Full Transcript for Wired to Fail: How the Digital Workplace Was Built Against You with Dr Kristy Goodwin

daughters, and I heard that woman take the final breath of her life. And It's a moment I'll never forget because it forced me to confront my own possible mortality. Had I almost paid the ultimate success tax. Yeah. You know, the doctors did all the testing and the only explanation they came up with as to why I was so sick with COVID and having these seizures was that I was burnt out. Years and years. And it wasn't just trying to homeschool three sons in the pandemic. That certainly amplified my stress. That I'd heard the whispers from my ears. I'd for sorry, for years. I don't know if you felt this too. You know that. speaker-0: That we specif speaker-1: Slow down. Work at a more sustainable pace, Christy. Release a stress valve. And I ignored it and I kept what I see many high performing women do. We hustle and we grind and we keep going. I often say we've adopted that caudal advice of the nineteen eighties. You remember the soldier on? speaker-0: Yeah. For sure. I remember this ad on TV. Soldier Ron with Cudrell. Like speaker-1: Yeah. Apologies that will stick with your listeners as long as I think it's in my head. But we have adopted these ways of working and living that don't work. And it was in that hospital that I had to reconcile the fact that even though I speak about stress and burnout, even though I coach high performers around how to avoid this, I wasn't immune myself. And so I made a promise to myself that if I was lucky enough to recover and leave that hospital, and I was. And that privilege isn't lost on me for a moment, but I promised myself that I was going to start walking my talk. I was going to start living and working the way that I knew we were designed. And this almost sounds like a panteen ad. ⁓ it didn't happen overnight, but it did happen. speaker-0: Tell you what, these brands can thank us later. speaker-1: Not an endorsement. But no. It it really forced me to define what does success look like. ⁓ and I had a very wise friend and somebody who used to work in my business, and Karen always used to say to me, What does success in this season of life look like? And I think so many of us are marching to such a frenetic and frantic pace that we've never paused to question and to ponder, is this really what success looks like? And I think we often speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: emulate other people's versions of success. And it's not until there's a health crisis, not until there's a relationship breakdown, or there's some defining moment in time that forces us to really define, articulate, get clear crystal clear on what success looks like. And so for me that was that that Amelia, our lovely friend Amelia talks about a temporal landmark, a really pronounced moment in time where your life will never be the same. And for me, laying in that hospital bed was. And so It took me about four years to talk about this. I felt immense shame. I was embarrassed. You know, I was a thought leader in this space. I was coaching people. And

yet here I was on a hospital bed, so unwell with burnout. And I was asked to deliver a a keynote on a World Mental Health Day at one of Australia's largest ⁓ financial organizations, shall I say. And just before I went on stage, the lady said to me, We'd love you to to share a personal story. hadn't prepared myself to share it. But I thought, why not? Yeah. And I shared that story of my code red ward. I cried on stage, but I had women coming up to me in the lift afterwards. I had women coming up to me in the local coffee shop because I started sharing it online and started talking about this fact that women aren't okay. Women are not okay. We're certainly not fine. Yeah. Because we all know what fine means. I heard this the other day. ⁓ I don't know if you've heard this, Jazz. People say fine means feelings inside not expressed. How good is that? speaker-0: Heard that. Amazing. But isn't it so true though, right? Isn't it? Gee. speaker-1: Yes, and we've almost accepted this. You know, I was reading a report just last week from Peanut and Nuna and they said that ninety three percent of mothers are reporting that they are burnt out, yet sixty percent of us are saying that we are good. We have normalized living, as I often call it being a low res, powered down, depleted version. And I I just we need to talk about this, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. And my my moment, although it was felt with such shame and embarrassment. has actually been a blessing in disguise because I I feel like it's a ⁓ an obligation, an honor to share these things and help people find another way out. speaker-0: Think this is, you know, this is an obvious reason why you're such a successful speaker and coach in this space. I mean, you're obviously very vulnerable, you're authentic, you're honest, but this is an issue that all of us experience. Ninety three percent of of new mothers of women being burnt out. I would absolutely believe that. But Nobody's really found the solution because in the end it becomes a personal burden that we seem to have to manage because the world just does not slow down. Our workplaces don't stop expecting more and more of us year on year. KPIs, targets, they never go backwards. They're always on the increase. And when you get to the end of that financial year and you think, wow, I just never thought I'd be able to get to that, you know, that target, suddenly that target moves and it doesn't even move a little bit, it moves exponentially. So it's really, really hard. And I think, you know, a lot of this too, I put myself in the same ⁓ boat as you is that we see ourselves as high achievers, as people that can do it all and handle it all, because history tells us that we've had to dig deep and find a way. And, you know, a lot of the time burnout does hide behind that lens of achievement and We do try lots of different ways to address it. You know, we're doing the meditating, we're doing the sleep hygiene, we're wearing the aura rings and the whoop bands and we're trying to manage the digital load, yet we're still running on empty. Like, why don't any of those interventions work? speaker-1: Because I think we're trying to apply micro strategies. You know, we're trying to self-care our way out of systemic and structural problems that we cannot fix alone. And so I often say there are absolutely macro general things that organizations, that governments, that policies can start to address. So we can start to address, I call this the gender wellbeing gap. We've got a very pronounced difference in the data that tells us that more women than men are experiencing stress and burnout. And I think part of this is most definitely those macro global issues. You know, we're trying to to operate. I often say we're trying to often mother like it's 2020. Sorry, we're trying to work and live like it's 2026, but we're trying to mother like it's still 1956. Parenting, parental. speaker-0: Hundred percent. speaker-1: expectations have grown. We've added in another digital load that research tells us that women are absorbing. They're often by default