Confessions of a Recovering Work Addict

0:26Jessica Mendoza and Laura Mayer. is the author of a new memoir called Try Hard, a cautionary tale of clocking in and spinning out. I think that being a try hard is unfortunately something that goes beyond just work. It's less about the advancement and it's more about being addicted to the process of showing up. It's really not being able to let anything rest. It's like perfectionism, but it's perfectionism in the extreme, maybe? And it's way exhausting. Exhausting and kind of cringe. Like, why can't these people just chill out? And the fact is, trying to do anything without it looking effortless is embarrassing because showing that effort is kind of going against all of the popular understandings of, at least in America, of how we are supposed to succeed.

1:30Minus like the rise and grind aspect, which is a whole separate side of things. But also like it's not necessarily a bad thing. I don't think so. I'm proud to be a tryhard. I'm trying to raise my kid to be a tryhard. I made a sign that says the most important thing to do is try. Forget Yoda. Don't listen to Yoda. Wait, is that a Yoda quote? Although he says do or do not, there is no try. Oh my goodness. He's wrong. He's wrong. Yeah, I'm going to start. I need to get George Lucas in on this. The most important thing is to try. Let's rebrand. It's time for a rebrand. Yeah, exactly. Today, Laura and I talk about loving work so much that it became an addiction.

2:11One that catapulted her into executive roles at major companies, but also led to panic attacks, crying in meetings, and the sense that being a tryhard comes with a cost.

2:28From The Journal, this is Work Mode, a special series airing on Sundays, where we take a look at how work is changing. I'm Jessica Mendoza. Let's get to work.

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3:29For a podcasting nerd like me, Laura Mayer's resume is it. She's launched over 100 podcasts, including chart-topping ones that I listen to, like Revisionist History and The Dream. She's held executive jobs at big companies like ABC News and startups like Panoply Media. But way before Laura became a podcast big shot in New York City, she was a kid growing up in a small town in Illinois. And it was in those days, as a child, that she held what she considered her first job, managing her mother as she struggled with alcoholism. My mom was, and to a certain extent continues to be, like the central figure in my life.

4:11And so for me as a kid, so much of my life was focused on tracking my mom, what she was drinking, taking the temperature of the room emotionally and otherwise, depending on what that consumption was. And what I would do is I started making these charts that were slightly based on like the Saffir-Simpson scale, which has to do with hurricane intensity of especially like during periods of time when I wasn't in school, like breaks, weekends. I would decide at the end of the day, OK, so my mom seemed to have be at like a one, meaning maybe she hadn't been drinking that much or hadn't drank at all, was a zero all the way up to like a five.

4:56which would have been very destructive. But that chart was like really a way for me to make something that was totally not concrete or controllable feel like it was in my hands. But then also at the end of the day, documenting. Like I needed to leave a paper trail. I needed to make sure that my books were in order. So that was that particular job. I mean, you describe your relationship to work as an addiction in the book. Can you talk about that. Why? Especially as someone who has experienced the effects of addiction. I mean, I'm obsessed with work. I'm obsessed with my own work. Before I had my kid and after I left my parents' house when I was 18, the first thing I think about when I get up in the morning is work.

5:48The last thing I would think about when I go to sleep is work. And my work and other people's work and what work I might do in the future and what work I did in the past. It is like a slot machine, you know, because I know what the circuit of success can look like and how I will feel if only briefly after something gets done. And that's an addiction cycle, right? But it's also an addiction cycle that's really, really, really valorized in our society. so if left to my own devices if I didn't have a kid if I didn't have a family if I didn't have any of that I do think that I would on paper have clawed my way to a certain level of success that I would deem as a kid oh you made it you made it but the thing about addiction is you're never We're satisfying that central lack.

6:47So I would never feel like I've done enough. It's really hard for me to sit in the present and not think about what's to come, which is also a hallmark of addiction. It almost sounds like you feel like you need to work harder than other people. Yeah. Why? It's like in math class when they would say you have to show your work. I love that. I love that. And everyone was like, why? I got to the answer. I'd be like, no, no, no. They need to see how I got there. I think you might be the only person I know who loves that part. Oh, I love showing my work because at least if I messed up, I'd be able to know where.

7:22Fair. I think that in showing your work, you're externalizing effort. And in that way, no one can take away how much you tried from you, even if you didn't accomplish what you set out to do. After a few years working in journalism after college, Laura started working in the business of journalism. And she moved up fast, launching new shows and managing people and studio operations, all while still in her 20s. She says that her number one asset was her work ethic. Did you see yourself or do you see yourself as an ambitious person? Yes. I want to hear more about that because ambition can be kind of a tricky word, especially for women.

8:06Oh, absolutely. Because it's threatening, right? For me at that time, ambition was I wanted to be able to prove myself as a serious business person, a legitimate business person. And I think that there is that kind of intensity for women around ambition that can feel icky for the woman themselves having to deal with people like feeling strange about it or feeling threatened. or just like being like, just chill out. Like, why are you showing your effort in that kind of way? Did you know at the time, like what you were reaching for? One of the questions that I get asked, you know, is like, where do you see yourself in five years?

