When loving your work becomes workaholism

‘Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life’ the saying goes. Sounds good, yes? But for far too many small business owners, investing time, effort, energy and money into building your business often tips into workaholism. You’re telling yourself that these hours are well invested, as you’re building your own asset. Until it tips into routinely working weekends, ruining family holidays, hiding from friends and family when you should be out there, socialising, and living, breathing and sleeping work.

In this episode, I get brutally honest about the holidays I’ve ruined through my work. This episode is a confession, a diagnosis, and an intervention all at once, unpacking the addiction hiding inside “hard work” and “passion” that so many self-employed people will never admit to out loud.

You’ll learn:

• Why the holiday that “should have been spectacular” still gives me a tinge of sadness — and what I’d do differently if I had my time over

• The paradox of the profit and loss statement: why working flat out often means your business goes nowhere at all

• A specific cognitive performance statistic that explains why you can’t think your way out of burnout using the same brain that got you there

• Six warning signs about your productivity — including one about sitcoms which might hit uncomfortably close to home

• Why “rest as a reward” is one of the most damaging beliefs a business owner can carry, and what to replace it with instead.

If you suspect you might have a problem working too hard, this episode is the key to unlock less stress, more focus, and far more fun.

Welcome to Meaningful Work Remarkable Life. I’m your host Brook McCarthy and I’m a business coach, trainer and speaker living and working on the unceded lands of the Camargo people here in Sydney, Australia. In this podcast, we explore the paradoxes inherent in working for love and money, magnifying your impact and doing work you feel born to do. We explore the intersections of the meanings we bring to work and the meanings we derive from work.

I have ruined so many overseas holidays. It is not a flex, not a flex. It is an embarrassment. Probably one of the saddest ones was when I was 33. Let me start again. And my children at the time—I think, well, if I was 33, they would have been three and four, or maybe two and three, something like that. Anyway, they were super-cute little blonde-haired, curly, goddamn delicious children. And we hired a big house in the countryside in France. It was on a hill. It was very picturesque. It was very steep. We had to walk up the hill and down the hill and up the hill and down the hill. And we had a whole bunch of friends and family come. So I had two of my three sisters, I think, came with their partners. There were no nieces and nephews at the time. My parents came. My partner’s parents and sisters came from England. I think he also had an uncle and an aunt and a cousin that came from England. We had some family friends from Australia that came. It was a revolving door, and it should have been a fabulously wonderful six weeks. And I ruined it. I ruined it, and I will feel forever a little bit sad. I try not to dwell, but I do feel a tinge of sadness when I think about that holiday because it could have been spectacular. But the issue was that I was deep in the trenches of delusion, believing that my love for my work, my enjoyment, my enthusiasm for my work was actually good and healthy and not workaholism when, in fact, with the benefit of hindsight, it absolutely was.

This is not uncommon. And it’s something that a lot of business owners suffer from. It is something that a lot of diligent, conscientious, hardworking, well-meaning people suffer from. And I want to make clear right from the get-go that occasionally we do need to work really hard. Yeah. And I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I’m not going to tell you that it’s all a walk in the park all of the time. It’s not all a walk in the park. Sometimes we do have competing deadlines. We do have a period of time where it’s like all hands on deck and we are, you know, working longer hours, and maybe we need to work on the weekend—and we must work on the weekend—not anxiety about work, but actual, you know, shit-this-needs-to-be-done-by-Monday work. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about periods of busyness. I’m talking about enduring periods of workaholism.

It’s when you’re checking your phone and you’re checking your phone and you’re checking your phone and you’re checking your phone and nothing really is happening. There is no unfolding incident, but it feels weird not to check our phones. The people that most need rest—the people, the owners who are deep in the trenches of workaholism—are the ones who are least likely to actually take the rest. And even worse, like there is an instance of truth in: the more you love your work, you know, the more you want to do it. What was that saying? “If you love your work, love your work, and then you’ll never have to work a day in your life,” or words to that effect.

I swallowed that hook, line and sinker when I was in France, and around that period of time I was deep in the propaganda that it’s okay if I work all the time and have no boundaries because I love it. I love it. It’s a privilege. And guess what? As an added byproduct, the more I work, the more I get paid. What’s not to like? It gets worse. The more you love your work and it is hard to kind of differentiate—it’s not an easy process, it’s not a yes, no, right, wrong kind of process of going, “Do I love my work or am I actually a workaholic?” This is not straightforward, but if rest feels like a bit of a threat, if lying down in the middle of a day or God forbid trying to take a nap feels really radical—if you leave work early one day because you’re going to a networking dinner or, you know, you’re having a drink, you’re meeting a friend for lunch in the middle of the day, and then you have some weird feeling like you need to catch up and do extra hours, even though if truth be told you really don’t because there is no deadline—then probably this episode is for you.

