The Mental Offload Podcast

Does the idea of "managing up" make you squirm?  Some people mistake it for a sort of "dark arts" of the leadership world. A way that bad leaders can make themselves look better, and get ahead. But smart women know that managing up is an essential skill for all leaders.  The problem? It can make you deeply uncomfortable. It might feel like pointless office politics, or bring up a lot of anxiety ov...

From Barbie to Beyoncé to T. Swift, something's been brewing. This was the summer of women creating massive success. Generating billions of dollars of success. But the financial success isn't the only common denominator. What do these women have in common? Comfort playing on the world's biggest stages, certainly. Comfort with playing big, period. Call it Main Character Energy, if you want. But mer...

Fun. 3 letters that strike fear in the bones of most high-performers.  We're told that fun is fluff. Fat to be trimmed from your schedule.  So any fun that we do have in our work days leaves us feeling guilty and unproductive. Unless it's having fun with our kids, in which case we feel guilty for not having enough of it. Eliminating fun seems like perfectly rational advice for getting more done. ...

Feeling stretched in all directions? Like there's not enough time for work or for family? You're not alone. But modern productivity methods end up offering "solutions" that dig you deeper into the hole. Encouraging you to just keep cutting all the "unproductive" time from your calendar, to make more time to grind it out at work and in life. In this episode, we'll introduce the concept of the "time...

Do you ever find yourself striving for peak productivity, only to end up feeling drained and overwhelmed? Do you ever dream of a work culture that seems to value hustle and busy-ness? Do you find saying you need to stop multitasking as you're multitasking?  Uncover the productivity habits that may be secretly sabotaging your success. Discover 6 of the biggest disordered ways of working (yes, you k...

There's a predictable phenomenon that happens in the workplace when people become parents. Mothers get penalized, both in salary and opportunities. Meanwhile, fathers get rewarded. It's structural bias, and it hits women hard.  The wage gap turns into a chasm, and it can have a staggering impact on women's careers and self-worth. In this episode, we'll unravel the staggering truth about the Mother...

For mothers in the paid workforce, the end of the workday can feel like your personal witching hour. Whether you're scrambling to finish up those last things – and working later than you'd like – or getting pulled into a second shift of work after your kids' bedtime, the result is the same. Work feels like it's always on your mind. Even when you'd like to be present with your family. Having a "shu...

Having a solid morning routine is important for increasing productivity and reducing stress. Most leaders try to thoughtfully optimize their morning routine to enhance their job performance. And having a solid, streamlined morning routine can make the difference between calm and chaos. But do you really need a complex, multi-step routine for peak performance?  Thinking that we do keeps busy, high...

As summer winds down, back to school season is winding up. And with it comes so. much. to. do. It's not just the clothes to buy, backpacks to prepare, and lunches to remember to pack. It's mental, emotional, and actual labor. It's rarely straightforward. And it often falls on mothers. All of the planning and moving parts can make back-to-school prep a tricky and stressful time.  While you can't er...

Summertime. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times for working mothers. If you're not lucky enough to live in a country that takes childcare seriously, it lays bare the gaps in our caregiving infrastructure.  And who steps in to fill in those gaps? Usually, it's a woman. And most workplaces aren't as flexible as we need them to be. On top of that, many of us have a vision in our head of...

Our culture tells women that their most important role in life is as a mother. But too often, the expectation is that we'll do it all, without support. That leaves those of us with a career and a family at a crossroads: feeling like we need to choose between our families, and our ambition…and, so often, doing this in workplaces where we need to navigate gender bias at the same time.   The Mental O...

Summertime, and the livin' is…easy? It's supposed to be, but around the world, toxic productivity culture and late-stage capitalism are conspiring with a message for employees: don't relax too much, okay? These messages are subtle, but the impacts aren't. We're sitting on record numbers of unused vacation days, and those who do take off are still feeling pulled to keep an one eye on their work pro...

