How I Work

In a portfolio career, requests have a funny way of multiplying. A speaking gig here, a board invite there, a coffee catch-up that sounds valuable but drains you for days. The answer to all of them is technically "yes" right up until the moment it isn't.
Katie is 18 months into consulting and a portfolio career, and she came to me with a problem a lot of people share: she's getting busier, she cares deeply about protecting time for values-driven work, and saying no is a muscle she's still building.
This episode is part of The Work Edit, a format on How I Work where I sit down with someone facing a real professional challenge and we work through it together live.
We cover my yes triage framework, the no club concept, the to-don't list, the never again list, and a simple rule called the next Tuesday test.
Katie and I discuss:
The yes triage: three questions to run every request through before deciding, and why you need a "hell yes" to at least two of them
Why saying yes out of flattery or guilt is so common, and how to catch yourself doing it
The no club: how a small group of trusted colleagues can give you the objective perspective you can't give yourself
The to-don't list and how to use it monthly to protect your energy from the things you already know drain you
The never again list for the spectacularly bad decisions you keep forgetting you made
Why a slow no is not polite and why a fast no within 24 hours is almost always the kinder move
The next Tuesday test: how to reality-check a far-off commitment by imagining it was happening this week
Key quotes
"A slow no is actually unkind because the other person is just waiting and probably following up when they could already be finding someone who'll say yes."
"What all these strategies do is reduce cognitive load. There's no longer a decision to make. There's just a rule to follow."

My latest book The Energy Game is out on July 7, 2026. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
Credits:
Host: Amantha Imber
Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

**Join the AI Agent Bootcamp here: https://www.inventium.ai/learnvirtually-agents**
You have access to AI. You probably use it a fair bit. And yet there's a good chance you're still manually scrubbing through meeting transcripts, tabbing between LinkedIn and Google News before every sales call, and spending 20 minutes writing an executive summary for a paper you just finished writing.
That gap between having AI and actually letting it take things off your plate is where a lot of time quietly disappears.
In this How I AI episode, Neo and I walk through eight tasks that knowledge workers should never have to do manually again, and what it actually looks like to hand them off to agents.
How I AI is a special series within How I Work where Neo and I explore how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm.
What you'll learn in this episde:
Which meeting-related tasks are the easiest to hand off to an agent
How to build a pre-meeting briefing agent for sales and business development
Why editing and proofreading agents need very specific instructions to protect your voice
Where inbox agents are most useful, and what they can and can't do for you
How to think about agents when comparing options before a purchase decision
Practical AI tools for productivity and focus
Real-world AI workflows used by high performers
How to use AI at work without burning out
Smart shortcuts for managing time and mental load
Connect with Neo Aplin on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/neoaplin/) and via inventium.ai (https://inventium.ai), where he leads Inventium's AI training and upskilling work with organisations and teams.
My latest book The Energy Game is out on July 7, 2026. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
Credits:
Host: Amantha Imber
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most professionals are terrible at talking about themselves. Not because they lack substance, but because no one ever taught them that being interesting is a skill, and that skill can be learned.
Maz Farrelly has spent decades on the other side of that problem. As the executive producer behind Big Brother, The X Factor, and Celebrity Apprentice, she has auditioned over 20,000 people, had her content watched more than eight billion times, and once broke Twitter deliberately. In this episode, I sit down with Maz to unpack what the TV industry understands about attention that most professionals never learn, and how to bring that same thinking into the way you pitch yourself and show up in any room.
Maz and I discuss:
Why you have about 10 seconds to earn someone's attention, and what TV producers do with that window that most professionals don't
The one word missing from almost every professional pitch ("so that")
Why adapting your introduction for every room you walk into isn't being fake — it's understanding your audience
How to share your credentials and achievements without sounding like you're bragging
The case Maz makes against performed humility on LinkedIn, and better alternatives that actually build trust
Why Maz banned email entirely on Dancing with the Stars UK, replaced it with two 10-minute standing meetings a day, and had only four phone calls across 100 shows
What Gogglebox taught Maz about the power of doing the exact opposite of what everyone else in your industry is doing
Key quotes
"If you can help people, you need to show off. Because I need to be able to buy you, and I can't buy you if I don't know you exist."
"The first line's job is to make me read the second. It's so obvious, and hardly anyone does it."
Connect with Maz Farrelly on Instagram, LinkedIn, and her website.

My latest book The Energy Game is out on July 7, 2026. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
Credits:
Host: Amantha Imber
Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We put someone on the moon in 1969. We didn't put wheels on suitcases until 1972. The problem was: Nobody had stopped to notice the problem existed in the first place.
That gap - between the problems people will tell you about, the ones they'll only admit after a drink, and the ones they don't even know they have - is exactly where Maz Farrelly operates. In this bonus conversation with the executive producer behind Big Brother, The X Factor, and Celebrity Apprentice, we get into the practical mechanics of walking into a meeting and already having the room on your side before you've said a single word.
If you have a pitch coming up - for an idea, a budget, or yourself - this episode has something useful in it for you.
Maz and I discuss:
The "warming up the room" technique Maz uses at the start of every pitch meeting, and why it works
How she used reverse psychology to make network executives desperate for the idea she told them she wasn't going to pitch
Why the smartest operators don't sell — they make themselves buyable
The three layers of problems your clients have, and why cracking the third layer is where the real opportunity lives
The suitcase story: why solving problems people don't know they have is the most valuable thing you can do in any industry
Why Maz brought too much cake to a Microsoft meeting, and how it made her go viral inside the building without spending a cent on advertising
What "sticky information" is, and why it determines whether anything you said in a meeting actually matters
Key quotes
"The smart money doesn't sell. The smart money is bought."
"Hope is not a strategy."
And if you haven't listened to the main episode with Maz yet, start there. It's all about how to make yourself impossible to ignore. Listen to the main episode here.
Connect with Maz Farrelly on Instagram, LinkedIn, and her website.

My latest book The Energy Game is out on July 7, 2026. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
Credits:
Host: Amantha Imber
Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

**Join the AI Agent Bootcamp here: https://www.inventium.ai/learnvirtually-agents**
You type a research question into your AI tool, get back a perfectly serviceable answer, and still feel like something's missing. The output isn't wrong, exactly. It just didn't quite hit the mark. The culprit, more often than not, is the prompt you started with.
The good news: there's a smarter way to approach this, and it doesn't involve becoming a prompt engineering expert.
In this How I AI episode, Neo and I walk through the agent Neo reaches for more than any other he has built: the Research Prompt Builder. We get into how it works, when to use it with a thinking model instead of deep research, and how pairing it with NotebookLM can get you genuinely well-briefed in a fraction of the usual time.
How I AI is a special series within How I Work, where Neo and I explore how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm.
What you'll learn in this episode:
Why your research prompt matters more than the tool you use
How Neo's Research Prompt Builder actually works before any research begins
When a thinking model is a better choice than deep research
How to go from a raw research output to a proper briefing using NotebookLM
Practical AI tools for productivity and focus
Real-world AI workflows used by high performers
How to use AI at work without burning out
Smart shortcuts for managing time and mental load
Connect with Neo Aplin on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/neoaplin/) and via inventium.ai (https://inventium.ai), where he leads Inventium's AI training and upskilling work with organisations and teams.

And here are links we promised:
Download the Research Prompt Builder agent here: https://amantha-imber.kit.com/41cec7c48c
NotebookLM (notebooklm.google.com) - Google's learning tool that lets you upload up to 50 sources and generate a podcast episode, ask questions, and get cited answers from your own documents.

My latest book The Energy Game is out on July 7, 2026. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
Credits:
Host: Amantha Imber
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.