Episode Details

Your working day was built around a hormone cycle that resets every 24 hours. Yours doesn't. So why are we all still measuring ourselves against it?

Sophie Cliff is the author of The Hustle Cure and Choose Joy, a coach and the founder of The Joyful Coach. Seven years ago she walked away from a corporate career because she could see the trade-off coming: be ambitious, or be present. Pick one. She decided not to. Today she runs a growing business on three days of childcare a week, went back to work 10 weeks after both of her babies, and has the positive psychology research to explain exactly why it works.

We get into why almost every productivity book she picked up in pregnancy was written by a man with someone else handling his life admin, and what happens when you stop trying to work like one. Sophie explains the 24 hour male hormone cycle the entire working world is built around, what your own cycle actually means for when you do your best thinking, and why waking up at 5am is not a moral achievement but simply the length of a piece of DNA. She also tells us about the nap she takes during work hours and the moment she stopped apologising for it.

There is honesty here too. Sophie burnt out at the start of this year while writing a book about burnout, and she talks openly about what that taught her. We cover how she and her husband divide the mental load through explicit conversations rather than assumed ones, the shoulds she has shed in motherhood from parenting camps to the myth of having it all together, and why prioritising joy is not selfish at all but the thing quietly fuelling your resilience, your relationships and your career.

If you have ever felt like the game is rigged, it is. This one is about playing it your way.

A note from us: we're taking August off for a summer break, and we'll be back with more brilliant guests in September.

You can find Sophie at sophiecliff.com, over on Instagram at @sophiecliff, on her podcast Practical Positivity, and in her book The Hustle Cure.