Spacious Success

Dr Kristy Goodwin
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A podcast for high-achieving women who want to thrive at work without burning out their lives. You’re smart. You’re driven. You love what you do. But you’re also… exhausted. Welcome to Spacious Success, a podcast for women who are ready to redefine what it means to “have it all” in a world that rarely slows down. Hosted by Dr Kristy Goodwin, one of Australia’s leading neuro-performance experts, this show unpacks the science, strategies and stories that help ambitious women perform at their best, without sacrificing their wellbeing, relationships, or sanity. Because let’s be honest: the systems we work in weren’t built for women. The digital demands never stop. And burnout isn’t a vibe , it’s a physiological SOS. Each episode explores how we can create sustainable success from the inside out, at work, in leadership, in motherhood, and in our own minds and bodies. Expect practical tools, honest conversations, and brain-based strategies that move beyond hustle culture and toxic productivity. Whether you’re a leader, executive, founder, educator, or changemaker, Spacious Success is here to remind you: ✨ You don’t have to choose between ambition and alignment. ✨ You can be excellent without being always-on. ✨ You can lead and live without losing yourself. We’ll explore topics like: • How to thrive in a digitally-demanding world • The nervous system science behind burnout and performance • Redefining success in leadership, motherhood, and midlife • Navigating the invisible load at home and work • Creating boundaries that actually serve you • Women’s health and hormones in high-pressure roles • Recovery, rest and resilience in real life Plus, you’ll hear from inspiring guests, thought leaders, experts, creatives and high-performing women, who are rewriting the rules and reclaiming what success looks and feels like. 🎧 Hit follow and join the movement toward a more spacious, sustainable, and human way to work and live. Because you weren’t meant to do it all. You were meant to do what matters, with more ease, energy and spaciousness.

  1. 21h ago

    040 | It's a Season, Not a Sentence: Closing Season 1 of Spacious Success

    What if pausing is the most ambitious move you could make this year? Kristy set a stretch target of 1,500 responses for her gender capacity gap survey. By the Monday after it was shared there were 2,000. By the time she hit record, there were more than 3,600, and 1,297 women had volunteered their time to talk further. Many said they had never told anyone what they wrote. That kind of trust asks for something back: time, energy and attention, the three human currencies this podcast has asked you to protect all season. So in this Season 1 finale, Kristy does what she has spent 40 episodes encouraging you to do. She names what success looks like in this season of her life, and chooses it on purpose. Along the way she thanks the guests and listeners who shaped the show, and traces the four themes that ran through Season 1. In this episode Kristy shares The number she got very wrong: 1,500 versus 3,600 Why 1,297 time-poor women offering an interview about the gender capacity gap is its own data point What women confided in their open-ended responses, and why so many thought they were the only ones Why "data doesn't change anything on its own", and the slow work that turns it into change Why a weekly episode recorded by a woman "quietly running on empty" would be hypocrisy Theme 1: the load was never a personal failing, with Maggie Dent, Georgie Dent, Marilla Akkermans and Yas London Why her language has shifted from the gender wellbeing gap to the gender capacity gap Theme 2: your biology isn't broken, with Dr Sarah McKay, Amelia Phillips, Amanda Stevens and Lisa Corduff Theme 3: capacity is designed, not willed, with Andrea Culligan, Manelle Merhi, Dr Adam Fraser and Dr Vanessa Lapointe Theme 4: you get to decide what success is worth, with Philippa Moig-Ryan, Tory Archbold, Taryn Brumfitt and Amanda Delosa Biological bandwidth: why there is no separate tank for the podcast Attention residue, and why you cannot write a book with half your mind on Friday's episode The leadership leak: when capacity stays depleted, women pass on the stretch role and step sideways This week's Power-Up: name your one potent thing, and the one that can wait Key Quotes "It is a season. It is not a sentence." "Data doesn't change anything on its own." "Pausing something doesn't mean that you have failed. It doesn't mean that you've given up. Sometimes it's the most ambitious thing that you can do." Timestamps (00:09) Why this episode is different (01:31) 1,500 versus 3,600: the gender capacity gap survey (04:10) 1,297 women who volunteered their time (04:54) What women shared in the open-ended responses (06:59) Why data alone changes nothing (08:05) The success tax and a hard conversation (09:26) What does success in this season of your life look like? (10:20) Four themes from Season 1 (10:27) Theme 1: The load was never a personal failing (13:40) Theme 2: Your biology isn't broken (16:15) Theme 3: Capacity is designed, not willed (18:52) Theme 4: You decide what success is worth (21:13) Thank you to our guests and listeners (22:57) Biological bandwidth and Kristy's next season (25:43) The leadership leak (27:41) This week's Power-Up (29:25) Three small requests Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin Website: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristy-goodwin  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/  Speaking enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/speaking  Gender capacity gap survey: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/gender-capacity-gap-survey  References Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168–181. Other episodes you may be interested in EP0 Everyone Needs a Karen (where the "what does success in this season look like?" question began; called back at 08:43) EP1 From Code Red to High-Res (Kristy's emergency department wake-up call and the success tax; called back at 07:19) EP7 Productivity Hijackers (attention residue and why switching costs more than you think; called back at 23:19) EP35 I Probably Shouldn't Be Telling You This: Naming the Gender Wellbeing Gap (the earlier framing that evolved into the gender capacity gap; called back at 12:50)