the parent in the WhatsApp group or the school communications. Yeah. Yeah. So we're trying to almost self-care our way out of these structural problems. But I also think there are things that we can do at a micro level because waiting for these structural systemic changes to happen will take time. And there are things that we can do. And so I I've created I I call it the ⁓ powered up pillars. And I think there are three things that are achievable. And I give people, I call them science-backed, brain-based protocols. How can we power ourselves up? And I think there's three big pillars that we can look at. One, we have to build our stress adaptability. We are living in a world that is seeing a, you know, digital acceleration at a rate that we have never seen in human history. And Justin Trudeau made a great quote recently saying, if you think this is fast. This will be the slowest rate of digital acceleration from this point moving forward. You know, at the moment we're seeing financial, you know, instability, global uncertainty. Yeah. So we are living in a stress superstorm. So how do we build our capacity to dance with stress? And unfortunately, stress gets a bad rap. And our HOS is designed for stress. However, our HOS was designed for pulses of stress, and we were designed For resolving the stress cycle. Our human operating system was never designed to go from back-to-back virtual meetings to triaging a bulging inbox to replying to, and we've seen, you know, there has been since the rapid adoption of AI, there has been a 104% increase in email usage. Which is the very technology. 104% hundred active track released a study telling us 104% increase in email. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: ⁓ a one hundred and forty five percent increase in collaboration and messaging tools. So we're calling it that our work days have become more digitally dense. And I think our

professional sorry, our personal lives have as well. And so we're in this constantly chronically elevated stress state. Now, as I said, stress is not bad. In fact, some great research tells us that stress in those short pulses can actually catalyze, it can enhance our performance. Yeah. So how do we develop that tolerance for stress? How do we eliminate the micro stresses? ⁓ and then how do we build our, I call it our stress resilience, so that when we do have a stressful incident, you know, the the challenging workplace conversation that we can react and not respond. Sorry, respond and not react. Yes. Yeah. So we that's that first pillar, building stress adaptability. The second pillar is what I believe is the super skill of the 21st century. We used to be t told that our IQ was the best predictor of our success in life. And then in more recent years we've said, no, no, no. A person's EQ, their emotional intelligence, determined their success. Hands down, what I believe is the super skill of the twenty first century is our F Q, our focus quotient. Yeah. Yeah We have to be careful. I said F Q. speaker-0: Or we like swear words on this podcast, so don't worry about that. speaker-1: I caught their attention. speaker-0: Absolutely. F Q. Not F U, but F Q, my friends. Optimize your F Q. Yeah. speaker-1: No, your capacity to focus in a world teeming. You know, our digital world has been deliberately designed to be distracting and disruptive. Yeah. And, you know, we often point the finger at social media and gaming platforms for our kids and the the distracting, you know, addictive design of those, but we've never really paused to consider our workplace technologies. You know, the fact that we get slack pings and our notification bubbles by default are usually red and red weak. associate like associate with danger and importance. The fact that there's a metric telling us we've got 47 teams messages we have to triage. ⁓ So our capacity to focus is the second pillar. And the third pillar is the one that I have personally found the most challenging. I'm asking you, Jess, if you do as well, it's reframing recovery. I often say ⁓ rest is a right and a responsibility. It's not a reward. Yeah. Gartner research tells us that when we proactively recover, we are 26% more productive. So I often talk for a lot of high performers, the the notion of laying on the couch or going to have a massage or closing your eyes or even just leaving your desk to eat your lunch is such a radical, challenging thing to do. And so we know that optimizing recovery. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: not only boosts our performance and our well being, but I often say to people, where were you when you came up with a genius idea? You solved a complex problem that you spent months agonizing over. Where where are you often having those great ideas? speaker-0: 100% always walking along the beach. Yeah. Walking along the beach, looking at the ocean, listening often to music. It's funny. I love podcasts. Obviously I run one and I do love them, but I I try really hard to listen to music when I go outside and exercise because it just allows me to escape my brain. speaker-1: You said that perfectly. What you're activating, this is the neuroscientist in me, is the default mode network. DMN. I call it the do mostly nothing network. When we let our minds meander, when we're walking along the beach, when we're having a shower, when we're in the car or the bus or the train or a plane or when we're driving, we create optic flow. And when things move past our eyes, that optic flow quietens down our amygdala and we enter this default mode network. And so I've I've asked thousands of people in keynote audiences where were they when they had their great idea and usually it's the shower or the car. Yeah. Never, ever have I had anyone say in my inbox or in an Excel spreadsheet. No. speaker-0: You're so right. I I'm so passionate about what you're saying here because like I think we have I often call them the golden handcuffs on that we have attached to our desk, you know, and we have this again, this sort of normalized view that there's no ROI on rest and we've become this society that only values output constantly. And there's a lot of anxiety around how much we're contributing. And we'll get into that with the AI, you know, era as well. But You know, we've got to start to value it or society has to start to value the importance of rest. I wish I could amplify all of that evidence that you've just covered off on, because we don't legitimately treat it like it is a rest and recovery cycle that's actually going to optimize our work. So i I find it just really frustrating because so much of this is about the systems around us, enabling us to be people that thrive, not just little workhorses and lemmings that are, you know, beholden to whatever the workforce and and whatever the business that we're in wants us to do. And I think particularly, you know, for us as as small business o owners or entrepreneurs, that's even more intense because there's no one else to rely on to make this work than us. So you've got to and a lot of the time that identity-based habits of being a high achiever and someone that's prepared to be resilient and can push through. keeps us in the golden handcuffs at our desk trying to find a solution and a way. It is so hard to manage, I think, when it comes to this. speaker-1: Yeah. Can I pick up on a few things that you said there? Because you talked about we often don't see the the value add from the the recovery. And from a brain perspective, we know that when we take a break. So let's say we leave our desk, we remove the golden handcuffs, and we heaven forbid just walk outside for ten minutes. It doesn't have to be a power walk or a F forty-five class, but we move. The act of movement creates ⁓ things in our brain like brain derived nootropic factors. They're B DNFs. They're like fertilizer for your brain. Right. We make dopamine,