8:53Like back then, what would you have said? Like, did you know that you were reaching for senior producer, manager, you know, executive, yada, yada? I fell into management, but I fell into it happily. I think that I wanted to be in a position where I was managing people, but I was doing creative stuff and operations at the same time. And I think that was like really the only time in my career where it was really clear to me, like, I want, this is what I would like to work towards. Though Laura fell into management happily, she says that those management roles demanded a lot of her. She began to feel that her gender played into how she was treated.

9:32And she often found herself in a position she calls the corporate mommy. So a corporate mommy is basically it's a manager position occupied generally by a woman that is sits between in middle management, but sits between managing a bunch of people underneath you and then managing up at all times. And a corporate mommy position is generally one that exists because there is a structural problem in the organization, like upper management doesn't really want to deal with lower management, doesn't communicate well. And so they put someone in that position in order to do all of that. And so you essentially become this dam of corporate problems to stop it from coming to your producers.

10:20And then you become this dam on their end of like, these are the problems I have. Please help. Please help. That you can't actually do anything about. And so that is, I think, a role, especially in certain sectors of the media, in my case, that are really, like, growing. Like, you don't have time to think about the actual organizational design. And so instead, you just put someone there to kind of, like, deal with all the problems. And someone like you who wants to try and wants to do might be more susceptible to becoming a corporate mommy than others. Corporate mommyhood. I have been the mother to so many adults at work.

10:59I've raised my hand to get into those positions. I have accidentally fallen into those positions over and over and over again. because ultimately you want like a workhorse in that position. But the issue is, is if you do want to eventually be in a decision making place, you'll never get there if you're a corporate mommy. There's no amount of work that you can do to show yourself as being capable of being in upper management because you are put into the position of corporate mommy because you're seen as holding a singular function, which is dealing with all the nonsense. And therefore they can promote you because then a bunch of other people would have to deal with the nonsense.

11:40It becomes kind of an immediate dead end. Yes. But on paper, looks great. And so if you are someone who's ambitious, who has, you know, career goals, wants to end up somewhere, et cetera, et cetera, it's like, oh, great, I'm in this role that, like, looks really good on paper. Like, LinkedIn loves me, et cetera, et cetera. But you also don't learn a lot in those positions. I mean, sure, management is, like, constantly learning. But essentially what you're learning is you're learning the various ways that people kind of interact poorly with each other and then trying to fix it. Yeah. Which aren't skills that you can carry on with you to your other jobs.

12:18Yeah. And it does sound like this is something that startups in particular are susceptible to because those org charts aren't nearly as clear. There's not nearly as much bureaucracy involved or as much respect necessarily for bureaucracy. Yeah. Or there's a lot of bureaucracy being created in real time. I love that. I love that. I love an org chart. I love an org chart for a five-year-old company that's just done a Series B. After the break, Laura talks about founding a startup and how she finally reached her breaking point.

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14:06In 2018, Laura Mayer reached what seemed like the pinnacle of her career. It was a time when tons of money was going into podcasts, and she was given the mother of all opportunities to co-found a podcast company. To Laura, it felt like this was the moment that her tryhardness was finally paying off. The world was finally seeing how much of herself she was giving to work. But that opportunity turned out to be just another job that took advantage of her tendency to push herself beyond the limit. And you co-founded a company at one point with a man you call in the book Roger. Ends up being a very tumultuous working relationship.

14:49But at the very beginning of your relationship with him and like when you first started meeting with him, he came to you for your expertise. Yep. And you wrote something that really struck me. You said, here was a person who said I was fully proven. It struck me because fully proven is something that I often struggle to feel about myself. Like, I don't know necessarily that I would put myself in the bucket of try hard, but I try. And I feel like there's always something to prove. Why did it feel so affirming to you to hear that? Maybe not in so many words, but to feel that way at that point in your life and from that person?

15:30You know, it's interesting. I don't know if I felt that, but I was definitely it was the first time anyone ever told me that. And I think that that particular person definitely was able to clock that that was what I was trying to hear. And so it was really, really appealing in that particular way to have someone hand to me this idea of I asked for a seat at the table and he said, you're not going to have a seat at the table. I need you to build the table. And I was like, yes, finally. And I mean, honestly, like I think that that those sort of initial conversations and the initial proving of that to be true, which ultimately fell apart.

16:11It really kept me tethered. You know, I was sold on the opportunity as soon as someone said that, as soon as that person said that. Looking back, does it feel like you had imposter syndrome and somebody basically said, you're not. Yeah, you're not an imposter. Because I saw that person, my old business partner, as someone who had made it, made it, made it, made it, made it. And so to have someone come to you in that position and be like, you don't need to prove yourself to me. I know that you know how to do this was just like everything I'd been hoping to hear for my whole life, you know. And this didn't come at no cost to you.