    040 | It's a Season, Not a Sentence: Closing Season 1 of Spacious Success

  2. Nov 5

    039 | My Wearable Was Wrong. I Believed It Anyway.

    What if the most important health data you have isn’t on your wrist? One morning I woke up feeling fabulous. Then I opened my recovery data, saw a score in the red, and within 30 seconds I had rewritten my entire day. It turned out my wristband had twisted around overnight and hadn’t measured a thing. I research attention, cognition and the stories our brains tell us, and I still handed my felt sense to a device in under half a minute. In this episode I unpack why that happens, what the research says about the stories we attach to our data, and how high performers can use wearables as a guide, not gospel. In this episode Kristy shares • The twisted wristband morning, and how one wrong number derailed a day that felt great • Why clients now open coaching sessions with their recovery score before saying how they feel • How leaders are quietly moving big meetings based on a readiness number • The paradox of the most measured generation in history • Why a clean figure feels more trustworthy than your own interoception • What consumer wearables do reasonably well, and what they cannot do for you: “the part that turns a number into a decision” • The 2014 study where fake sleep feedback changed people’s cognitive performance • Orthosomnia, when chasing a perfect sleep score costs you sleep • Negativity bias, and why one red reading outweighs six good nights • Why this is a decision quality issue for organisations, not a wellbeing footnote • Her coaching rule: prioritise and personalise, don’t optimise • How to read trends instead of daily noise, using heart rate Kathleenriability as the example • Wellbeing fatigue, and why looking after ourselves has become one more thing to perform • This week’s Power-Up: a 15-second check-in before you check the data Key Quotes “The interpretation step, the part that turns a number into a decision, that’s the part wearables can’t do for you.” “There’s a fine line, I think, between bettering ourselves and bullying ourselves.” “Trust the data enough to learn from it, but trust yourself enough not to be ruled by your data.” Timestamps (00:10) Are we over-optimising every part of our lives? (01:39) The twisted wristband morning (03:05) Why even a scientist hands over her interoception (04:12) When the device’s language replaces our own (05:43) This isn’t anti-data (06:12) The paradox: more data, more vigilance (07:23) Why we default to the number over the feeling (08:52) The placebo sleep study (10:10) Orthosomnia (11:00) Negativity bias and the coffee stain (11:26) The real cost: decision quality (13:53) Prioritise and personalise, don’t optimise (14:56) Read your trends (15:47) Watch for wellbeing fatigue (16:38) Guide, not gospel (17:39) Bettering or bullying? (18:33) This week’s Power-Up Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin Website: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristy-goodwin  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/  Speaking enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/speaking  Coaching enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/coaching  References Baron, K. G., Abbott, S., Jao, N., Manalo, N., & Mullen, R. (2017). Orthosomnia: Are some patients taking the quantified self too far? Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 13(2), 351–354. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.6472 Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323 Chinoy, E. D., et al. (2021). Performance of seven consumer sleep-tracking devices compared with polysomnography. Sleep, 44(5), zsaa291. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsaa291 Draganich, C., & Erdal, K. (2014). Placebo sleep affects cognitive functioning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(3), 857–864. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035546 Other episodes you may be interested in EP009 Wide Awake at 2:22am? https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149200659 EP002 The Stress Superstorm: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149200666 EP013 We Don’t Have an Ambition Gap. We Have a Wellbeing Gap: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149235056 EP038 The Third Space, with Dr Adam Fraser: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149277693

    039 | My Wearable Was Wrong. I Believed It Anyway.