serotonin when we move. We make something called endocannabinoids that help us regulate our stress. So our human operating system was never designed for us to be sedentary by default. Yet we are these days, as we've got those golden handcuffs. So there is, you know, brain based reasons to to want to take a break and to recover. I often talk to people because a lot of the women And high performers that I coach really grapple with this. I know I did. I felt guilty. And so I've reframed recovery as a peak performance pit stop. And I often like to use the analogy of a race car. In 2026, race cars are so technically and mechanically sophisticated they don't need to take pit stops. They could do the whole race without ever taking a pit stop, but they still do. Why do they still take pit stops to change drivers and refuel and and and change the tires? Because they do not want that race car crawling to the finish line. They want that race car finishing in an optimal state. And so it might be semantics, but if you can swap out the word for rest, I I coached a CEO once and he understood the science behind needing to take breaks. And he said to me, look, Christy, my my EA and some of my team have access to my calendar. I can't put boredom. in my calendar, but I understand the merits of it. Yeah. So I'm going to write down in my calendar and I'm going to block it off and it will move throughout the week, but I'm going to try and block off an hour each week to have this default mode network time. So he called it activation of default mode network time, just so it made him feel more important. I love it. Do what it do you know what it was for him at yes? That that hour was either playing golf or going for a surf. That's when his mind meandered. That's when he solved problems. This particular gentleman came up with an idea on one of those days when he was surfing that generated his business twenty five million dollars in revenue. Now I cannot guarantee this does not come with the money back. Isn't that and so we've we've and and this I think speaks to the third thread I wanted to pull on with what you said is that we need the biggest thing we can get is people in leadership positions walking the talk. ⁓ Yeah. As an employee speaker-0: I was about to say that. speaker-1: You can have all the best intentions, you could have all the best protocols and hacks ready to go. But that guilt, if you've never seen it modeled before, and in fact, some great research that was published last year from Singapore told us that a leader's well being is fifty-six times more effective than an EAP at building stress and resilience. It is more effective at boosting employees well being than any stress or resilience program. Yeah. And we also know, this was what I loved about this study, is yes, a leader's well being sets the tone for employees' well-being, but it also was strongly correlated with organizational performance. Because when you invest in your human capital, when you invest in your people, especially your leaders, they have a ripple effect. They have a contagion effect. Absolutely. speaker-0: Preach to everything that you just said. I think, you know, there's a there's a lot of evidence across the board in different industries about the the role modeling of leadership. You know, we're going to go and talk about AI and technology a little bit more now, but I know that, you know, reports coming from ⁓ everywhere from McKinsey to Gallup data to the World Health Organization to the World Economic Forum are all starting to say, in terms of adoption of anything, whether it's AI or whether it's Trying to increase well-being and reduce burnout. It starts with leaders who are prepared to do it themselves, but not just do it, but make it visible. So, you know, I don't know how clear his diary was for everyone else, but perhaps when people are starting to look at booking a meeting with him and they start to see this regular booking in his calendar. That's where that contagion effect can really start. We just need, you know, those courageous first movers, the people who are prepared to change those environments and do things differently to activate in that way. speaker-1: I agree. And as you've articulated beautifully, we need the leaders walking the talk. We also have to be from an organizational perspective really careful that we are not either overtly or covertly rewarding people who are burnt out and stressed. You know, the person that gets the promotion who is fried to a crisp. They are on the the precipice of burnout ninety percent of the time. Mm-hmm. we are sending very powerful signals to our other employees and other leaders when that behavior is rewarded. You know, those people that get the bonus, the huge bonus, because they've depleted themselves. So Yeah. Yeah. speaker-0: We can't think that people are not putting two and two together. I think with that, you know, like it's very obvious it's the person that's that's responding to those messages at midnight or one o'clock in the morning. I mean, I was having a conversation with someone yesterday about this going, why why can't we or why do we not choose to use a schedule send? Something as simple as that, you know, because ultimately there's a level of that person that wants to be seen at sending that email at that time. speaker-1: Can I I I I coined a term called digital presenteism. And what we see is, and again, there's this is a gender difference, ⁓ women tend to select or ask for roles with more flexibility because they're often absorbing more of the caring and domestic responsibilities that come with a home life. And many women, especially the women I coach, say they that comes with a sense of guilt. And so from an optics perspective, they want to be seen to be responsive. So they will o you know, reply to the emails at eleven o'clock at night. They're still, you know, triaging teams chats late at the night or first thing in the morning. Yeah. And so