Because you didn’t swap one job for many, right? You didn’t swap one boss for many bosses. Or a job that could follow you home, and now you’re working 24 seven because you’re either at your desk or you’re thinking about work. That is indicative of a problem. Am I right or am I right?

Workaholism and self-employment is really, really common. It’s a deep issue. It’s tied to your identity. It is tied to your beliefs and thoughts about the value of hard work and discipline and complexity and difficulty. Maybe you can hear the voice of your parents in your head. Maybe, you know, some of these sayings that our parents and our grandparents, our great-grandparents said—”There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” There’s one of them, you know. Like, nothing, nothing comes easy. If you’re going to be paid, it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be difficult. It’s not going to be fun. It’s going to be complicated.

If, for example, you were really good at one subject at school and you got great marks at it and your family kind of overlooked that, and instead they put great onus and great value on the subject that you really struggled with—the difficult subject, maybe it was maths—then this is for you. Workaholism also relates to people-pleasing. It relates to self-worth through productivity, and to an extent it relates to everybody, right? Because this is the air that we breathe. This is the ocean that we swim in. This is our socialisation that we must be productive, that there’s value in productivity, that we have no value if we’re not productive participants, citizens of society.

And you know, there is some, of course there is some value in that because humans are creative. We are innately creative. We are driven to create. What is the opposite of that? It is depression. And what happens with depression is we shrink, we contract, we become passive. We don’t do, we don’t create, we stop creating. So yes, of course there’s some truth in the joy that comes through work and the joy that comes through productivity, through doing stuff, through creating stuff, through being part of something larger than ourselves.

It’s when it tips into that toxic element, when it goes too far, this is when it becomes dangerous. When we don’t just want to be needed by other people, but we don’t see any value in ourselves without other people around. When we don’t just want to be relevant to other people, but we don’t see any value in ourselves without other people signalling that for us. When resting doesn’t actually feel like resting, it feels like disappearing. It feels like some kind of existential threat—of irrelevance, of not being needed, of not being useful, of not being worthy.

Because funnily enough, the harder you work to secure your future through your business, the more we squander the fruits of our labours, right? Because we’re working all the time. We’re working all the time. We’re missing our children. We’re missing key milestones. We’re missing the everyday joy and the everyday moments of awe that are right in front of you.

And this is why I try not to be too hard on myself about that French holiday because, you know, there were many moments of joy and awe and “Oh my God, this is so fantastic.” There were, you know, hilarious stories and things that happened, and you know, it was brilliant. It was just coloured by this kind of enduring feeling that I needed to keep going, keep working, keep being relevant.

I didn’t have good boundaries then. I didn’t know how to push back on the client that said, “We do think it’s a priority and you know, we do need it done immediately. We do need a new website and new branding immediately.” And it’s like, “Well, you know what? I think it can wait.” This was a client I was already working with, not a new client. You can wait till I get home.

There’s a difference between being devoted to your work and using your work to avoid something. And most of us don’t know which one we’re doing. I definitely have noticed that my work is a coping mechanism when things are stressful or hard in my personal life. I find it a lot easier—I definitely find it a lot more appealing than life admin. You know, give me something complicated to do in my business and I will happily do it, but give me some life admin task and I can feel like my brain is leaking out my ears and time slows down and I start questioning existence. I just hate it. I hate it. So strange.

So “busy” is a feeling. And you know, one of the little kind of tricks—one of the things that I’ve done, which I love—try this on for size, report back, let me know—when somebody says to you, when the person comes up to you and they’re all like, their eyes are a-flutter and they’re all looking a little bit like, you know, a little zany, they say to you, “How are you? Busy?” I love saying no. I love saying no. Especially if I’m really busy, if I’m stressed—this is the best thing to say. If you’re really stressed and you’re really busy and you’ve got heaps of deadlines and you’re just like, “How the hell am I going to manage this?”—when somebody says, “Are you busy?” say no. And smile and notice how uncomfortable they look. It thrills me. And weirdly, it makes me feel less stressed and less busy.

Because we’ve all had that, right? We’ve all had seasons where we were flat out in our business and we were working way too hard and we knew it, but nothing actually really moved forward, you know? And you’ve had that experience, I’m sure. I’ve had that experience of looking at your profit and loss and going, “What the—? Surely, surely, surely I earn more money than that,” because you’ve spent the energy, you’ve spent the time, you’ve been running around like a headless chicken, but you don’t actually have any momentum.