  3. Oct 29

    038 | The Third Space: Why Work Gets Your Best and Home Gets What’s Left, with Dr Adam Fraser

    What if the hardest part of your day is not the work, but the walk from your car to your front door? One CEO caught a glimpse of his children running from the room when they heard him come home. A surgeon now pauses with his hand on a door handle before every patient. A single mum who arrived at child care as "the hurricane" every afternoon printed three words on a card and stuck it to her dashboard. Dr Adam Fraser, human performance researcher and author of The Third Space and Strive, has spent decades studying these moments with soldiers, surgeons, executives and school leaders, much of it in partnership with Deakin University. He is also Spacious Success’s first male guest, and he brings a perspective on guilt that many women will find quietly confronting. Together we trace the gap between roles, the guilt that keeps women from recovering, the case for micro-recovery over the annual holiday, and why the things that grow us most are the things we would rather not do. In this episode Adam shares What the Third Space is: the transitional gap between what you have just done and what you are about to do Why soldiers told him coming home is "brutal", and the CEO who built a new entrance to his house The surgeon’s five-second reset at the door handle Reflect, Rest, Reset: the three-step transition, and why reflecting on what went well is not "Pollyanna" thinking How a single mum went from "the hurricane" at child care pick-up to a calmer arrival, with three words on her dashboard Why the Third Space is about how you show up, even when you walk into a second shift you resent How he and his daughters turned the dinner-time chore into kitchen karaoke Why audiences tell him "work gets the best of me", and the people who matter most get the worst version His view, as a man looking at the research, of how deeply guilt is embedded for women Why the women who rest well still feel guilty, and how they do it anyway What his burnout research found when it compared men and women in the same role His days at the Institute of Sport, and why recovery became part of training rather than a response to collapse Why growth comes from discomfort, and what his singing teacher told him after a lesson he hated How he builds his own spacious life: daily recovery practice, singing, a weekly ocean swim and a monthly day at the racetrack Key Quotes "It was this capacity to sit with the discomfort of guilt but still do the behaviour." "What we discovered is the key to preventing burnout was short, regular, consistent bursts of recovery." "I think what’s happening is our inability to be uncomfortable is holding us back in so many aspects of our life." Timestamps (00:41) Welcome, and why Adam is on the show (01:48) What the Third Space is (03:19) Soldiers, a CEO and a surgeon: the theme in the research (06:00) Role Ricochet: from leader to parent with no transition (06:59) Reflect, Rest, Reset (11:49) The single mum who stopped being the hurricane (16:25) "Work gets the best of me" (18:29) 4,000 Sundays and the Superwoman myth (22:36) The gender wellbeing gap, and what actually helps (23:39) How deep the guilt goes (28:32) Fantasising about being sick: common, but not normal (31:03) The guilt does not go away. Do it anyway. (33:06) The doer identity and the recovery paradox (38:42) Micro-recovery, and why the holiday fades (40:00) Strive: why growth lives in discomfort (54:54) How Adam builds his own spacious success (57:37) What do you do for fun? Dr Adam Fraser Website: https://dradamfraser.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dradamfraser/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dradamfraser/  Books: The Third Space (https://dradamfraser.com/shop-content/p/the-third-space) and Strive (https://dradamfraser.com/shop-content/p/strive)  Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin Website: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristy-goodwin  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/  Speaking enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/speaking  References Other episodes you may be interested in EP005, The Superwoman Myth: Why Doing It All Is Breaking Us- https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149200663   EP013, We Don’t Have an Ambition Gap. We Have a Wellbeing Gap: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149235056  EP017, Women Fantasise About Being Sick: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149235062  If anything in this episode raises something for you, Lifeline is available 24/7 on 13 11 14.

