Spacious Success

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 o

Spacious Success is a business podcast hosted by Dr Kristy Goodwin, with 29 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Dr Kristy Goodwin hosts Spacious Success, a business show with 29 episodes published.

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  Episode #27

  027 | Shiny and Shabby: The Trade-Offs Nobody Warned You About

  Aug 13, 202617 min

  What if the exhaustion you keep trying to fix with sleep is not a flaw, but the honest cost of a life you chose? There are no research papers stacked up in this one. No tables. Just the thing that keeps surfacing in the rooms Kristy has been speaking in all year: accomplished women, quietly naming the trade-offs they have made, and exhaling when someone finally says it out loud. Kristy tells the story of the preschool concert she missed for a keynote in Perth, the part her son had rehearsed for weeks, and the feeling she carried for months afterwards. What she understands now is that the feeling was not guilt. It was grief. Something small was lost, and it was real. From there she does what she always does, grounds it in biology. Decision fatigue, the glucose-hungry prefrontal cortex, the mental load that keeps a dozen cognitive tabs open at once. The conversation traces why the trade-offs are a consequence of carrying more than any nervous system was built to hold, and what changes when you name them honestly. In this episode Kristy shares Why she opens with no stats and no tables, and what she wanted to say instead The collective exhale she keeps witnessing when women name their trade-offs in a room Shonda Rhimes' honest answer to "how do you do it all", and why "I don't" was the most useful thing she could have said The difference between the shiny side that reaches your LinkedIn profile and the shabby side that never does The preschool concert she missed, and the months she carried it Why the feeling was grief, not guilt, and why that distinction matters How decision fatigue degrades the quality of choices across a day, from parole boards to doctors' clinics Why your prefrontal cortex runs on glucose, and what that means for every values-laden yes and no The mental load research, and why women carry a disproportionate share of the invisible organising "Every role you carry is a cognitive tab that remains open", and why more tabs means less processing power Why the exhaustion is not fixed by sleep or a bubble bath The visible load audit: how to make the invisible visible once a quarter The seasonal question her late friend Karen used to ask her Emma Isaacs on guilt as a wasted emotion, and Kristy's reframe: guilt says I did something wrong, grief says something was lost Key Quotes "You are shiny. You're also shabby. Both are true. Both are yours." "Guilt says I did something wrong. Grief says maybe something was lost." "The trade-offs are not a flaw. They're a consequence of carrying more than your biological system was ever supposed to hold." Timestamps (00:06) A different kind of episode (01:36) What keeps surfacing in the rooms (03:16) Shonda Rhimes names the trade-off (05:57) Shiny and shabby (06:41) The concert I missed (07:50) The biology of trade-offs (08:35) Decision fatigue (09:13) The mental load (10:08) Why sleep does not fix it (10:52) The visible load audit (11:42) The seasonal question (12:36) Guilt versus grief (14:40) Proximity to your values (15:52) You are shiny, you are shabby (15:56) This week's Power-Up Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin Website: https://drkristygoodwin.com LinkedIn: [VA to insert handle] Instagram: [VA to insert handle] Speaking enquiries: Emma Chase, Tier One Management, emma@tieronemanagement.com.au References Daminger, A. (2019). The cognitive dimension of household labor. American Sociological Review, 84(4), 609–633. Danziger, S., Levav, J., & Avnaim-Pesso, L. (2011). Extraneous factors in judicial decisions. PNAS, 108(17), 6889–6892. Isaacs, E. (2018). Winging it. Allen & Unwin. Linder, J. A., et al. (2014). Time of day and the decision to prescribe antibiotics. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(12), 2029–2031. Rhimes, S. (2014). Commencement address. Dartmouth College. Other episodes you may be interested in EP0 Everyone Needs a Karen (where the seasonal question comes from; called back at ~11:35) EP4 The Superwoman Myth (the cape, and the maths and biology of doing it all; called back at ~16:52, "take your cape off") EP19 The Invisible Tax (the mental load and women's hidden load) EP16 Amelia Phillips (what shows up in the bodies of high-performing women; named at ~2:47)

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  Episode #26

  026 | The Joy Metric: How a CEO Decides What Success Is Worth, with Philippa Moig

