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#24 Design a Life You Don't Want to Escape with Manelle Merhi

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

Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin

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/)