    038 | The Third Space: Why Work Gets Your Best and Home Gets What’s Left, with Dr Adam Fraser

  4. Oct 22

    037 | Majoring in the Majors

    What if the edge you are looking for is the basic you keep skipping? A senior leader came to a coaching call wanting one thing: the single move that would fix her fractured focus. She had heard about the cold plunge, the nootropic stack, the productivity technique everyone in her circle was suddenly using. Her wearable told a different story. She was sleeping well under five hours a night, and had been for six weeks. In this solo episode, Kristy makes the case for majoring in the majors. Ambitious women are trained to believe that more effort, more output and more optimisation is what sets them apart, so when something stops working, we add. This episode traces why that instinct backfires, what deep sleep is actually doing for your brain while you are not there to manage it, and how to tell the difference between a lever and a distraction. In this episode Kristy shares Why a brilliant senior leader's request for "the one thing" to fix her focus led straight back to sleep The everyday symptoms of chronic short sleep: rereading the same paragraph three times, snapping at colleagues, irritation at home Why a protocol with a name and a start date feels more satisfying than "sleep more", even when it is not the answer How ambitious women are trained to add rather than subtract, and why that drive is understandable, not foolish Why "nobody posts a carousel about eight hours of quality sleep" Kristy's own cupboard of supplements sampled once and forgotten What happens in deep (slow-wave) sleep: growth hormone release, immune recalibration and the brain's overnight clearance processes Why the prefrontal cortex, the seat of judgement and impulse control, is hit hardest by sleep loss, and why that makes sleep a leadership issue The five fundamentals Kristy always comes back to: sleep, stress adaptability, movement, nutrition and human connection Why knowing the basics is not the gap; living them consistently is The novelty bias: why a new supplement feels like progress and week four of good sleep feels like nothing The hidden cost of stacking: "five supplements, three apps on top of five hours of sleep isn't optimisation" Why your body does not bank partial credit, and why "embedded is the whole game" Two tools to use this week: the weakest link audit (and finding your ignition habit) and the gate question Key Quotes "You cannot outperform your biological blueprint, and your biology needs sleep." "Sleep does not impact your performance and wellbeing. It dictates your performance and wellbeing." "Sophistication was never the thing that was missing." Timestamps (00:49) Stop majoring in the minors (01:09) A senior leader asks for the one thing that will fix her focus (01:49) What her wearable revealed (02:50) Every symptom pointed back to sleep (03:42) Why a protocol feels better than "sleep more" (04:43) The drive to add rather than subtract (05:57) "What am I skipping? What could I add?" (06:45) Majoring in the minors isn't stupid (07:17) Kristy's cupboard of forgotten supplements (07:57) The basics work if you work the basics (08:34) Deep sleep: the body's maintenance window (10:48) Sleep debt, the prefrontal cortex and leadership (11:45) The five fundamentals (13:34) Knowing isn't the gap (14:02) Why novelty wins our attention (14:38) The hidden cost of stacking (16:06) Power-Up 1: the weakest link audit and ignition habits (17:32) Power-Up 2: the gate question (19:24) This week's Power-Up Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin Website: https://drkristygoodwin.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristy-goodwin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/ Speaking enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/speaking Coaching enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/coaching References Other episodes you may be interested in EP2, The Stress Superstorm (referenced at 12:20): https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149200666  EP3, Why Women Can't Do Life Alone: The Biological Power of Connectionhttps://drkristygoodwin.com/spacious-success-episode-03-why-women-cant-do-life-alone/  EP9, Wide Awake at 2:22am? Why Women Are Struggling With Sleep: https://drkristygoodwin.com/spacious-success-episode-09-why-women-are-struggling-with-sleep/  EP10, Cold Plunges for Women: What No One's Telling You: https://drkristygoodwin.com/spacious-success-episode-10-cold-plunges-for-women/

    037 | Majoring in the Majors

  5. Oct 15

    EP036 | Rest Isn’t the Enemy of Revenue, with Marilla Akkermans: Building Flexibility Into the DNA