one of the things and and I work with some organizations to help them do this is we need teams and businesses to create digital guardrails, not just in response to our right to disconnect legislation that we have here in in Australia. Yeah. But from a well being and a sustainable performance perspective. Because Many of us have adopted digital habits and behaviors in our workplaces that are not sustainable. But we never, you know, let's be honest. We were thrust back in 2020 into remote work for many of us. There was no long term change management program. You know, we were told on I think it was Friday the thirteenth of March to take our laptops home and just go home and work from home for a couple of weeks. Yeah. And we've never really figured out, you know, remote hybrid work protocols. So I often talk about Getting people as a team, and sometimes this is a more granular level, but to come up with your digital guardrails. What are your digital norms, practices, and principles? Just like you articulated with the email sending, is the onus on the sender or the receiver to be sending or, you know, delay sending messages? Yeah. Do you have a communication escalation plan so that when there is an urgent, a legitimately urgent, time-sensitive issue? How is that disseminated? So people can switch off. You know, that inability. Deloitte's women's at work study last year said that only forty percent of women feel like they can switch off from work. Sixty percent of women feel like we have to be always on. And it's I think it it it's the earning that right for more flexibility. So hence we revert back to that digital presentee. speaker-0: Yeah, it's such an important point. You know, d I remember when you coined digital presenteism and, you know, it it pre-COVID, you know, wasn't even it wasn't anywhere near the level of escalation that it's at now. You know, we had things like notifications and we always had that infinite availability always on mentality. But now with AI, that has really escalated this in a number of different ways. And I wanted to talk to you about the concept of of cognitive load and cognitive debt. I know you and I are quite passionate about this, that the the overuse of of AI, the over reliance of AI is actually becoming a a big problem. AI automation bias is is another way to describe it. Do you think that AI in general is delivering on its promise, or is it just creating a new layer of pressure and intensity dressed up as efficiency and optimization? speaker-1: Yeah, look, I think the research is still in its infancy, but from the preliminary research that I have looked at, I I d I think we're we're seeing the productivity paradox. You know, the efficiency gains that we were supposed to get from AI, I don't think have come yet. There are some I I read a a paper earlier this week about botch sitting. And so we are now spending a lot of our time waiting for output from our our AI tools or checking. Because we all know AI hallucinates. I heard somebody say this the other day and I loved it. I was at a conference. Melinda shared this and she said, think of AI like your friend, one of your closest friends who has taken illicit drugs for the first time. It's going to be convincing. It is going to be per persuasive. It's going to have a level of confidence and articulation that will trick you into thinking that its output is on the money. Yeah. But speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-1: It is conflating things. It is hallucinating. And so I think we need to bear that in mind. Yeah. We know ⁓ Active Track have produced a a workplace study and they have found that our days, whilst interesting, our work days have become slightly shorter since the adoption of AI. They are becoming more digitally dense. Yeah. We are spending nine percent less doing deep work because we're Bot sitting, we're checking for AI hallucinations. From a brain perspective, I think what and again, we don't yet have long term longitudinal data on this, but we know that cognitive atrophy, you know, when we are constantly offloading to the technology to do our mentally heavy lifting work. Now, yes, for some tasks that are really rudimentary, that are monotonous, that where AI automation can step in, absolutely use them. But when you are offloading the the tasks or the cognitive effort that you bring, you know, your expertise. Mm-hmm. I love the analogy that AI should be your sparring partner. It should not be your ghostwriter. And I think many of us are relying on AI to be our ghostwriter to do the whole project from way to go. We will see cognitive atrophy. We know that neural pathways die off when we, you know, use it or lose it. And I think that's a real risk that we're seeing. speaker-0: It's so it's such it's something that I cannot emphasize but you know, more to people. Even when I do these presentations, I s I I use a story. I don't know if you remember that movie Wally, the the Pixar movie about the little robot that l lives in a dystopian world. And he goes on a on a quest across the galaxy to try and find a way to solve, you know, the to bring the Earth, I guess, back to its its heyday. And he comes across this this little rocket ship called Axiom. And he goes into Axiom and he comes across a whole generation of fitless humans. So human beings that have literally learnt to just get around in little mini little rocket ships and press buttons and suddenly, you know, things like milkshakes and cheeseburgers will will will turn up. They're very overweight. One of them falls out of one of these rocket ships and it's like he's like a little cockroach. Can't get off his back. And, you know, I ha make a little bit of a joke about it, but this is exactly what we're talking about here. We have the risk of creating fitless humans, at least in terms of our brain function, if we atrophy all of our human skills. And I think it's also important to think about too, because, you know, there's this existential dread

and anxiety about AI coming and taking our jobs. And, you know, the fact that we perhaps might even be training AI in our day-to-day to take our jobs. And I think it's much more nuanced than that because, you know, we've got to think about it in terms of our value and what we bring to the workplace. And if we atrophy the skills that make us valuable, then AI replacing us is far easier. So we've got to think about it a little bit more holistically. And if we're creating cognitive debt, if we're not practicing memory recall, if we're not able to pick up on those hallucinations which are happening everywhere, then that's where risk really scales for us, our well-being, and of course in our workplaces. I even heard that ⁓ the the AI detection tools, so things like zero GPT and Turnitin, some of those tools have analyzed Martin Luther King's I Had a Dream speech and found that it was 87% AI. So, you know, it's absolutely ridiculous. the extent that some of these things ⁓ get get wrong. So we have to make sure that that we lean into that. Now you mentioned, you know, deep work and and that's the dream, right? AI frees us humans up to do the deep work. But deep work ki requires the conditions, you know, to actually do it. So for leaders listening in today, what do they need to focus on to create that opportunity in their their workplaces? Yeah. speaker-1: I think we're at a unique period in time, you know, how we work, where we work, you know, are we working remotely in the office hybrid? So this unique juncture in time is an opportunity for us to redefine what does successful work look like. And I think we know more than ever about the human brain. We know, you know, emerging evidence about how we can use AI. So I think this is a really great opportunity. I know a lot of people