In this episode, Leah finally pulls back the curtain on a piece of her research she hasn’t fully shared yet: the mental load at work and how it travels both directions between your job and your home. Drawing on her book Drained: How to Reduce Your Mental Load to Do Less and Be More and prior research with colleagues at the University of Melbourne, she explains why the mental load is not just “to-do lists” or cognitive labor, but invisible, boundaryless, emotional thinking work you carry everywhere you go.
Leah walks through the eight types of mental load and invites you to look at how they show up differently in your work life versus your home life, using insights from her Lighten Lab assessment tool. She highlights what her studies are finding about dads in particular: men are often thinking intensely about safety and “dream building” for the family, trying to show up as better, more emotionally present fathers than their own dads while also compartmentalizing work so it doesn’t bleed into home. The twist? When men feel justified in investing in their own dreams and rest, many women are still running everything behind the scenes—fueling resentment and burnout. This episode gives you language to see your work mental load clearly and to start rebalancing it in your own life.
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