Hidde de Vries is the founder of Recharge, a former Googler and the author of “Work Smart, Play Smart’ which he released in the UK live on this podcast episode. Hidde recalls losing his business, his income, his girlfriend and his flat as the catalyst for his journey to avoid burnout and depression. It was only when Hidde was full time at Google and loving his work did he start to reconsider how he could best manage is own energy and vitality and so he used himself as an experiment for what became his Recharge Programme. As humans we know we can work hard, and with the new technologies around us, we also have the ability to literally work ourselves to death! Sustainable performance is more than just wellbeing, it’s about empowering people to work smarter which in turn allows people to regulate all the various internal and external energisers that allow us to improve our ability to be productive in all that we do in order to improve our ‘live life balance.’The pandemic eroded even more boundaries between our working life and our personal life. Many of us travelled from the bedroom to the laptop on the kitchen table back to the bedroom in order to do it all over again the next day. As many organisations attempt to tackle what flexibility means for their people, the critical component is trust. Leaders must switch their mindset to output, as opposed to hours, location and depersonalised ways of working