are afraid and feeling overwhelmed. And yes, there is, you know, a rapid rate of digital acceleration. But what if we use this as an opportunity to redefine how we work? And that's where I think going back to our human operating system. ⁓ I often talk about our HOS was designed for us to work in sprints, not marathons. I call them work in a digital dash. And that is because we have something in our brain called an Ultradian rhythm. And our Ultradian rhythm means our HOS is designed to roughly go through a peak. For about 90 minutes. This is why we sleep in 90 minute cycles. After that, and it's give or take, it's not an exact 90 minutes, but after that 90 minutes, we will inevitably hit a 20-minute trough. So we are not designed to sit down at our desk with our golden handcuffs on and pump out four hours worth of work and then run to the bathroom and then sit back down and go again. That's working against our human operating system. The other benefit I think that came out of the pandemic. The pen pandemic gave us lots of gifts. It gave us lots of horrible things, but one of the gifts it afforded ⁓ knowledge workers. And I recognize that frontline workers don't have as much locus

of control over their time. But one of the biggest blessings I believe for COVID for knowledge workers is that we now have greater schedule flexibility. We have a greater locus of control over when we work. And one of the best things I get teams to do is to identify their unique chronotype. So your chronotype dictates what time of the day or night You are naturally most focused and alert. I call it your peak performance window. And so we roughly fall into three categories. We're either the early morning lines, which I am, yes, I know you are not quite a lion because I've tried to speaker-0: early as you a walk with yes. Can I just say this is what this walk is happening at five AM. So there's there's no it's I'm I'm I would could almost consider myself almost a morning person, but no, I'm not a five AM walk out walker. I'm often running into you while you're leaving the gym attending the gym. For the morning classes. speaker-1: Yeah. So aligning our work, I often say if you can, align the contours and the cadence of your day to your chronotype. So your chronotype dictates basically when we're most focused and alert, but it also dictates when we naturally want to fall asleep and wake up. And McKinsey and co-research found that if we do our deep work, if we do our most productive work in those most productive hours, we are fifty-five percent more productive. This is not about working harder, it's about working smarter. And so how can we, not all day, but during the that peak performance window, how can we build a fortress around our focus? How can we eliminate as many distractions as possible? So that that 90 minute sprint that I might protect means that I can get all of, you know, the data analysis, the report written and actually get that done. Because we know that when we are distracted, it takes the average adult 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back into a focused state after a distraction. If we think about the average workday and the constant pings and dings that are diverting our attention, that is hugely costly. Yeah. So I think we've we've got a a rich opportunity to redefine what good work looks like. Again, leveraging the AI and the digital tools that are at our disposal to free us up from the monotonous shallow work in particular. But we just have to be really careful that we're still doing the mentally challenging work that we're we're designed to do, bringing that expertise so it can be that. The AI can be that sparring partner. speaker-0: That's where we get that meaningful work, right? You know, there's a discussion around that AI taking our jobs and there's this sort of unfulfilled at this point promise of a utopia of of of freedom and and a universal basic income and all these different things. But actually when we do the deep work, when we're in the messy middle, when we achieve something or we produce something that we feel really proud of. You know, that's where we understand that work is so much more than a paycheck. It's so

much more than that box tick exercise when we're able to get those systems around us right. And that's the beauty and benefit of something like AI. But we do need to really zero in and think about the ways that we're using this in a more meaningful way. You know, you talked about notifications and the distractions. I think the fragmentation of our systems and the volume of our systems that we're using right now. is such an easy win for a lot of organizations to do an audit to see whether something is actually necessary. Can we reduce that? And and by way of doing that, we reduce the distractions and the cognitive load pretty quickly as a as a quick win. So there's many things that we can do if we just start to focus our attention on the objective and what we're trying to build meaningfully. I did want to ask as well, you know, for burnt out women, speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: If they're in this world, if they're in a a role that's sort of really fast paced and high volume, and they've got an organization that is pushing them to adopt AI. And there's, you know, I know of organizations that have metrics and notifications that will remind people if they're not using AI enough in their workplaces. You know, there's a risk of them just throwing their hands up and going, look, I'm out. And we don't want that to happen. And they're often, statistically, as we've seen over the last couple of months, the ones that ask the hard questions about AI, about ethics and integrity and automation and whether we're actually building technology that works for us as humans. Do you see that as a a cost gap? You know, and are we paying enough attention to that issue? speaker-1: Yes. I I hear this anecdotally from a lot of high performing women too. They've been the squeaky will and I say to them, keep squeaking because I don't think we're critically thinking. You know, I think part of the problem is there's this quick adoption. There's a keeping up with the Joneses because we can see the AI rollout in this organization. And I I I think the smarter organizations I spoke recently at a conference and it was so refreshing to hear there was an open panel C suite QA. And one of the questions from the floor was in this particular industry, when are we rolling out more AI systems? And this was from an industry where other companies are most certainly using AI. And their response was that they had seen too many hiccups, too many really detrimental problems with how it's been rolled out across their industry. But they were pausing, they weren't avoiding it, but they were pausing and pondering before they figured out how they could embed it meaningfully. And I think that's the key word. I think there's a lot of if let's be honest, I'm seeing a lot of tokenistic use of of AI. Yeah. Very rudimentary use. And again, it's because people are hitting these metrics and targets, these really false measures of effective use. So I I champion women to keep talking about your concerns. Yeah.

