Introduction
Burnout in midlife rarely arrives as one dramatic collapse. More often it’s the quiet build-up of pushing through one exhausted day after another, the caffeine-fuelled mornings, the short temper by mid-afternoon, and the strange fantasy of getting sick enough to be left alone for a week. Dr Amantha Imber knows this territory well. She’s an organisational psychologist, founder of behavioural science consultancy Inventium, and author of the new book The Energy Game. In 2024, two decades into a career spent telling other people how to work better, she hit her own wall. This episode of Don’t Let The Old Man In sits down with Amantha to talk honestly about what burnout looks like for high performing men in midlife, and the small, research backed habits that rebuild energy without a wellness retreat or a total life overhaul.
Why this conversation matters
Amantha stepped back into the CEO role at Inventium in 2024, expecting it to feel familiar. Instead she found a business under financial pressure, a team she felt disconnected from, and a level of exhaustion that led to a recurring thought: what if she got sick enough to be hospitalised for a week, not seriously, just enough that nobody could reach her. A psychologist friend told her that fantasy has a name. She’s heard it from clients so often she calls it the getting hit by a bus fantasy.
That moment is where The Energy Game began. Amantha spent months reading over a thousand peer reviewed studies and running experiments with more than 1300 people, hunting for the smallest interventions that actually move the needle on energy. What she kept hearing back from men, in particular, was a version of the same thing: they were too depleted to be present with their own families by the time they got home from work.
This conversation matters because it names something a lot of midlife men are quietly living with: the sense that exhaustion is the price of doing well. Amantha argues the opposite. Treating energy as a finite, precious resource is what actually lets you keep performing.
What we discuss
- The “getting hit by a bus” fantasy, and why wanting to disappear for a week is a far more common sign of burnout than most people admit
- Why Amantha stepped back into the CEO chair she’d deliberately handed over years earlier, and what a year of “just pushing through” cost her, right down to a cracked tooth
- The four energy types, built around Me Mode versus We Mode and ambition driven versus anxiety driven, and what they reveal about why some seasons of life quietly drain you more than others
- Fast boost strategies backed by research, including the science of a peppermint scent and a 30 second cold shower
- Why the “rest” most of us default to, scrolling or bingeing television, isn’t rest at all, and what proper recovery looks like instead
- The “to don’t list” and the “yes, but” strategy for protecting your energy and saying no without the guilt
Why midlife men should listen
If you’ve caught yourself negotiating with the alarm clock, wondering whether today’s the day you finally call in sick, this episode will feel familiar. Amantha doesn’t tell you to overhaul your life or book a retreat you don’t have time for. She talks about specific, testable habits that take minutes, not months, and about the identity shift that happens when you stop treating exhaustion as proof you’re working hard enough. For men measuring themselves against a career ladder or a provider role that no longer fits, this conversation offers a way back to feeling like yourself again, one experiment at a time.
Liked what you heard in this episode, but not quite sure what to do with the insights?
We have you covered.
We are releasing a short, 10-minute bonus episode that covers two things:
- What exactly should you do next, and
- Why this is guaranteed to work.
Perfect insights. No excuses.
All you have to do is execute!
Listen or watch on:
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Guest info
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.