16:52You know, this continuous need to push and to try and to show that you are proven. And sometimes you just seem to take it to the point that you would have panic attacks on the subway. Like it was taking a toll on your physical and mental condition. And you still continue to power through. And is that just because doing the work was so important to you? I think at the time I felt like if I didn't do the work, then I didn't exist. Because that was so central to like everything I'd done in my life. And so if I had stopped or let go of the opportunity, and I use the phrase let go deliberately because I did feel like I was really hanging on.

17:38Then if I let go of it, if I stopped it, if I walked away, because to me, the only way that I could, there was no solving the situation. the only solve would have been to walk away, then I felt like I would have been giving up everything. I'd worked forward to that point in my life because I was not a quitter. Not being a quitter. It's the other side of the coin of being a tryhard, which makes it all the more ironic or maybe poetic that Laura's breaking point actually comes some years later when she decides to quit one of the biggest jobs she's ever held. By then, she's had her daughter. She's becoming aware of the space that work takes up in her life.

18:16And she's wondering if maybe she needs to direct her try-hard tendencies elsewhere. You go on to become the executive producer at ABC News leading their podcasting team. And then a few years later, you quit the job, which in the course of reading the memoir, it seemed like it was the first time that you actively set a boundary between your work and the rest of your life. Yep. Why do you think it took so long for you to do that? It's the most unnatural thing for me to do. You know, it's the thing that I've most had to learn. I think that I grew up kind of not having any boundaries that were respected as a kid.

18:59And that somehow transmogrified into me not setting any boundaries for myself in work, between my work and my personal life. I think that it took realizing that I need to be, like, well in order to continue and be as a person, but then also to be there for my daughter. The book is dedicated to my mom and to my daughter. And I think that her coming into the picture and me accepting that I'm not just a job is ultimately what allowed me to set that boundary. I actually love that you have mother listed in your work experience on LinkedIn. More of us should do that. I'm not yet a parent myself, about to be.

19:47Oh, really? Congratulations. I'm curious, you know, you've—how old is your daughter now? She's five? Okay. How do you think at this point she sees you and your relationship with work? She makes fun—she roasts me about work. She does impressions of me doing Zoom calls. She has a little paper computer that my husband made, and she goes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I wear glasses generally when I'm on my computer, and she puts them on. She will heckle me when I say I have to do something and I'm not doing it. She goes, Mommy, you got to go to work. I am concerned that especially during the period of time when I was writing the book and working at ABC that she saw me as someone who only works and she said that back to me she was like why did you choose to be at the office all the time the Mickey Mouse office because ABC is owned by Disney and I said well to make money and work is important to me and I told her I regret that And then I had to explain what the word regret meant.

20:54And then I said, if you do something but you wish you didn't do it, and she said, so you could have not done it. And I was like, damn, you really got me good. You're putting me on the spotlight here. You're putting me on the spot there, kid. I can't lie to you. But I do think that there has been a change in recent years that she will grow to understand that I'm not just mommy working. And she insists she never wants to get a job. She's going to work at the bank because that's where the money is. Right. Just be near the money. Why not? Yeah, just near the—she's going to steal money from people when they're at the ATM.

21:29That's the plan. That's the plan. You did say you want your daughter to be a try-hard. What version of try-hard do you want her to become? The goal with having my kid for my husband and me is for—her name's Joanna—is for Joanna to be the most Joanna she can be. Always. and I want her to be able to be someone who advocates for herself, whoever that self may be and become. And the type of tryhard I want her to be is relentlessly herself, whatever that might be. And I think that we are currently succeeding in that particular avenue as of five years. It sounds like having a daughter, having a family, maybe pushed you to think about work in a somewhat different way.

22:31How would you say you approach work now? It's still complicated. I still have these try-hard tendencies. I definitely have less of a firm... I said, you know, when we were talking about like past jobs I've had where it's like, you know, a lot of things are going wrong and I'm like holding on to it for dear life because I don't know who I will be would be without the job. I don't feel like that anymore. My identity isn't so tied to the specific thing that I'm doing for work to make money every single day. Laura, what is the number one piece of advice you would give to other tryhards? The number one piece of advice I would give to other tryhards is do not think that you're only as good as your last email or your last project or your last success.

23:32And don't hold on to the failures. you can have that energy of wanting to do more, but then you can also, I say as a hypocrite, hypocrite, such a hypocrite, sit and realize sometimes that you've done enough. Laura, thank you so much. This was a great chat. Thank you for having me.

24:00Work Mode is a series from The Journal, a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by Enrique Perez de la Rosa and edited by Katherine Brewer. I'm Jessica Mendoza. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak, and Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wiley, remixed by Nathan Singapak. Fact-checking by Kate Gallagher. Have an amazing week, and let us know what you thought of these Sunday episodes.

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