You know, we know that a lot of the data these large language models are pulling on are historical measures. So we have some very baked in gender differences, some bias that we need to be aware of. Yeah. And I I I think often people are just unaware because we're adopting it in an unquestionable manner because we're in this frantic, frenetic pace to to keep up. speaker-0: Yeah. And look from an organizational point of view, there's legislation and regulation that people need to be aware of when it comes to work health and safety. I know that the ⁓ the work health and safety digital systems act in New South Wales changed in February that said that we can't now overburden you know, people when it comes to to workloads, bes especially around AI, we can't unreasonably monitor them. And of course we can't allow AI to make discriminatory Or biased decisions. And so, you know, this is really starting to come to the fore for organizations. We've already had legislation that has said that we have to create safe psychosocial environments inclusive of the online world for quite some time. So, you know, if you're a leader listening to this or you're, you know, ⁓ someone working in this space that has concerns, start a conversation about how we're addressing how you're addressing that because. there's a requ a a positive duty requirement as well. So are you educating people? Are you consulting? Are you listening? Are you auditing your digital systems? Do you know where the human in the loop actually is? Because I think we like to talk a lot about that. Everybody sees the value. But you know, unless you're that decision maker at the top of the table, as those processes come down towards every other worker, are they clear about what their responsibilities are and where that human in the loop actually is as well. So, you know, if if anything, you can pull that card of of work health and safety legislation. Yeah. In there. And if that's what it requires for people to sit up and pay attention, then so be it. Yeah. Now, what's one structural change, I guess, that you think orgas organizations can make? You know, we've talked about obviously the reg the legislation. ⁓ we've talked about reducing fragmented systems and putting our own boundaries in place and making sure that we're working in in those digital dashes. How can we think beyond like wellness programs, one off education sessions? What's actually going to move the needle in this space for organizations moving forward? Look. speaker-1: This might be a Christie bias, I'm acknowledging that from the outset of this answer. I think the ripest opportunity is that we can marry what we know about our human operating system and we can marry it to these new ways of working. How can we redefine and reshape how we work so that it's compatible, not in conflict with our human operating system? And I think there are so as you just described, there are so many things that are within reach that are not cumbersome. speaker-0: But we love it. speaker-1: And I often say, you know, we cannot outperform our HOS. We have to live and work in congruence with our biological bandwidth. And, you know, we're not designed, you know, for one example, we our prefrontal cortex, so the part of our brain that does all our heavy lifting, our prefrontal cortex only has a four to six hour battery life per day. Now, don't misconstrue this. I know a lot of organizations are trialing or implementing four day work weeks. And sometimes when people hear that statistic, they just cherry pick it and they say, ⁓ Christy said I should have a four hour workday. I'm not proposing that. But for you to do the mentally taxing work, that deep work, you have a four to six hour battery life in total per day. So how can we structure your day so that you're working and then recovering? And so you have those ninety-minute oltradian sprints and then some sort of recovery. How can we it even comes down to the mechanics of your your workplace? Yeah. You know, w we've got a lot of people who are returning to the office only to spend the entire day in teams meetings. And we have open plan offices and that haven't all been acoustically treated very well. And we know Bond University have done some great research. When we can hear intelligible speech, it it elevates our cortisol levels. It stresses us out. And yet that's how many of us are operating in offices. Yeah. ⁓ where everyone's on their virtual meetings and often they have their headsets on and they're oblivious to the fact that they're a few decibels higher than what is acceptable standards. speaker-0: Everything that you're talking about, I'm th just in my head thinking about my wife who is in the next room constantly on the phone. She works in sales. So, you know, it's all she's always on. And the one thing that we do have a bit of a a tease of each other about is that she is constantly I'm like, I can't concentrate. I have to schedule this time when I'm doing podcast recordings to say, dial it down, because we can't have you having that discussion coming through the microphone. But you're so right. It's really hard to focus and I think even more so after COVID because you know, we're used to that silence. Well, not me obviously, but ⁓ we're used to that silence. So going back into a an office or a workplace, you just can't concentrate. And it's easier. And I hear people say this all the time, you know, it's easier, I get more work done at home. It's that doesn't speaker-1: ⁓ yeah. And that goes back to w this is again rich opportunity because let's redefine what is the function of the workplace. Is it for us to collaborate in person? And we know this, you know, we can have a digital conversation and w it will produce cortisol, yet we have the identical conversation face to face and we're releasing oxytocin, which is a social bonding hormone. So we've got this opportunity to reconsider what's the actual function and role of the workplace. Yeah.

