How I Work

If your organisation has moved its AI licenses onto a per-use plan, every single chat thread your team sends is now adding to a bill. Some companies are already burning through their entire IT budget for AI within the first couple of months of the year, and most staff have no idea their usage is costing anything at all.
It doesn't have to be a mystery. There are simple habits, from which model you default to, to what time of day you send your first message, that change how far your usage actually stretches.
In this How I AI episode, Neo and I unpack tokenomics, the economics of how you actually use your AI. We get into how usage limits work across the major platforms, why the timing of your first chat each day matters more than you'd think, and what changes once you move from a personal plan to an enterprise one.
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:
What tokenomics actually means and why it's suddenly everywhere
How Claude's usage window works differently to ChatGPT and Copilot
The simple morning habit that changes how far your usage window stretches
Why enterprise billing is shifting, and what that means for your team's budget
What managers should be doing before token usage gets out of hand
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.

** Grab tickets for The Energy Game Melbourne launch (29 July, 6:30pm) here and pre-order The Energy Game book here.**
Writing a book is hard. But getting a publisher to say yes to your book? That is an entirely different challenge, and one that most aspiring authors know almost nothing about.
What actually happens when a proposal lands on a publisher's desk? Who else needs to sign off before an offer is made? And in a world where anyone can ask AI to explain any topic, why has "great content" stopped being enough on its own?
This one is a little different from my usual episodes. It's a recording from a live webinar I did with Izzy Yates, head of Penguin Publishing Lab at Penguin Random House Australia, who has published my last three books, including my newest one, The Energy Game.
We unpack the full journey of a book, from proposal to bookshelf, including how Penguin's internal acquisitions process works, why pre-orders matter far more than most people realise, what actually gets retailers excited, and whether you can land a deal without a big platform.
If you have ever thought about writing a book, or you are in the middle of writing one right now, this is the conversation I wish I had heard before I started.
Izzy and I discuss:
What made my first book proposal stand out, and the key ingredients Izzy looks for in every strong proposal
The formula publishers use to evaluate a book: the quality of the idea multiplied by the size of the author's platform, and why it's more nuanced than it sounds
Why authors who weave personal story into their content are having more success than those who rely on expertise alone
How Penguin's two-stage internal process works, from publishing meeting to acquisitions meeting, before any offer is made
The full editorial journey from first draft to printed book: structural edit, copy edit, and proofread
How titles and covers are developed collaboratively, and what the team considers when landing on a final design
Why pre-orders matter so much and how they create a virtuous cycle with retailers and chart placement
Whether you can get a book deal without an existing audience or platform
What topics and themes Izzy sees as most resonant right now, particularly in the health and personal development crossover space
Pre-order The Energy Game: https://amzn.to/48ID29M and book your ticket to the Melbourne book launch at the Malthouse Theatre on July 29 with Lisa Leong here.

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.

If you've ever stared at a model picker and wondered whether to click Flash, Sonnet, Opus, Instant, or Think Deeper, you are not alone. These naming conventions are genuinely confusing, and most people just pick something and hope it works. The stakes are higher than they might seem, though. Token misuse has left some companies with eye-watering AI bills, including one case where a single employee ran up a $500,000 tab in a month.
The good news is that there is a simple mental model that cuts through all the noise, and once you have it, choosing the right model for any task takes seconds.
In this How I AI episode, Neo and I walk through the four major AI platforms, Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot, and break down exactly which model to use and when. We also get into tokens, usage limits, and why matching the model to the task matters far more than most people realise.
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:
Why ignoring model numbers and reading the small print instead saves a lot of confusion
What Fable and Mythos are, and why you can't use them right now
How token usage works and why the right model choice protects your access
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.

We're using AI more than ever. And yet, according to research from Glean's Work AI Institute, only 10% of Australians say AI is significantly improving organisational performance.
The truth is that most organisations have done what Dom Price calls the "Woodstock theory" of AI adoption: build it and they will come. Throw the tools out there, hope people figure it out, and wait for the productivity miracle that never quite arrives.
In this episode, I sit down with Dom Price, former Atlassian work futurist and one of the sharpest thinkers I know on how organisations actually work. Dom joins me off the back of new Australian research showing the enormous gap between AI adoption and AI impact, and we dig into exactly why that gap exists and what to do about it.
If you care about building genuine AI capability in your team rather than just looking busy with AI, this conversation will make you rethink where to start.
Dom and I discuss:
The "Woodstock theory" of AI adoption, and why most organisations are getting almost nothing back for their investment
Botsitting and botshitting: two new terms that capture exactly what's going wrong with how we use AI at work
The minus one, zero, plus one framework for figuring out where AI actually belongs in your organisation
Why managers are becoming the unexpected bottleneck in an AI-enabled workplace
Dom's board of directors inside Claude, and how he uses it to catch his own blind spots
The question Dom asks every leadership team that almost no one can answer
Key quotes
"If you have inefficient and ineffective processes and people systems, and you layer in AI, you are doing stupid things faster."
"Most of the businesses I work with in the ASX, their human operating system's Windows 95. So you might have Claude 5.9. You're using Ferrari-style horsepower in your technology, but the way your humans and teams work and meet and make decisions... all those things are Windows 95."
Connect with Dom Price on Instagram, LinkedIn and his website.

If this conversation sparked something, you'll also love my recent chat with Professor Scott Anthony on how AI has changed the way he approaches problem-solving and his day-to-day workflows. Listen here.

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.

** Grab tickets for The Energy Game Melbourne launch (29 July, 6:30pm) here and pre-order The Energy Game book here.**

You have the calendar colour-coded. You time block. You deep work. You have iterated on your to-do list more times than you can count. And yet somehow, you are still exhausted - falling further behind, producing less than you know you are capable of, and wondering what on earth is wrong with you.
Nothing is wrong with you. But the solution you have been sold almost certainly is.
This episode is a little different. It is an excerpt from my new book, The Energy Game, read by me, and it picks up close to the start of the book where I get into how we ended up in this energy crisis in the first place, and how to spot those early warning signs of chronic depletion before they tip into full-blown burnout.
The Energy Game is out on July 7, 2026. You can pre-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.