  Aug 6, 202641 min

  What if the exhaustion isn’t a workload problem, but the cost of performing a steadiness you don’t feel? Most leaders can tell you their revenue, their utilisation and their sleep score. Very few can tell you the last time they felt genuinely light. Philippa Moig can, because she treats it as a measurement. Chief Executive Officer of UnLtd, the social purpose organisation connecting Australia’s media, marketing and creative industries with charities supporting young people at risk, Philippa arrived in the role after two decades in senior agency positions and a stint leading media at Google. She also didn’t get the job the first time she went for it. The feedback, when she finally did, was that it was how she showed up after the rejection that won it. In this conversation she is unusually direct about the years before. What it does to a nervous system to stand in front of 70 people and perform a competence you can’t feel. Why she now measures success by how much joy is in her life, and what happened when that metric told her to leave. Dr Kristy traces the science underneath the story, from the contagion effect of a leader’s state to the cortisol cup that empties at 2am, and the structures any leader can borrow this week. In this episode Philippa shares Why not getting her dream job the first time became the reason she eventually got it The Monday she told her leadership team she was a five out of five, and what happened next Vulnerability as the actual unlock of authentic leadership, not a soft skill bolted onto it What a sustained pressure-cooker environment costs, in her own words Measuring success by the amount of joy in your life, and treating a downward trend as data Why she resigned from a role she was performing well, with nothing lined up Sleep as the one non-negotiable, and the arithmetic of the extra hour that costs four the next day The three wearable metrics she actually watches, and the days she lets the data overrule her Delaying the first coffee by 60 minutes, and the adenosine science behind why it works Why work-life balance is the wrong picture, and what peaks and troughs look like instead Putting a time horizon on an intense season so the people around you can absorb it Naming the support out loud, including a husband who is the primary caregiver Ten minutes lying down, guilt free, reframed as a performance decision "Rest means rest": the phone, the sauna, and the confession that follows What organisations could actually do for working parents, starting with permission Why leaders have to walk the talk before flexibility means anything Key Quotes "It was actually how you showed up after you didn’t get the job which got you the job." "That extra hour will actually cost me four hours the next day." "Rest means rest. No phone. Actually just downtime." Timestamps (00:43) Why this conversation exists (02:53) From Google to cause-driven: how she got here (04:05) The job she didn’t get the first time (05:43) What we get wrong about leadership (06:28) The five out of five (07:20) A leader’s state is contagious (07:58) Shiny and shabby (10:37) The superwoman myth and the trade-offs (12:03) What the pressure cooker actually cost (12:53) Joy as a success metric (17:36) Sleep as the ignition habit (19:29) The cortisol cup and the 2am waking (21:18) Delaying the first coffee (26:38) Why balance is the wrong picture (24:29) Putting a time horizon on the hard season (30:44) The three metrics she watches (33:57) Ten minutes lying down, guilt free (35:24) Redesigning work for working parents (37:14) Digital guardrails and the right to disconnect (39:01) Leaders have to walk the talk Philippa Moig LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippa-moig-38a02953/ UnLtd: https://unltd.org.au/ Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin Website: https://drkristygoodwin.com/spacious-success/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkristygoodwin/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/ Speaking enquiries: https://drkristygoodwin.com/speaking/ References Barnes, C. M., Lucianetti, L., Bhave, D. P., & Christian, M. S. (2015). "You wouldn’t like me when I’m sleepy": Leaders’ sleep, daily abusive supervision, and work unit engagement. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5), 1419–1437. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.1063 Rhimes, S. (2014, June 8). Commencement address. Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2014/06/shonda-rhimes-91-delivers-lesson-packed-commencement-address WorkWell Leaders. (2025). WorkWell Leaders Impact Measure. WorkWell Leaders in partnership with the National University of Singapore. https://www.workwellleaders.org/programmes/workwell-leaders-impact-measure/ Other episodes you may be interested in EP002 The Stress Superstorm (the biology under chronic stress, and why the cup overflows at 2am) https://drkristygoodwin.com/spacious-success-episode-02

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  Episode #25

  O25 | Fragmented Focus: Why Your Attention Is a Design Problem, Not a Discipline Problem