    What if flexibility isn’t something women should have to earn, but something work should have been designed around all along? When Marilla Akkermans returned to work in 2018, she could see that the only thing part-time about her role would be her pay. So she resigned, and built the agency she couldn’t find. Eight years later, Equality Media + Marketing runs a four-day week at full pay, offers 19 additional days of inclusive leave, and recorded 447% year-on-year profit growth in 2025. Marilla is clear that none of this is altruism. It is commercial logic. In this conversation, Kristy and Marilla trace why flexibility so often turns into productivity theatre, what changes when trust is given rather than earned, how a time audit and a handful of meeting rules made a four-day week possible, and why rest is the fuel for revenue, not its enemy. In this episode Marilla shares Why the only thing that was going to be part-time about her role was her wage, and why she built a business instead The pattern she saw again and again: talented women leaving powerful roles and returning from parental leave as “a back of house resource” “Choose your hard”: why the effort of designing a better workplace pays for itself in retention Why judging people by presence instead of output is “lazy leading” Her contract with her team: “It’s not yours to earn, it’s yours to break” Why she designs roles to about 70% and lets people shape the last 30% Why she doesn’t get it right 100% of the time, and why that is not a reason to avoid trying Why work-life balance doesn’t exist, and why the four-day week is “a gift, not a given” Her answer to the claim that working from home is a career killer for women: workplaces were never built for women, and if men took as much flexibility, women wouldn’t need as much The uncomfortable truth few people say out loud: it is often easier to go to work than to care for people What three months of time tracking revealed before the four-day week trial: half the team’s time went on admin and internal tasks The meeting rules that changed everything: around 70% fewer internal meetings, no meeting without an agenda or follow-up notes, and 45 minutes instead of an hour The three mistakes organisations make when they introduce flexibility without structural change: not consulting people, not fixing workload and tools, and not training Why she introduced a personal health budget instead of a “spray and pray” approach, and how she experiences spacious success on her drive home Key Quotes “I’m giving you my trust. It’s not yours to earn, it’s yours to break.” “You give these women what they need, they give you more in return.” “If men took more flexibility so that they could pick their children up from school as many days a week as their partner does... then women wouldn’t need as much flexibility.” Timestamps (00:47) The headline that stopped Kristy mid-scroll (04:28) Why flexibility was built into Equality from day one (06:32) The exodus of talented women from media (08:15) Location flexibility versus schedule flexibility (09:55) When women have to prove they deserve flexibility (12:52) “It’s not yours to earn, it’s yours to break” (14:54) Permission not to get it right every time (18:37) Is working from home a career killer for women? (21:33) “It’s easier to go to work” (25:49) Does a four-day week really work? (28:40) Meeting bloat and the cost of interruptions (29:58) Rest isn’t the enemy of revenue (35:15) When the model fits the women (36:29) The three mistakes organisations make with flexibility (41:48) How Marilla experiences spacious success Marilla Akkermans 🟩 Equality Media + Marketing: https://equalitymedia.co/  🟩Marilla Akkermans on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marilla-akkermans/ Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin 🟩 Website: drkristygoodwin.com 🟩 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristy-goodwin 🟩 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/ 🟩 Speaking enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/speaking References ActivTrak. (2026, March 11). 2026 state of the workplace: AI adoption and workforce performance benchmarks. https://www.activtrak.com/blog/2026-state-of-the-workplace Akkermans, M. (2026, April). My business grew to $17 million when I stopped asking women to prove they deserved flexibility. Women’s Agenda. https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/my-business-grew-to-17-million-when-i-stoped-asking-women-to-prove-they-deserved-flexibility/ Gartner. (2022, October 24). Gartner HR research identifies new framework for organizations to succeed in today’s fragmented workplace [Press release]. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2022-10-24-gartner-hr-research-identifies-new-framework-for-organizations-to-succeed-in-todays-fragmented-workplace Mark, G., Gonzalez, V. M., & Harris, J. (2005). No task left behind? Examining the nature of fragmented work.

