Birth of a Workaholic ft. Jenny Lynne

“I was eager, and I was a quick learner.”

These two traits are a dangerous recipe for success. I loved to learn new things, and to be successful at taking on new challenges and defeating them. So I did it for my whole life. It fed me.

When my kids lost their dad, and I was left to parent two grieving kids solo, I quickly realized that this wasn’t right. This wasn’t how I wanted to live my life. I couldn’t live my life like this anymore. So I worked and made the change.

This first story is all about:

• The start of my map: The moment when I fell in love with work at 16
• My entrepreneurial journey: The influences of being a business owner on my relationship with work
• The turning point in my map: My first step to fully integrate my life over 20 years later
• You don’t have to be a workaholic to have a successful business or a successful life.

Key Takeaways:

• If you don’t change your relationship with work, you’ll fight yourself every step of the way. You shouldn’t feel guilty about taking time off, or decreasing work hours. If you constantly feel like you need to be working, it’s time to make a change. 
• Just like any behavior, workaholic behaviors are learned. We can learn something and we can unlearn something. How will you apply your successfully learned skills, and integrate that into a balanced life?
• Ask yourself. Have you built something that only you can do or decided that only you can do it? If you answer yes to either question – it might be time to commit to building your map beyond workaholism.
•  Don’t wait until tragedy strikes because it happens to all of us at some point. Be there for the people and life waiting for you BEFORE you need to.

Key Moments:

{3:10}”I easily worked 70 to 80 hours a week, not because anyone was making me, nor because I was getting paid for it or punching a time clock for it. I wasn't, but because I loved every freaking minute.”

{3:51}”Fast forward a year. I am exhausted, burned out, and struggling with health issues because what I didn't know at the time is that my body, mind, and spirit aren't separate things. We are whole and integrated people and we mess with one. We mess with it all.”

{7:07}”It was January, 2021 and I am, eyeing 40 in the nuts. I was standing in the kitchen staring at a piece of paper and there was a few words on it that I understood, likely malignant tumor.”

{9:55}”You are not a workaholic. Your workaholic is an outfit that you put on top of who you are. It's an outfit you can choose to put on, and it's an outfit you can choose to take off.”

Want to share your story or make a change?

If you’d like to share your story, contact me at
podcast@jennylynneerickson.com

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Transcript

  [Intro]
 Welcome to Death of a Workaholic, where other people's stories are a piece of your map. I'm your host Jenny Lynn, and I'm ready to take you on an adventure.

  It was the year 2000. The tiny conference room in the nonprofit I worked in was packed. It was a nice change of pace from the cold telemarketing office I normally sat in trying to drum up enough donations to keep their cause moving forward.

 The all hands meeting was coming to a close, and I was gonna do it. I was finally brave enough to get my first real adult job. I tracked down the technology director and I asked him, I like computers and I'd like to work for you. He took me through interviews and a test on computers, a test that of course, I promptly failed because I didn't know what a DLL was, and in case anyone's interested, that is a dynamic linked library.

Yet, he offered me the job. I was floored as to why he would give me a job when I clearly didn't know what I was doing or was unable to pass a test about basic computer terminology. But his answer spoke for itself. You're a fast learner and you're cheap. You will figure it out. But first, he needed a diploma, which means I needed to figure out how to get myself a diploma.

You see I was 16 and homeschooled. And while teaching yourself gives you a lot of things, a diploma is not necessarily one of them. However, it does give you another tool, one that I found very useful throughout my life, which is self-direction. What happens when no one else is telling you what to do?

Well that day, I can tell you what happened to me. After waffling around for a while, I figured out a solution and it happened to be Print Shop pro. I bought some fancy paper, logged onto the app and used my parents' diploma to craft the words. This document certifies that Jenny Lynn Macoff has completed the course of study required by the consolidated school district of , but did I meet the requirements?

I wasn't sure. probably not, but I had my mom sign as the principal, and my dad is a super attendant, and I was officially graduated. Apparently it was enough for the office and I got the job, and this was the moment that my love affair with work got really heated in a good way because my boss was right. I was eager and I was a quick learner.

And I was most definitely cheap. A salaried employee by day, I crawled under desks in my Walmart acquired pencil skirt, hot pink, mind you and my button downs. And I made sure that all the cords were plugged in whenever a help desk side support was called for a broken PC or our broken printer. Did you reset that? Became my favorite thing to say. And by night I brought home old computers and I learned languages and systems so that I could manage servers and websites and data across different operating systems and technologies. I easily worked 70 to 80 hours a week, not because anyone was making me, nor because I was getting paid for it or punching a time clock for it.

I wasn't, but because I loved every freaking minute. I tackled the problem. It frustrated me. I solved it. I wrestled it to the ground, and then I applied what I learned to something else, and I did it again and again and again. And through that process, I went from knowing nothing to having enough tools to be quite dangerous in the technology world.

The work worked for me.

