When organisational psychologist Amantha Imber began fantasising about being hospitalised just to get some rest, she realised something had to give.
“2024 was my absolute year of utter burnout,” she says.
At the time, Imber had reluctantly stepped back into the chief executive role of her behaviour change company. The business was running at a loss for the first time in 17 years, and morale was low.
“I actually felt quite disliked as a leader,” she admits. “I felt like people didn’t really want me in that role. And that’s really exhausting … It felt really, really lonely.”
The mother of one found herself crying easily, battling a chronic cold and clenching her jaw so tightly she developed a hairline fracture in one tooth – all on top of dreaming about that aforementioned hospital stay.
Burnout is a state of severe physical, emotional and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged or chronic stress. According to various global surveys, it afflicts up to 82 per cent of workers, and at least 53 per cent of Australians.
“Anyone who has been burnt out or just perpetually exhausted will know it is incredibly hard to make big decisions or big life changes when you’re in that state,” she says.
Yet much of the advice about remedying the condition involved making major changes and removing stressors, which Imber says was completely unrealistic at the time.
So she took a short break and started looking into what she could do differently. Specifically, what were the small things that she could do to improve her energy? And what was the “minimum viable dose” – or MVD – that would move the needle?
In her new book The Energy Game, Imber details various MVD solutions, but these are four of the fastest strategies she used to get a quick energy boost when she desperately needed it.
A rush of cold
Hot and cold therapy might be on trend, but Imber didn’t have the time or inclination to get a bag of party ice from the local 7/11 and set up an ice bath.
Her research into the MVD of cold suggested she didn’t need to. A Dutch study of 3000 people found that ending your shower with cold for 30 seconds gave the same boost of energy as longer durations of freezing your face off.
Speaking of freezing your face off, when a shower isn’t an option, separate research has found that wearing a cold face mask or splashing icy cold water on your face can have a similar effect.
That’s because it stimulates the mammalian dive reflex, shunting blood to your vital organs to conserve oxygen, thereby slowing your heart rate and lowering blood pressure, all while giving your brain an instant jolt.
Stimulate your senses
Imber now keeps a little roll-on bottle of peppermint oil on her desk.
“I had no idea, before writing the book, about the impact of scents on our energy levels,” she explains. “Peppermint is actually a bit of a super scent.”
Uplifting scents, like peppermint oil, may relieve fatigue and even reduce aggression and improve mood.
In one small study, participants were put in a driving simulator for 30 minutes before peppermint aroma was released intermittently for one minute.
Compared with the control group, who continued driving without any scent, the fatigue levels of the peppermint group significantly decreased after the aroma intervention. Lavender and citrus scents also worked just as well.
It’s worth noting here, before anyone goes and buys a car air “freshener”, that synthetic fragrances can lead to headaches and breathing difficulties in some people.
Say ‘yes, but…’
Imber doesn’t like saying ‘no’. But, in 2024, she realised that saying ‘yes’ to everything was sucking the life out of her. So, she started saying “yes, but…”
“It’s where you say ‘yes’, but with some constraints or some boundaries,” she explains.
“So ‘Yes, I can help you on that project, but I can only give you half an hour next Tuesday’, for example.”
It means she can still feel like she’s helping and saying yes to people that she does want to help, but it’s setting boundaries around her time and energy.
“Once I was able to do that, I could stop my energy from just leaking out from me and protect my time and therefore protect my energy.”
Take a silent walk
“Most of us are doing fake rest,” Imber says. “Like collapsing in front of the couch and binge-watching Netflix or scrolling through the socials at night and thinking, well, at least my brain is switched off. It’s not.”
Given, as she cites, 99 per cent of people have some form of anxiety when their phone is out of reach, researchers wanted to see what happens when we leave them at home for a moment (or 12).
So they divided participants into two groups and had them walk for 12 minutes around a leafy park, except one group had their phones and the other left them behind.
At the end of the walk, those who took their phones (and spent the walk glued to them) were in a worse mood than before they left. The opposite was true for the phone-free group, who returned feeling refreshed, in a sunnier mood and feeling more connected to nature.
“I call it the silent walk, where essentially you’re leaving all stimulus, all devices at home,” Imber says. “I would do this, I reckon, almost every day, if not several times a day.”
Lovely as these strategies sound – and despite the science that backs them up – I ask Imber how much peppermint oil, a splash of cold or a short stroll can help when you’re genuinely burnt out.
“I just had no capacity to make any kind of big decisions,” she replies. “Those little steps of progress, and small wins [helped me] get back some energy and got me to a place where I could make those big changes that were necessary.”
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Sarah Berry is a lifestyle and health writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.
