How a Burnt-Out Psychologist Rebuilt Her Energy | Amantha Imber


Dr Amantha Imber has spent two decades telling other people how to work better. In 2024, none of it saved her from burnout.

If you’ve caught yourself negotiating with the alarm clock, wondering whether today is the day you finally call in sick, this one’s for you.

Amantha is an organisational psychologist and founder of Inventium, the behavioural science consultancy behind work at Google and Apple. Stepping back into the CEO chair in 2024, she found herself fantasising about getting sick enough to be hospitalised, just so nobody could reach her. She calls it the getting hit by a bus fantasy, and it’s where her new book, The Energy Game, began.

She won’t tell you to overhaul your life or book a retreat you don’t have time for. She’s honest that the exhaustion doesn’t vanish overnight. What changes is realising energy is something you manage, not proof of how hard you’re working.

That shift alone is worth the 40 minutes.


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Meet the Guest

Amantha Imber

Dr Amantha Imber is an organisational psychologist and the founder of Inventium, one of Australia’s leading behavioural science consultancies.

She has helped organisations including Google, Apple, Disney, LEGO and Atlassian rethink how they work, and in 2021 became the first Australian to win the Thinkers50 Innovation Award, described by the Financial Times as the “Oscars for Management Thinking.” She was also named one of the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence.

Amantha hosts How I Work, Australia’s number one ranking business podcast, which has passed six million downloads. She is the bestselling author of Time Wise, The Innovation Formula, The Creativity Formula and The Health Habit. Her latest book, The Energy Game, grew directly out of her own experience of burnout in 2024, and offers more than 50 science backed, quick to apply strategies for rebuilding energy without a life overhaul.

Amantha’s writing and research have featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur and Fast Company. She lives in Melbourne.

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