  Jul 30, 202619 min

  What if your fractured focus was never yours to fix? That question lands differently once you see who is most worried about it. Not the women navigating menopause. Not the ones managing chronic illness or complex caregiving. The youngest ones. Six in ten women aged 18 to 24 report concerns about their attention span, against two in ten women aged 65 and over. If this were a hormonal story, the numbers would run the other way. Dr Kristy found her own version of it at 30,000 feet: three and a half hours to Cairns, no signal, a book, coffee, nobody asking for a snack, and she could not get past the third page. A woman with a PhD in how the brain processes information, watching her attention slide off the paragraph like water off a windscreen. What follows is not a lecture about willpower. It is the science underneath the experience, from the attention economy to attention residue, the organisational cost most leaders are absorbing without measuring, and three protocols any woman can put in place this week. In this episode Kristy shares Six in ten women aged 18 to 24 are worried about their attention span, the highest of any age group Why the age inversion is the finding, and what it rules out The flight to Cairns: uninterrupted time, and still unable to read Focus Quotient depletion, and how it differs from burnout and from stress Why the workplace tools built for efficiency are quietly fragmenting us The attention economy, where interruption is a design decision rather than an accident Attention residue: why you are never fully present in the task in front of you What feels like multitasking is rapid task switching, and what the switch actually costs Popcorn brain, and why it is a description rather than a diagnosis Best thinking versus most persistent thinking, and what fragmentation costs an organisation Power-zone hours, and how to build a fortress around your focus Ultradian rhythms, ninety-minute blocks, and thirty seconds with your eyes closed Auditing your attention environment, and why red notification badges are never neutral "Your urgency is not my emergency", and why most responsiveness pressure is self-imposed Key Quotes "This is not a focus problem. This is a design problem." "You are not getting their best thinking. You are getting their most persistent thinking." "Your attention system is not broken. It is responding perfectly rationally to irrational conditions." Timestamps (00:11) The statistic that stopped me (02:26) Unable to read on a flight to Cairns (04:24) Focus Quotient depletion, and what it is not (05:27) The Jean Hailes data, and the age inversion (07:02) A prefrontal cortex built for a different world (07:28) The attention economy (08:07) Attention residue (09:32) Popcorn brain (10:04) What feels like multitasking is not multitasking (12:09) Best thinking versus most persistent thinking (12:56) Power-zone hours, and a fortress around your focus (14:18) Ultradian rhythms and the thirty-second visual break (15:24) Auditing your attention environment (17:01) Your urgency is not my emergency (17:20) The reframe, and this week’s Power-Up Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin Website: https://drkristygoodwin.com/spacious-success/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkristygoodwin/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/ Speaking enquiries: https://drkristygoodwin.com/speaking/ Chronotype Assessment and Report: https://drkristygoodwin.com/product/chronotype/ References Arain, M., Haque, M., Johal, L., Mathur, P., Nel, W., Rais, A., Sandhu, R., & Sharma, S. (2013). Maturation of the adolescent brain. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 9, 449-461. https://www.dovepress.com/maturation-of-the-adolescent-brain-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-NDT Foerde, K., Knowlton, B. J., & Poldrack, R. A. (2006). Modulation of competing memory systems by distraction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(31), 11778-11783. Jean Hailes for Women’s Health. (2025). 2025 National Women’s Health Survey. https://www.jeanhailes.org.au/research/womens-health-survey/2025-reports 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. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.04.002 Mark, G. (2023). Attention span: A groundbreaking way to restore balance, happiness and productivity. Hanover Square Press. Levy, D. M. (2011). "Popcorn brain", as attributed in reporting on Levy’s work at the University of Washington Information School. A colloquial term, not a clinical diagnosis. Other episodes you may be interested in EP001 From Code Red to High-Res (the burnout story the flight anecdote calls back to): https://drkristygoodwin.com/spacious-success-code-red-to-high-res/ EP007 Productivity Hijackers (context switching and attention residue): https://d

