Like, that's incredibly important to me, but
Speaker 1: somehow it very often gets deprioritized. And you know, the book,
Speaker 1: Like having the space to write books and do them
Speaker 1: really well is incredibly important to me. And yet it's
Speaker 1: often that kind of work that gets shoved in little
Speaker 1: corners around lots of other busy things that aren't as important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think that the kind of plan about not
Speaker 1: was in was the spirit of it is about that,
Speaker 1: about the things that actually really matter. Why are they
Speaker 1: always the things that somehow are being shoved around the
Speaker 1: things that don't matter so much. Of course, my core
Speaker 1: mom and Mia work of Mama Mia out loud and
Speaker 1: mid and that is incredibly important, But there's just a
Speaker 1: lot of other stuff, you know, and so it's about
Speaker 1: trying to be very clear about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me give you one other tip, because I'm curious, like,
Speaker 2: have you ever said yes to something where you've just
Speaker 2: completely regretted it and in the moment you're just thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Like I think that we all have. I definitely have.
Speaker 2: And so something else and I'm writing about this in
Speaker 2: the book is the idea of a never again list,
Speaker 2: And for me, one of the things so I do
Speaker 2: a lot of keynote speaking. I get asked a little
Speaker 2: a lot of speaking, and somewhat not super regularly, but
Speaker 2: it happens enough that I will get asked to speak
Speaker 2: at a dinner event. And in my lifetime I've spoken
Speaker 2: at a handful of these, and every single one of them,
Speaker 2: I think bar one has just been. I've left the
Speaker 2: event and I thought why, Like my content is around
Speaker 2: self optimization. People are drunk. No one wants to hear
Speaker 2: about how to be a better person when they are
Speaker 2: drunk and they're just wondering is chocolate on the dessert menu?
Speaker 2: But I keep saying yes because I think, oh, this
Speaker 2: one will be different.
Speaker 3: And then I thought, I need to do.
Speaker 2: Something different here. I am going to start a never
Speaker 2: again list, and top of my list is never again
Speaker 2: will I speak at a dinner event, because I know
Speaker 2: they lead to disaster. And by having a list and
Speaker 2: by putting things like that on it, it just removes
Speaker 2: the decision making load because you know, if a bureau
Speaker 2: or someone reaches out and said, hey, can you speak
Speaker 2: it that dinner event, I don't need to think about it.
Speaker 2: I don't need to agonize, I don't need to wonder like,
Speaker 2: will this one be different? Well no, I will never
Speaker 2: find out because never again will I speak at a
Speaker 2: dinner So I wonder if that might be something else
Speaker 2: for you to try as well.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 1: I've literally just written these things all yes, but boundary
Speaker 1: and never again.
Speaker 2: Never.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because in my office, my little shed,
Speaker 1: which is my happy place, I have post it notes
Speaker 1: around my desk that are like because one of the
Speaker 1: things about that I know about myself is I hate
Speaker 1: feeling fenced in, and so one of the post it
Speaker 1: notes above My best says, you don't have to. It's like,
Speaker 1: it sounds so silly, but that's a reminder to me
Speaker 1: that when I start, as I say, looking at the
Speaker 1: calendar or whatever it is and getting all like upset, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, like you didn't have to do that. You
Speaker 1: can choose to change things that even just the idea
Speaker 1: of that calms me down.
Speaker 3: You don't have to.
Speaker 1: So I think these post its are going to go
Speaker 1: on the collection of post its around the window.
Speaker 2: Oh holy, I feel like I can just talk to
Speaker 2: you for hours, but I need to let you go
Speaker 2: and you need to write book number six.
Speaker 1: So I know your new book is about energy, but
Speaker 1: people keep it quote this is hilarious that this is
Speaker 1: my reference, but people keep quoting, you know. Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: said in her recent one of her recent interviews, treat
Speaker 1: your energy like it's expensive, and lots of people have
Speaker 1: started saying that, and I'm like, I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: know what that means, but maybe this is kind of
Speaker 1: what it means, like don't just spend it. But the
Speaker 1: idea of the Year of Nap was a bit that
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, so anyway, we'll see.
Speaker 2: Make it the quarter of nap, Holly, I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you so much for your time. Holly.
Speaker 1: Thank you, it's always such a joy to talk to you.
Speaker 3: Amantha.
Speaker 2: Here is the thing about burnout. It often sneaks up quietly.
Speaker 2: It all looks fine until you are flat on your
Speaker 2: back wondering how you missed the signs.
Speaker 3: What I loved.
Speaker 2: About this chat with Holly is her honesty and that
Speaker 2: reminder that rebuilding your energy isn't a one off fix.
Speaker 2: It's a constant recalibration. So the next time you find
Speaker 2: yourself running on empty, try asking what am I saying?
Speaker 2: Two that's actually draining me? And if this episode resonated,
Speaker 2: you might want to go back and listen to the
Speaker 2: main conversation I had with Holly on jealousy and ambition.
Speaker 2: And if you haven't yet followed How I Work, please
Speaker 2: do so hit that follow button so you'll never miss
Speaker 2: a new episode. If you like today's Joe, make sure
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Speaker 2: when new episodes dropped. How I Work was recorded on
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Speaker 2: Cooler Nation