And oftentimes the first thing that suffers is your long-term business. Because the first thing most business owners drop when they’re frantic is that they drop their business development, they drop their pitching, they drop their marketing. And so what happens? You’re just pushing the tin down the road a little longer. You’re just making future problems for yourself. “I couldn’t possibly make time for marketing,” she says. And then, you know, wonder why you’ve got up-down, stop-start cashflow, stop-start momentum, great inefficiency and way more stress than necessary.

The problem is there’s always more that could be done, right? The problem is it can feel like there’s never enough time. It can feel like you’ve never done enough. There is always something else to do. And this is, you know, this is the paradox at the heart of it. We need to be okay with that. We need to be okay with drawing a line under the to-do list and going, “It’s 5pm, it’s 4pm, whatever time—I’m leaving it there. That’s it. I’m walking away. It’s not finished.” It’s never finished until you’re six foot under. It’s never finished. You will never get that satisfaction. Sorry, not sorry. You will never feel that satisfaction of feeling like it’s all done and it’s all finished. There will always be something more to do. And if it doesn’t feel like there’s something more to do, well, probably it’s a lack of imagination and you need to hire me immediately because I can give you stuff to do. There will always be more. You will never finish.

Now, the most valuable thing that you can do as a business owner—and especially if it’s just you, especially if you’re a sole trader, especially if you’re a soloist—the most valuable thing you can do is to actually be really, really selfish with your time and to make it clear and obvious when you’re going to carve out space or delineate space for not working.

And for a lot of my clients who have been in this cycle, this pattern of working way too hard, what I oftentimes get them to do is a bit of lifestyle design and to remember their hobbies. Remember when you were a person that had hobbies? And so this might look like exercise, although I probably wouldn’t call exercise a hobby, but maybe it is—maybe it’s trail biking, maybe it is rock climbing, maybe it is dancing, maybe it is fine woodworking or craft. I’ve got a client that takes herself on craft tours to Japan. Yay! Hello, Alison. Maybe it is, I don’t know, pottery. Hello, Laura. Whatever it is, you’ve got a hobby.

Another thing that I do with clients is I give them a hard stop, or they give themselves a hard stop, and what we do is schedule something. So maybe it’s a Pilates class, for example, that starts at 5.30 or 4.30 on the dot, which means the business owner must walk away from the work and go to attend the class. And oftentimes you just need that break of an hour or an hour and a half. And all of a sudden you remember that you’re human, and then the evening begins, and then you’re cooking dinner, and then, you know, you’re speaking to friends, and then you’re watching your show or you’re doing whatever you do.

Another thing I give to some clients is analogue evenings. So analogue evenings, as the name suggests, might be playing records, reading books, lighting candles, making candles, cooking, eating. Cooking and eating are always a good idea. Ah, gardening, yes, you could do gardening in the dark, why not? You could absolutely definitely do gardening if it was indoor pots. You should see my house covered in indoor plants.

The busier you are, the less capacity you have also for the actual work to grow your business. The blank space—you need this. You need this. You need the blank space, the space that’s carved out for thinking and for creativity and for relationships. And I’m talking in this instance about business relationships, cultivating business relationships that may turn into referrals, that may turn into collaborations, that may turn into some kind of publicity. Maybe they invite you on their podcast. They invite you to speak on their stage.

Busyness is oftentimes the enemy of progress. And when you are stuck in the trenches, you will lose your perspective. You will lose your ability to notice and see the opportunities that are all around you. And this is not just my opinion. This is backed up by research—plenty of it—but I’ll give you one quick stat: cognitive performance drops 13 per cent after just one night of poor sleep, and decision-making quality declines well before you feel impaired. You don’t know how bad your thinking actually is when you’re burnt out. You’ve got no idea. You’re too burnt out to notice. You cannot think your way out of a problem using the same exhausted, overwrought brain that created it.

So a few warning signals, just in case you’re starting to think, “Shit, I might have a problem.” This is for you. A few warning signals:

You can’t actually enjoy the moment. You are always thinking about work. You are always thinking. Maybe you’re at a party, maybe you’re having a good time, and you’re actually not even in the moment because you’re thinking, “Oh, this would look great on Instagram. Where’s my phone? This would be great on LinkedIn. Where’s my phone?” You’re not actually ever fully present in your joy and satisfaction.

I always think that the sign of a good time is you’ve put your phone down and haven’t taken any photos of the entire evening because your phone’s in your bag in a corner and you’re busy having a great time. That is my idea of a good night out.

Another warning sign: you can’t sit without scrolling. When you are still, you are either thinking about work or feeling anxious.