Fast forward a year. I am exhausted, burned out, and struggling with health issues because what I didn't know at the time is that my body, mind, and spirit aren't separate things. We are whole and integrated people and we mess with one. We mess with it all. Just like our lives and work are.Artificially separating them is a recipe for disaster, but it took me a long time to learn that.

After dabbling at a bunch of entry level jobs and temp jobs, I found myself at IBM and I thrived once again. I channeled my desire to work harder into fixing problems so that I could work myself out of a job. And then when I got bored, because I worked myself out of a job, I would go find a new one because I hated being bored.

I hated not being productive. I hated not having challenging work to do every minute of every day. Because I was Superwoman, I could work 45 to 60 hours per week. I could go to school full-time and get great grades. I could pop out and raise a few kidlets and try and fail to keep a house clean. It was a roller coaster of working like crazy in every aspect of my life, followed by seasons of boredom, followed by new adventures, and I rode that rollercoaster for life with a freaking grin on my face.

There was never a dull moment in that adrenaline pumping system.

 Eventually it occurred to me that this drive, this pursuit of building from nothing , that all in mentality, the love of the adrenaline rush, the ability to roll up my sleeves and just make crap happen, make stuff happen. It made me perfectly suited for being an entrepreneur. So I struck out on my own.

I did pretty damn good. I didn't become rich. I didn't blow the socks off anything. I wasn't one of those overnight sensations, but I was able to predictably grow and build something solid under my feet. I was able to earn a living within a couple of months, and I avoided the feaster famine cycle that a lot of entrepreneurs had because I built my business by design and intention, just like I built my life.

I set a goal and I made it happen. But I built it, one spreadsheet, one service, one product, one automation, one hire, one sale, one project at a time. I built it and I carried that burden of revenue on my back. And the moment that I looked away it fell.

Every time I had a win, there was another voice, another nudge in the direction. Jenny, you've got this. No matter what, you'll figure it out. I could outwork any problem that came up in my life. , every time I failed, the question was, could I have done something more? This was the voice of my workaholism, so I kept working and working and working until I couldn't anymore.

It was January, 2021 and I am, eyeing 40 in the nuts. I was standing in the kitchen staring at a piece of paper and there was a few words on it that I understood,

  likely malignant tumor.

I looked at my kid's father. There were no words, only tears.

We didn't know how bad it was at the time that it didn't take long to find out stage four, 5% chance he would make it to five years and no chance that the kids would have their father in 10 years, but it didn't take five years. In fact, it didn't even take. . 10 months later, he was gone. It only took me a week from diagnosis to drop from 55 to 45 hours per week and nine months to drop from 45 to 35, but it took me 18 months from the time the word cancer was first uttered to fully wrestle my workaholic to the ground.

but I had to, I didn't have a choice. I was a single mom putting food on the table who had consistently and maybe kind of proudly prioritized my identity as a worker above my identity as a mother, and that was not going to fly anymore. I needed both. In my journey, I learned a few things. , I did all of the right things, the delegation activities, the time management activities, and it worked.

I brought my hours down, but it wasn't enough to create a healthy company that could operate while I was away, and it certainly did not help me remove the guilt I experienced when I wasn't working, and for a lot of my clients. , they struggle to even implement the changes unless they shift their relationship with work.

Because until we shift our relationship with work, we will fight ourselves every freaking step of the way.

The second thing I learned is that a workaholic is not who I am. It's a behavior that I learned through a lifetime of reinforcement.  and it's a behavior I can unlearn and replace with something else more deeply satisfying. Workaholism does not have to be an addiction that you suffer forever because it is not who you are.

You are not a workaholic. Your workaholic is an outfit that you put on top of who you are. It's an outfit you can choose to put on, and it's an outfit you can choose to take off. We can learn something and we can unlearn something, but if you want to change it, you have to go back to the source of your story.

How did you build this outfit in the first place? What voices wove it together for you? What voices do you need to change and rewrite? What part of your story do you need to rewrite right now? So the question that I learned to ask myself and the question that I've learned to ask others, have you built something that only you can do?

Or have you decided that only you can do it? Is it time to build your map beyond workaholism? Your first step is simple. Capture your story. Show where you've been. Where you are and where you wanna be. Tear down the walls of work and life because they're one thing. Show the story of you and your journey, and then you can use the pieces of other people's stories , to build your map for your way through.

And you'll find these map pieces here on death of a workaholic. 

[Outro]
Thank you for joining us on Death of a Workaholic, where other people's stories are a piece of your map beyond workaholism. I'm your host, Jenny Lynn, and if this was a valuable addition to your map, then please like, subscribe, or follow or sign it for my newsletter to get updates when new episodes are dropped. You can reach out to me at podcast@jennylynnerickson.com.  Or you can go to my website, deathofaworkaholic.com.  If you have a map that you think would be valuable for other people, then please reach out and see if we can book you on the show.

That is podcast@jennylynnerickson.com or deathofaworkaholic.com,  and I can't wait to see you on the next drop.