    EP036 | Rest Isn’t the Enemy of Revenue, with Marilla Akkermans: Building Flexibility Into the DNA

  6. Oct 8

    035 | I Probably Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: Naming the Gender Wellbeing Gap

    What if the exhaustion you’ve been hiding isn’t yours to carry alone, but a pattern with a name? For almost two years, Kristy has been having the identical conversation with different women in different rooms. In the queue after a keynote. In the lift down to the lobby. In the DMs that land once everyone has gone home. It almost always starts with the same four words: "I probably shouldn’t be telling you this." Sitting in a Perth hotel room after a keynote, Kristy realised she had been quietly building an archive of women’s exhaustion for years. One story is an anecdote. Fifty is a pattern. In this episode, she names that pattern as the gender wellbeing gap, traces the data and the biology beneath it, explains why it is a leadership pipeline problem rather than a personal one, and makes a direct ask: help her put it on the record. In this episode Kristy shares Why the "lean in" message was never going to work well for women, and what the research suggests happened instead The stories on repeat: the 27 minutes in the office car park, the search history that has become "a graveyard of half-finished questions", the fantasy of a week in bed just to have permission to rest Why she second-guessed herself, and why confirmation bias does not explain what she is hearing Why exhaustion is quietly being written into the job description of an accomplished woman The Success Tax: the sleep, nervous system and sense of self many women pay as the entry price of their ambition Why so many women struggle not despite being capable, but because they have learned to perform competence so convincingly Why Kristy nearly didn’t share any of this publicly, and why she decided she couldn’t expect anyone else to go first What the gender wellbeing gap is, and why it is "not a personal failing or a flaw" The headline data: 60% of senior women versus 50% of senior men reporting frequent burnout, and 72% of Australian women reporting burnout in the past year Why women’s stress response runs on different hormonal architecture, and what allostatic load means when the bad day never stops Why this turns from a health story into a leadership pipeline and retention problem, and why most organisations are still guessing The leader contagion effect: why a manager’s own regulation sets the tone for the team Kristy’s ask: the Gender Wellbeing Gap survey that will shape her white paper and next book The reframe to leave with: "The opposite of burnout isn’t rest. It’s being fully seen." Key Quotes "The opposite of burnout isn’t rest. It’s being fully seen." "We were told that women need to lean in, but they’re leaning out. Honestly, many of them just want to lay down." "The shame only survives when we whisper about it." Timestamps (00:50) Lean in, and what happened instead (01:14) The conversations on repeat (03:15) The common thread (04:17) Was it just confirmation bias? (06:01) It shouldn’t be normal (06:28) The Success Tax (07:22) "I probably shouldn’t be telling you this" (08:35) Why I nearly didn’t share this (09:48) The Perth hotel room and an archive of exhaustion (10:35) Naming the gender wellbeing gap (12:41) The biology underneath: stress hormones and allostatic load (14:26) From health story to leadership pipeline problem (15:23) The leader contagion effect (17:26) The ask: the Gender Wellbeing Gap survey (20:31) The opposite of burnout isn’t rest Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin 🟩 Website: drkristygoodwin.com  🟩 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristy-goodwin  🟩 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/  🟩 Speaking enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/speaking 🟩 Take the Gender Capacity Gap survey: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/gender-capacity-gap-survey 🟩 The Powered-Up Table:https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/the-powered-up-table  References Deloitte Global. (2025). Women @ Work 2025: A global outlook. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/issues/work/women-at-work-global-outlook.html Gallup. (2015). Managers account for 70% of variance in employee engagement. Gallup Workplace. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236570/employees-lot-managers.aspx LeanIn.Org, & McKinsey & Company. (2025). Women in the workplace 2025. https://womenintheworkplace.com McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171–179. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199801153380307 Women’s Agenda. (2025). Women’s ambition report 2025. Women’s Agenda with AGSM @ UNSW Business School. https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/eds-blog/a-2025-reality-majority-of-women-report-burnout Nadalin, T. (2025). Stress, fatigue and painful periods: The reality of women's health in 2025. Body+Soul.

