# What I told Lael Stone about my worst year

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/how-i-work-960132/what-i-told-lael-stone-about-my-worst-year
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/how-i-work-960132/what-i-told-lael-stone-about-my-worst-year.md
Podcast: [How I Work](https://stenobird.com/podcast/how-i-work-960132)
Published: 2026-05-20T20:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://omny.fm/shows/how-i-work/amantha-imber-being-with-lael-stone
Audio file: https://mgln.ai/e/187/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/190bd54e-82e6-43fb-8f6a-af46001792de/015a1e11-6138-4002-8c1a-b450007342ad/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=71f0c47d-eac4-4e42-b713-af46001792ec
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/how-i-work-960132/episodes/what-i-told-lael-stone-about-my-worst-year
Duration seconds: 4270

## Resource

**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, 202…

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