Where do we do our best deep work? And for a lot of people, it is at home or in a third space. So taking this as a I I just think we've been gifted. Yeah. Maybe it's a gift wrapped up in a a different disguise, but we've been given this opportunity for us to redefine, you know, work is not working for people at the moment. We would not be seeing the rates of stress, exhaustion, and burnout that we are seeing if people were working in ways that worked for them. And so we can keep going and and continue this trajectory where people are not fine, where we have this growing gender well being gap, or we can s stop and recalibrate and find ways of working that actually work for humans. And I that's where I just again Christy biased. But I think going back to we have to work with our HOS, the reason that we are struggling is 'cause we're not. Yeah. speaker-0: I don't think it's bias. I think as you're speaking, there'll be a lot of nodding heads, mine included. It's all all of us are feeling it, right? But there's no I think when we look around, everybody's just kind of getting on with it. And so we start to gaslight ourselves a little bit about whether it's just us or, you know, is this just what life is and we've got no power to change it. Before we go on to our fast five when it comes to the first movers framework, I just wanted to ask you one quick question on that. Is and that's around responsibility. So we're in workplace. Like whose responsibility is it to start shaping these systems? Because we've talked about technology and obviously that might be, you know, IT. We've talked about ⁓ you know, well-being and psychological safety, and that can be HR, like, you know, managers, we know middle managers can sometimes have the greatest influence over engagement, productivity, culture. Whose responsibility is it? How what what's a step a workplace can take? to address this meaningfully with so many stakeholders. speaker-1: Look, without saying sounding generic and without giving very simple advice, I think the onus sits on all of our shoulders. I would say though, that leaders set the tone. You build the culture, you shape the culture. So if we want to get systemic change, if we want to get large scale change, we have to invest in our human capital and we have to invest in the performance and well being of our leaders. We know that just forty-five minutes of sleep debt from a leader will jeopardize the psychological safety from their of their team. We measured this with whoop bands. ⁓ there was a study that was reported. We know that any amount of sleep debt drops our cognitive performance by five to ten percent. So if we can get our leaders optimizing their performance and wellbeing, then they have that ripple effect and we get other people with the permission to take the breaks and to work the same way. We're very simple as humans. And we've got these things called mirror neurons. So mirror neurons mean we're biologically designed to imitate and copy. And so if we are emulating really healthy, productive, sustainable behaviors that our leaders are demonstrating, we will all start to thrive. But we can't wait for our leaders. So if you're in a position that is not perhaps a leadership position, what's within your locus of control? What can you do that will power you up, that will sustain your performance and well-being? So I think it sits with all of us, but if I was to if if I was an organization and looking at where I was going to spend my money, I I would certainly start at the top and then continue that elsewhere. Yeah. speaker-0: I love that. Be the first to go first if you must. You know, leaders are at every level of an organization. And I think to your point, you know, go even going back to, you know, your origin story about being in hospital with COVID, you know, I think a lot of us can have those big moments, those those aha moments, but over time we can sometimes not forget them, but we can sort of start to, you know, be taken over by the normalcy of life. And so it's to understand that this can take time. And to keep your eye on the prize and to keep consistent and to keep talking about these things because they don't happen overnight as we know. ⁓ but they will happen and you know, when one person moves, it does have that contagion effect there. All right. So one of the things that we do to wrap up every episode is to go through our first five framework. ⁓ and that's fueling growth, igniting courage, reframing relationships, shaping the status quo, and telling your story. Now, when it comes to fueling your growth, are you able to share a book and you've shared so many pieces of research today that I love, but a a tool or a resource that has most shifted how you think about performance and technology that other people could listen to or read as well? speaker-1: Yes. I'm a big proponent of people using wearable devices. And it do I don't care what the brand is, a garment, an aura ring, a whoopstrap, a Fitbit, it does not matter. What I think gets measured gets mas managed. And so the problem with any habit change is often it's incremental and it's invisible. And when we start to track our sleep, our stress, our recovery, our strain, our steps, our HRV, all of this biometric data. It helps us to make data driven decisions bespoke to us. You know, you don't have to follow their TikTok advice or the hack that you've seen on Instagram if it doesn't work for you. And so I think, you know, that was the thing that changed my life. I'd been wearing a whoop band and an aura ring, believe it or not, for years before I went into that code red ward. I saw the data. I was in code red on my whoop strap. Like it was alerting me, but I arrogantly and ignorantly thought I could push past it. Your body keeps score. Your body does not lie. So I think making any sort of data driven decision, maybe you don't want to wear a wearable, but what can you do to track your progress? I think that's really