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  Spacious Success

  024 | Design a Life You Don't Want to Escape with Manelle Merhi

  Jul 23, 202648 min

  What if the exhaustion isn't a time problem, but a nervous-system one? That question lands differently when you're a senior leader who has held it all together for years, and your body finally calls it in on the first night of your holidays. Manelle Merhi knows that moment intimately. General Manager of Marketing and Customer Experience at Kennards Hire, mentor to women in a male-dominated industry, mother of twins, she did all of it at what she calls full velocity. Until 19 December, when the surge capacity ran out. What followed wasn't a slow-down. Manelle hasn't lost an ounce of ambition. It was a rebuild: an operating model tied to her biology rather than fighting it. In this conversation she and Dr Kristy trace the science underneath the story, from the letdown effect to attention residue, and the structures any leader can borrow this week. In this episode Manelle shares Why her body "held on" until it was finally safe to collapse, and the science of the letdown effect What burnout actually looks like in a high-functioning senior leader Treating energy as a bank account: are you in credit, or heading for deficit Why knowledge workers are paid for judgement, not hours, so energy is the real lever No-decision days: protecting her biggest calls for a rested brain No-meeting Fridays, and the research linking meeting-free days to higher output and lower stress Closing the mental tabs: 15-minute transitions and the science of attention residue Why women may be the first generation carrying full-velocity work and intensified parenting at once The ambition gap that's really a wellbeing gap in disguise Why you can't champion other women on an empty tank "Can you hear the birds?" — the question that brought her back to presence Designing a life you don't want to escape, rather than waiting for the weekend Key Quotes "Now I think about my energy as a bank account." "Let me design a life I don't want to escape." "Your urgency is not my emergency." Timestamps (00:00) Meeting Manelle Merhi (11:34) The wake-up call: burnout on the last day of work (18:08) Duck syndrome and the letdown effect (22:24) Energy as a bank account (23:37) The three human currencies and the Energy Audit (26:51) No-decision days and meeting-free Fridays (31:54) Mental open tabs and attention residue (34:37) The first generation to carry both (37:48) The ambition gap that's really a wellbeing gap (41:26) Why you can't champion others on an empty tank (43:17) Can you hear the birds? (46:55) A breath that resets: dignity, safety, belonging (52:27) Design a life you don't want to escape Manelle Merhi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manellemerhi/ Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin Website: https://drkristygoodwin.com/spacious-success/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkristygoodwin/ Instagram: https:https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/ Speaking enquiries:https://drkristygoodwin.com/speaking/ References Laker, B., Pereira, V., Budhwar, P., & Malik, A. (2022). The surprising impact of meeting-free days. MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-surprising-impact-of-meeting-free-days/ 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. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.04.002 McKinsey & Company, & LeanIn.Org. (2025). Women in the workplace 2025. https://womenintheworkplace.com/ Other episodes you may be interested in EP002 The Stress Superstorm (stress cycle and hormones), (https://drkristygoodwin.com/spacious-success-episode-02-the-stress-superstorm/) EP007 Productivity Hijackers (context switching and attention residue), (https://drkristygoodwin.com/spacious-success-episode-07-productivity-hijackers/) EP013 We Don't Have an Ambition Gap. We Have a Wellbeing Gap (the reframe Kristy revisits at 38:16), (https://drkristygoodwin.com/spacious-success-episode-13-we-dont-have-an-ambition-gap/)

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  Episode #23

  023 | The Unmasking: When Perimenopause Strips Away What Was Holding You Together

  Jul 16, 202616 min

  If your brain has felt unfamiliar in recent years, this episode is for you. Dr Kristy Goodwin unpacks the ADHD and perimenopause collision: why so many high-performing women hit their late thirties and forties and find that the strategies that carried them for decades suddenly stop working. Estrogen is one of the brain’s most powerful neuromodulators, and when it starts to fluctuate, it destabilises the very dopamine circuits that govern attention, working memory and emotional regulation. Drawing on a 2025 population study of more than 5,000 women published in European Psychiatry, plus new analysis from King’s College London, Kristy explains why women with ADHD experience severe perimenopausal symptoms at nearly double the rate of other women, why nearly half are not diagnosed until midlife, and why perimenopause can unmask, worsen or mimic ADHD. You will learn how to build a coherent symptom picture before your next medical appointment, why this is the season to protect rather than strip back your support systems, and how to advocate for yourself when you are told everything looks fine. This episode is not medical advice. If you recognise yourself here, please speak with a medical professional who understands both ADHD and perimenopause. Relevant Links Speaking enquiries: https://drkristygoodwin.com/contact/ Ovum app: https://www.askovum.com/ Episode References Chapman, L., Gupta, K., Hunter, M. S., & Dommett, E. J. (2025). Examining the link between ADHD symptoms and menopausal experiences. Journal of Attention Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1177/10870547251355006 Jakobsdottir Smari, U., Valdimarsdottir, U. A., Wynchank, D., de Jong, M., Aspelund, T., Hauksdottir, A., Thordardottir, E. B., Tomasson, G., Jakobsdottir, J., Lu, D., Nevriana, A., Larsson, H., Kooij, S., & Zoega, H. (2025). Perimenopausal symptoms in women with and without ADHD: A population-based cohort study. European Psychiatry, 68(1), e133. https://doi.org/10.1192/j.eurpsy.2025.10101 Eng, A. G., et al. (2024). Cyclical hormonal fluctuation and ADHD symptom severity across the menstrual cycle. Hormones and Behavior. Osianlis, E., Thomas, E. H. X., Li, Q., Bellgrove, M., May, T., Chapman, D., Kulkarni, J., & Gurvich, C. (2026). ADHD in females: Survey findings on symptoms across hormonal life stages. Journal of psychiatric research, 193, 208–215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.11.035

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