    035 | I Probably Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: Naming the Gender Wellbeing Gap

  7. Oct 1

    034 | Roads and Bridges with Georgie Dent: The Care Infrastructure Working Parents Were Never Given

    What if it feels impossible not because you are doing it wrong, but because nobody built the road? It rarely arrives as a crisis. It arrives as a calendar change: a gala day moved at the last minute, a sick child, a vacation care booking window that closes before breakfast. And then someone absorbs it, usually by default, usually a woman. Georgie Dent has spent almost two decades arguing that this is not a personal logistics problem. As CEO of The Parenthood, she helped win paid parental leave of 26 weeks with superannuation and a pay rise for early educators, and in September she took the case to the National Press Club. She is also a mother of three who learned, early and painfully, what happens when you treat a structural problem as a personal failing. Together we trace why this is a parenting issue with a disproportionate cost to women, why the first year of a baby’s life sets the pattern for decades, and what workplaces and households can do right now. In this episode Georgie shares Why the viral ABC Lifestyle post got the analysis right and the question wrong "It’s not feeling hard because you’re making the wrong choices": the line The Parenthood says to parents every day Why the answer is never to take women out of the workforce, and what economic security means for women’s independence and safety Why she advocates for parents, not mothers, and how that protects women Why dads need to be "main characters, not cameos in families", and how use-it-or-lose-it leave makes that possible The caregiving patterns that set in a baby’s first year and persist for decades The invisible logistics of care: nappies, wipes, onesies that fit, the right layers for today’s weather Her colleague’s restaurant lesson on swapping front of house and back of house Why lowering the bar is a skill, and why lunchboxes are not a verdict on your parenting How she and her husband use the Fair Play system to take full ownership of tasks, including every school form The school camp phone call that proves who institutions still assume is in charge The acting editor role that judged her on output, not hours, when she had two small children Key Quotes "It’s not feeling hard because you’re making the wrong choices. It is really hard because we have not invested in the infrastructure that you need in order to be able to combine work and care." Georgie Dent "Paid parental leave and early education and care are literally the roads and bridges that parents need in order to be able to move between home and work. But we haven’t built it for them." Georgie Dent (04:38) Welcome, Georgie Dent (10:12) The ABC Lifestyle post that asked mothers for their secrets. (14:27) The Success Tax, and parenting like it’s 1956 (17:14) Why women’s economic security is non-negotiable (19:00) Why men have to be in this conversation (21:07) Main characters, not cameos (26:37) The invisible load and why it sticks to one person (30:27) Lower the bar, and fully owning a task (33:16) Why the school always calls Mum (38:20) What genuine workplace flexibility looks like (43:17) Roads and bridges: care as infrastructure (45:41) A turning point early in Georgie’s career (55:34) What spacious success looks like for Georgie now Georgie Dent 🟩 The Parenthood: https://www.theparenthood.org.au/  🟩 The Parenthood on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theparenthood/?hl=en  🟩 Georgie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georgiedent_/?hl=en 🟩 Georgie on LinkedIn:  linkedin.com/in/georgiedent?originalSubdomain=au Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin:  🟩 Website:https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/  🟩 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristy-goodwin  🟩 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy 🟩 Speaking enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/speaking

    034 | Roads and Bridges with Georgie Dent: The Care Infrastructure Working Parents Were Never Given