meaningful and it's unique to you. Yeah. speaker-0: Great advice. And I think, you know, what's nice about that as well, if you look at, you know, any brand, but, you know, I wear an aura ring and and I know with your whoop strap, it's not an invasive technology. It doesn't buzz you, it doesn't beep, it doesn't draw your attention in. And so therefore you're in control of how much you want to look at that and how much attention you wanna give it. And that was one of the driving factors for me. I didn't want it to have another, you know, Apple Watch that was starting to drag on my attention and totally defeat the purpose. So I think that's really, really helpful to know. ⁓ okay, reframing relationships. When it comes to women, how can they start to rethink their relationship with technology? So not ditching it, but using it in more meaningful ways that stops draining them. Yeah. speaker-1: Look, I say don't do a digital detox. They don't work. They create binge and purge cycles. I think we're better off to cr come up with our own digital guardrails. What are our digital practices and principles? You know, when do we use it? When do we not? Are we phone free for the first 15 minutes in the morning? Does it come to the dinner table? Is it the digital intruder in your bedroom? Yeah. Just coming up with those boundaries, those borders and boundaries help us, I think, have healthier relationships because if we're honest, Tech has crept into every crevice of our lives. It really has. And so what can we put in place that helps us create healthy boundaries for ourselves? Yeah. speaker-0: I that's really, really good advice. What I'm hearing from you a lot is just personalization is to not be swept away by a whole bunch of noise, is to actually, you know, look at your own life and figure out what ways technology is actually going to benefit and help you thrive rather than, you know, you being controlled by it. speaker-1: It. Yeah. I often just say I have a quick saying, is technology serving you or is it enslaving you? speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. And this is the question I think we've got to regularly ask ourselves, you know, and be mindful of and to recognize our triggers, I guess, when we're in those loops. Again, the golden handcuffs can apply to a mobile phone too. Shaping the status quo. So what's one belief or norm about how we work today that you're most committed to dismantling? I know basically the whole episode's been about this, but if there's one belief or one norm that you would like to that better. speaker-1: challenge, what would they say? And a circle back to the beginning and I can't can't stand that phrase, sorry. speaker-0: We we're talking like corporate jargon here. speaker-1: I I caught your attention though. You don't have to pay a success tax. You do not have to trade your health or your happiness for high performance. You don't. If you live and work in harmony with your human operating system, you can achieve success. I have done

that since that code red ward. You don't have to make sacrifices. And I often say I loved this. Success was never supposed to feel like burnout in a designer blazer. It wasn't. speaker-0: No. That's it. I mean, what that's the the question though. You and you mentioned this earlier is what is and beautiful Karen used to say this to you, like, what does success look like in this season of your life? So I think that's the thing. We don't need to say that this is a forever moment. We're gonna have peaks and troughs, but that seasonality is also a helpful thing to think about. What does success look like? In the end, you know, yes, we can achieve lots of things. Yes, we can be, you know. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: perceived as a high achiever at work, but if it comes at the cost of our health, our health is our wealth. Without it, we have nothing. And I think we are intermittently reminded of that in our lives. We just need to remember that, you know, once we start to recover. All right. Last one is around telling your story. It's the whole ethos, I guess, of this podcast, that concept of what we make visible shapes, what others believe is possible. Your living proof of the ability to recover from a stressful situation, some serious burnout, a life and death moment. What's the conversation women need to start having more openly with themselves, with their teams, with their leaders if they feel courageous enough about what performing at this pace is actually costing them? speaker-1: Number one, ditch the superwoman myth. It is absolute BS that you you can have it all. We and and we were given a a version of this saying you you can have it or you just can't do it all. That's not true either. There are trade-offs. So we need women, especially ambitious, accomplished women, talking honestly about what the trade-offs are. What are you trading? And this is comes back to knowing what your values are. I have another wise friend who says to me, success is living in close process. proximity to your values. And so if what are you willing to trade of those values, are you willing to sacrifice your health to get the promotion? Are you willing to miss date night for the fourth night in a row, fourth week in a row, just because you're traveling interstate? So I think definitely ditching that superwoman miss let's talk openly, transparently about what you are trading. I think the biggest, another challenge for a lot of high performing women is accepting and asking for help. speaker-0: Hold speaker-1: home, in the workplace, talking about that in an open way. And the last one, and we've talked about this repeatedly, is just being comfortable and taking the time to know what success looks like for you. I work with a lot of high performers who get to the top and then they suddenly look around and realize they've climbed the wrong mountain. They're at the top of the corporate ladder, they've hit the what they thought was their metric of success. Only to realize that this is not what they want. Please do not, you know, I often say our most important human currencies are T, time, energy, and attention. And we have to make sure that we are spending those currencies really wisely. And so please know what success looks like and make sure you're climbing the right mountain of that success too. speaker-0: Gosh, what a way to wrap up. I think in the end, I have no doubt that you know your work is not gonna put their arms around you and like hold you close at nighttime. They're not gonna look after you when you're in the hospital bed. Yeah, you might get some flowers, but let's look at what we value in life. Let's look at what success actually looks like for us. Let's live aligned to our values and importantly surround ourselves with people, with cheerleaders. That are gonna help encourage us to live the life that we were truly meant to live. Dr. Christy Goodwin, thank you so much for joining First Movers today. speaker-1: Thanks for having me, Yes. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. speaker-0: Me too, always a pleasure. If you love today's episode, do me a quick favor. Hit that like button, subscribe so you never miss an episode, and share this with one person you think needs to hear it. It just takes five seconds and it genuinely helps this show grow. And I'd love to hear from you. Is there someone you think I absolutely must have on the podcast? If so, drop their name in the comments below. I read every single one and some of my best guests, well, they've come straight from the source. Thanks for being here and for being a first mover. I'll see you on the next one.