Your identity has quietly become “the hardworking one” or “the highly capable one.” And you’re feeling quite pleased and proud about that. And look, this again, this is kind of a paradox, right? There’s so much of this episode, so much of this conversation, which is a paradox and it is complicated because yes, you know, yes, there’s value in being hardworking and yes, there’s value in being highly capable and yes, there’s value in resilience and there’s value in, you know, generosity and being the person that manages stuff. Yes, of course these are good things, but the problem becomes when they cost us so much.

Rest becomes a reward. This is another warning sign. Rest feels like a reward. And I have this conversation with my Momentum masterminders all the time—every week, pretty much—this feeling of “First I do the thing, then I get the reward. First I do the thing, then I get the rest. First I do the thing, then I get the joy.” No! How do we unschool ourselves? How do we unlearn? How do we rewire our brain? We have joy first, second, third. We start the day with joy. We finish the day with joy. We put this throughout our day because we are pleasure-seeking creatures. Why would we deny ourselves joy? Why?

If I want to get the most out of myself and do my best work, why would I deny myself the joy that fuels the person? Which means not just sleep, not just a good night’s sleep, but cake for breakfast. It means handstands for lunch. It means like you pepper your joy deliberately throughout your day because that is how you will thrive and how you will do your best work.

If you find yourself secretly judging people—maybe you’re jealous, maybe you’re judging, maybe you’re jealous, maybe you’re judging—it could be two different things. It doesn’t matter. But you know, I find sometimes what I’ve noticed is if I’m looking at sitcoms and I’m thinking, “You bastards, you’ve got all the time in the world in a sitcom to sit around and blah-dee-blah-blah with your neighbours and your family and your friends.” If I’m looking at sitcoms and I’m starting to feel a bit jealous of the sitcom, I’m thinking, “Okay, Brook, third person again. Okay, you need a rest. You need a reset. You need a redesign.”

And then final warning sign—and this one’s a big one: You’re using busyness as a way to avoid things, as a way to avoid your family, as a way to avoid your romantic relationship, as a way to avoid conversations, avoid decisions, avoid looking at your numbers. A lot of what people call passion is actually avoidance. It’s productive procrastination. The busyness is the perfect hiding place. It’s socially celebrated. It’s financially justified. It’s endlessly demanding. And you know, you might be rewarded—people will say, “Isn’t she good? Isn’t she great? Look how hardworking she is. What a successful woman.”

So I want to leave you with a question. I’ve opened up a lot of questions, and like I said, this is not straightforward. This is not black and white. You know, this is complicated and it does require you to be brutally honest with yourself. And sometimes that’s impossible. If I can be again, brutally honest with you, dear listener, it is hard to be brutally honest with ourselves. And sometimes it does require an outsider’s opinion. And remember: rest is not the opposite of ambition, and you cannot build something great whilst you’re running on empty. You can only maintain it.

So I want to leave you with a couple of things to tuck into your brain and marinate on. Firstly, are you going to take ownership of this situation or are you going to be a victim to it? Ouch. A lot of workaholism is like the person is in that victim mentality. They’re on this endless slog—running, running, running, slog, slog, slog. And they’ve kind of built a victim mentality around that slog, and they’re not going to change. Nobody with a victim mentality is open to change, right? The first thing we need to do when we’re making change is to get ourselves out of that victim mentality because we can’t make a change when we’re stuck in that.

We need to understand what it’s costing us—not just intellectually. We need to reinvent ourselves. This, make no mistake, is about your identity. This is deep. This is not, you know, about the Pilates class at 5.30. Yeah. This is about reinventing your identity and what you value, what your opinions and beliefs are. This is no small thing. This is about being, not doing. Being a being, not a doing all the time. Do a, do a, do a, do a, do a. Yeah, because what’s left at the end of the day?

When was the last time you went to a funeral? And what did, you know, what did everybody say to each other? I’m going to suggest if it was a lovely, heartwarming, fabulous wake, I’m going to guess that you were surrounded by loved ones and with tears in your eyes, you had your arms around each other and you probably said to each other, “We really need to see more of each other. We can’t keep seeing each other only at a funeral” because there is nothing like death to really make clear what life is all about.

And I tell you what, at the end of the day, you do not want somebody to stand up at your eulogy and give a eulogy at your funeral and say, “Gee whiz, she was a really hard worker.”

Real quick before you go, if this episode has gotten you thinking, gotten you excited, or is having you change the way that you do business or life, would you do me a super quick favour and write me a short review? Your podcast review means so much to me, and it helps other values-based business owners just like you to find this show, which is a fantastic gift to me.