Member since March 2025
Lauren Lefkowitz is an executive coach who partners with corporate executives and leaders who are ready to create positive, sustainable, transformational career change.
Lauren's work supports individuals and/or teams as they navigate their careers and work lives, whether working on boundary-setting, burnout, team dynamics, leadership skills, big change, or simply finding healthy integration between work and home.
Lauren, a recovering workaholic and chronic hand-raiser herself, used to work 80+ hours a week, all while coaching others as a side-gig.
After breaking her shoulders chasing a Roomba vacuum, literally becoming unable to physically raise her hand for nearly a year, Lauren took her own advice and hired a coach to help her manage her own workaholic tendencies, find her version balance, and launch Fine is a Trap Coaching.
In fact, once Lauren took control of her own career and her time management, she not only found the space (and confidence) to launch her business full time, she also became a certified laughter yoga instructor!
How often do we say “it’s fine” when it’s not actually fine? Fine is a word we all use automatically. Ask almost anyone how they're doing and they’ll say, “I'm fine.” They almost never mean it. In reality, ‘fine’ is a self-soothing word we use when things aren't fine…when things are far from okay.
We use the word fine to make ourselves feel better or to make other people feel better for how we think things just are.
We say, “Oh, I'm overworked, but it's fine because they're paying me a lot of money.”
We say, “I say yes to too many things, but it's fine because I'm helping people or the company or my team.”
We say, “I’m in too many meetings, but it’s fine because the rest of the team can’t function without me.”
We say, “I’m just a bad delegator, so it’s fine that I’m working all of these hours. I’ve earned this punishment and it’s fine.”
It's almost as though we're patting ourselves on the back and saying, “There, there, self. I have to say it’s fine because if I admit it’s not fine, we’re all going to feel terrible and systems and processes will simply crumble.”
Fine is not fine.
Fine is settling.
Fine is not speaking up for what we need, what we want, how we can best work together.
Fine is not setting boundaries, not following our own goals, and really just giving up on better.
Fine is the trap of complacency, overworking, damaging teams, and slowing progress.
What we think is actually in service of others – being agreeable and helpful and in-service-of – actually burns us out and makes us less than fine. It burns all of us out.
There is a world in which we all stop settling for fine. It’s a world in which we have real conversations about what the goals actually are, what is actionable and what is time-wasting, what is achievable and what is too much for one person, one team, one year. It’s a world where we stop settling for fine and start going after amazing.
Technically, I was the vice president of HR, and eventually we added Operations to my title because the vice president of HR and sometimes marketing and a hey-how-about-some-program management, and a bit of finance and, oh, I’m in charge of IT now? was a really long title.
With each new job I took on in addition to the jobs I already had . . . with each new task . . . I forgot to consider what I should be, could be, letting go of.
It, in fact, did not occur to me that I was allowed to let anything go.
Even though I trained people on the art of delegating.
Even though I coached people on finding projects and tasks and responsibilities that were mis-assigned to them.
Even though one of my great skills was to help executive leaders build departments in which no one person took on the lion’s share of responsibilities.
I could not get my job done in less than 80 to 100 hours a week.
I didn't know how to say no.
I didn't know how to stop allowing work to happen to me.
Until one day.
Right in the middle of the hardest I’ve ever worked, the most I’ve ever achieved, the biggest job I’ve ever had . . . and juuuuust as I was about to plan for my next career steps (because there had to be even more somewhere else, right?), everything changed.
Working from home one day, I was in the midst of a bout of wrapping up projects at work, while reorganizing, cleaning and purging at home. By the end of this day, everything would be perfect.
This was my workaholic dream. Do everything for everyone until all the work is done and then, well, I actually didn't know what, but there had to be some kind of reward, right?
Running my Roomba vacuum while working from home one day, I saw the little robot vacuum heading for the unplugged cord of a glass lamp. Picturing the vacuum catching the cord, envisioning glass shattering all over my wood floors, I jumped up and ran across the room to prevent disaster.
Instead, I slid on those wood floors in my socks, launched forward, reached out to grab a table (that I was not close enough to) to stop my fall, and landed face down, hard, with both arms over my head.
I had broken both of my shoulders, literally taking away my ability to be a hand-raiser.
For the first time in my adult life, my only choice was to stop working completely. Imagine all the things you can’t do without your shoulders – eating, going to the bathroom, even taking my glasses off my face, were all impossible. It was almost four months before I went back to work; more than a year to full recovery.
You're waiting for the this-was-the-day-I-stopped-being-a-workaholic moment, aren't you?
As soon as I was able, I did everything I could to make up for lost time: back to the 80+ hour workweeks, back to volunteering for anything that needed attention, back to interim management. This time I was managing all of my regular departments, plus Finance, plus a $1M construction project.
Disappointing, isn't it? I bet you wish there'd been a tidy little ending to this story.
It's not tidy, but it is amazing, and it's led to the most interesting, fulfilling, and fun career and life changes I could have made.
Technically, I was the vice president of HR, and eventually we added Operations to my title because the vice president of HR and sometimes marketing and a hey-how-about-some-program management, and a bit of finance and, oh, I’m in charge of IT now? was a really long title.
With each new job I took on in addition to the jobs I already had . . . with each new task . . . I forgot to consider what I should be, could be, letting go of.
It, in fact, did not occur to me that I was allowed to let anything go.
Even though I trained people on the art of delegating.
Even though I coached people on finding projects and tasks and responsibilities that were mis-assigned to them.
Even though one of my great skills was to help executive leaders build departments in which no one person took on the lion’s share of responsibilities.
I could not get my job done in less than 80 to 100 hours a week.
I didn't know how to say no.
I didn't know how to stop allowing work to happen to me.
Until one day.
Right in the middle of the hardest I’ve ever worked, the most I’ve ever achieved, the biggest job I’ve ever had . . . and juuuuust as I was about to plan for my next career steps (because there had to be even more somewhere else, right?), everything changed.
Working from home one day, I was in the midst of a bout of wrapping up projects at work, while reorganizing, cleaning and purging at home. By the end of this day, everything would be perfect.
This was my workaholic dream. Do everything for everyone until all the work is done and then, well, I actually didn't know what, but there had to be some kind of reward, right?
Running my Roomba vacuum while working from home one day, I saw the little robot vacuum heading for the unplugged cord of a glass lamp. Picturing the vacuum catching the cord, envisioning glass shattering all over my wood floors, I jumped up and ran across the room to prevent disaster.
Instead, I slid on those wood floors in my socks, launched forward, reached out to grab a table (that I was not close enough to) to stop my fall, and landed face down, hard, with both arms over my head.
I had broken both of my shoulders, literally taking away my ability to be a hand-raiser.
For the first time in my adult life, my only choice was to stop working completely. Imagine all the things you can’t do without your shoulders – eating, going to the bathroom, even taking my glasses off my face, were all impossible. It was almost four months before I went back to work; more than a year to full recovery.
You're waiting for the this-was-the-day-I-stopped-being-a-workaholic moment, aren't you?
As soon as I was able, I did everything I could to make up for lost time: back to the 80+ hour workweeks, back to volunteering for anything that needed attention, back to interim management. This time I was managing all of my regular departments, plus Finance, plus a $1M construction project.
Disappointing, isn't it? I bet you wish there'd been a tidy little ending to this story.
It's not tidy, but it is amazing, and it's led to the most interesting, fulfilling, and fun career and life changes I could have made.