  8. Sep 24

    033 | The Double Load: Why You're More Exhausted Than You've Ever Been

    What if the exhaustion you can't explain isn't one problem, but two, and nobody has named them together yet? Kristy had been circling the same question for months: why were so many ambitious women, in her coaching sessions, in keynote Q&As, telling her their exhaustion felt different this time? Not the end-of-financial-year kind. A quieter, denser kind, like the operating system itself had changed. Then her laptop started dying by 11am. Barely twelve months old, battery in perfect condition, just asked to run flat out, switching between tabs and tools, all day. And that's when it clicked: her laptop had been showing her, in real time, exactly what her own brain had been doing. In this episode Kristy names both loads properly for the first time: a hormonal shift that new 2026 research shows is dramatically under-recognised, and a digital toggling tax that's quietly reversing productivity the moment you cross a specific threshold. Both draw on the exact same finite resource. Neither is your fault. In this episode Kristy shares Why "fatigue, not hot flushes" is the real headline of a landmark 2026 study of over 17,000 women across 158 countries The specific symptom percentages from that study that upend what most of us expect perimenopause to feel like What the 2026 Australian Menopause Experience Report found about who's actually struggling most, and why it's not about age "These aren't two different problems. I'm tracking the same problem", the moment it clicked for Kristy Why almost every ambitious woman defaults to blaming herself first when she's exhausted The real story behind Kristy's laptop dying by 11am, and what it revealed about multitasking and glucose The neuroscience link between fluctuating estrogen and your prefrontal cortex's capacity to focus Why this is an organisational risk, not just a personal inconvenience, for women in their most senior, highest-judgment career years Gloria Mark's research on how little time it takes to lose focus, and how long it takes to get it back The Fourth Tool Rule: the exact tool-count threshold where new research shows productivity reverses Why naming your symptoms specifically, not just calling yourself "tired", changes what your GP or health professional can actually act on This week's Power-Up Plan: one protocol, implemented once Key Quotes "My laptop was showing me in real time what my own brain had been doing all day." "These aren't two different problems. I'm tracking the same problem." "You are not more fragile. You are not broken. You are carrying two very real, documented loads." Timestamps (00:09) Two real reasons you're more exhausted than ever (01:55) The 2026 study: 17,000 women, 158 countries (02:08) The Australian data says the same thing (04:10) The executive who stopped trusting her own judgment by lunchtime (05:59) Why we blame ourselves first (06:28) The laptop that kept dying by 11am (08:46) Layer one: the hormonal load, named properly (12:27) Why these two loads are mechanically related (13:52) Layer two: the digital load (14:07) Gloria Mark's 47 seconds and 23 minutes (14:49) The toggling tax (16:04) The Fourth Tool Rule (16:37) Protocol two: name it, don't numb it (19:09) This week's Power-Up Plan (20:12) The Powered-Up Table Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin 🟩 Website: drkristygoodwin.com 🟩 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristy-goodwin 🟩 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/ 🟩 Speaking enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/speaking  Powered-Up Table- Powered-Up Table- https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/the-powered-up-table  Other episodes you may be interested in Episode 2, The Stress Superstorm: Why Women Are Burning Out Faster Than Ever (https://drkristygoodwin.mykajabi.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149200666) (directly referenced at 12:00, the biological groundwork for how estrogen andcortisol interact) (https://drkristygoodwin.mykajabi.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149200661) Episode 7, Productivity Hijackers: Why Working Harder Isn't Working (https://drkristygoodwin.mykajabi.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149200661) (the digital-load thread continues here) Episode 9, Wide Awake at 2:22am? (https://drkristygoodwin.mykajabi.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149200659)(the sleep-hormone loop this episode's fatigue findings connect to)

    033 | The Double Load: Why You're More Exhausted Than You've Ever Been
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About

A podcast for high-achieving women who want to thrive at work without burning out their lives. You’re smart. You’re driven. You love what you do. But you’re also… exhausted. Welcome to Spacious Success, a podcast for women who are ready to redefine what it means to “have it all” in a world that rarely slows down. Hosted by Dr Kristy Goodwin, one of Australia’s leading neuro-performance experts, this show unpacks the science, strategies and stories that help ambitious women perform at their best, without sacrificing their wellbeing, relationships, or sanity. Because let’s be honest: the systems we work in weren’t built for women. The digital demands never stop. And burnout isn’t a vibe , it’s a physiological SOS. Each episode explores how we can create sustainable success from the inside out, at work, in leadership, in motherhood, and in our own minds and bodies. Expect practical tools, honest conversations, and brain-based strategies that move beyond hustle culture and toxic productivity. Whether you’re a leader, executive, founder, educator, or changemaker, Spacious Success is here to remind you: ✨ You don’t have to choose between ambition and alignment. ✨ You can be excellent without being always-on. ✨ You can lead and live without losing yourself. We’ll explore topics like: • How to thrive in a digitally-demanding world • The nervous system science behind burnout and performance • Redefining success in leadership, motherhood, and midlife • Navigating the invisible load at home and work • Creating boundaries that actually serve you • Women’s health and hormones in high-pressure roles • Recovery, rest and resilience in real life Plus, you’ll hear from inspiring guests, thought leaders, experts, creatives and high-performing women, who are rewriting the rules and reclaiming what success looks and feels like. 🎧 Hit follow and join the movement toward a more spacious, sustainable, and human way to work and live. Because you weren’t meant to do it all. You were meant to do what matters, with more ease, energy and spaciousness.

Information

  • Creator
    Dr Kristy Goodwin
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    42
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Dr Kristy Goodwin
  • Show Website
    Spacious Success

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