You might think that when you finally get that promotion, get your dream house perfectly set up, or have that magic number in your bank account, you'll be set. Not only will you have achieved a big goal, but you're sure you'll feel better, too! Perhaps you think you'll feel more confident, more secure, more fulfilled… I used to think that, too. And then, I had dinner with two billionaires, who cou...

At work, we're often faced with difficult colleagues. Someone whose way of approaching big decisions (or the smallest email), leaves us feeling frustrated, or downright annoyed. Sometimes it's not just one individual, but a whole division's way of doing things. It might make us question whether the senior leadership is aware of – or cares about – the chaos we're left to navigate below. When you're...

When overachievers become mothers, something strange can happen. And it's rarely discussed. It's Mom-poster syndrome.  Most people have heard about imposter syndrome. Those feelings of being not good enough, of feeling like a fraud, that can sneak up on us.  We mostly think of imposter syndrome in our professional lives. But our inner critic can also come up around our "other" job as mothers. It m...

Unless you've been holed up under a rock, you've probably heard about ChatGPT, and the coming artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.  This month alone, ChatGPT (and its AI cousins) have been in the headlines for their uncanny abilities to write a term paper or have a good approximation of a human conversation.  What might happen if we asked AI tools to help us solve for some of the mental load?...

Haters. I don't know anyone who wants to have one at work. Some seem to be content to just make your day-to-day unpleasant, while others seem hellbent on undermining an initiative you're leading…or discrediting you. Dealing with a hater can range from frustrating to terrifying. "They're just jealous, ignore them!" or "keep working hard and they'll see how great you are," are okay strategies for th...

Women are burned out, stressed out, and still trudging along. When the pandemic hit in 2020, the hope was that the struggles would be temporary. But three years on, many women are still living in survival mode. We can't get ahead as long as we're living this way. But our workplaces, our partners, and our society hasn't gotten the memo. And the truth is, many working mothers don't fully understand...

What will the next step in your career look like?  Does the question itself make you want to sweep the whole issue under the rug? Or maybe you've been told that if you just keep your head down and work hard, someone will notice and you'll get the recognition you deserve.  This can set you down a dangerous path. One were you keep putting more effort, more time, more energy into your current job…and...

Partners who don't do as much as we'd like. Colleagues who seem downright antagonistic. The friend who forgot to text on our birthday. Sounds like a recipe for frustration, resentment, and hurt feelings. But it doesn't have to be. Patriarchal and cultural socialization shape a set of rules for how others should treat us. We end up carrying this into our relationships at home and at work. And it ra...

Is it possible to thrive in a biased world? It can feel like an impossible task, one where we're always at risk of failing someone else. Or our own standards. Trying to navigate a world that has soooooo maaaannny rules for how we're supposed to do things can be utterly exhausting. And thankless. It also leaves many of us as perfectionistic people-pleasers. But where did those rules, standards and...

You've probably heard that it's important to have a "good mindset". And you may think that means having a growth mindset or a "positive mindset". And these are important. But when it comes to balance, what's even more powerful is a CEO mindset. This doesn't mean that CEOs are some sort of universal role model, or even a role that we all aspire to hold. But let's not throw the baby out with the pro...

If you lead a busy life, you know that having organized systems is critical. When you have solid systems in place, life runs smoothly.  But when you don't have the right systems in place, life can quickly get chaotic and overwhelming. Systems are one of the 4 Pillars of Work-Life balance, because you will only be as successful as your systems. Even the most disorganized people have systems in plac...

Have you ever found yourself looking at the unfinished projects around your house and thinking "if you want a job done right, you need to do it yourself"? Or maybe it happens at work, when a direct report sends back the document with errors for the second time, and you choke back your frustration, as you wonder why they can't seem to run their own spell check? Overachievers usually ARE able to do...

Most working mothers know this truth: you need to be on top of your time if you want to be making the biggest impact you can. But with only 24 hours in a day, what tends to get squeezed? All time for ourselves. But here's a truth that we're NOT told: not all time management "problems" are not always caused by poor time management practices. In this episode, we look at the root causes of time manag...