I thought I'd lost my ambition, but it turns out I don't even know what my ambition is anymore
Confessions of a LinkedIn doom-scroller 👀
Nine years ago, a friend introduced me to one of his friends via email. You two have similar interests and would get along swimmingly.
We made plans to meet, and after a few reschedules (“A meeting just got scheduled for tmrw AM so it will be a tight squeeze. Schedules are crazy!”; “I just got a meeting thrown on my calendar with our CEO. Are you free for lunch tomorrow?”), we finally met up. On our first friend date, we talked about our world-changing ambitions: hers in the realm of climate and sustainability, and mine in the realm of product and prose. We bonded over our love for writing. We were brimming with optimism, drive, and focus. We were 22 and 25, and as is clear from our email exchange, our job was our top priority.
Despite this, or maybe because of this, our friendship blossomed. Together we attended eclectic San Francisco events, hosted joint dinner party social experiments, meditated, tutored local students, drank lots of coffees, and ate overpriced buckwheat waffles. Whenever we saw each other, no matter the occasion, we always started by providing one another with a work update—and all the work we still needed to to do in our lives. We started to joke that every time we saw each other, at least one of us was looking to quit our job for a bigger, more purpose-filled role.
Two months ago, we met for a walk and immediately jumped into our traditional work updates. She went first. “I’m loving that I get to choose the type of work I do and who I work with. I feel like I bring value to these companies and they value me.” She has been freelancing for a year, and in all the time I’ve known her, I’ve never known her to be so joy-filled about her work. I was overjoyed for her.
“What about you?” She asked. “I feel the opposite,” I told her. “I really like where I work. But I am stuck or lost or something. I’m not progressing on the career ladder and I don’t even know what I’m working toward anymore. I should probably feel urgency around this, but I don’t.” The optimism, drive, and focus—the ambition—that characterized our first ever conversation, was absent from me during this one.
I was unsettled.
My first ten years of work was so all-encompassing that I never paused to think about the compass of my career. When pandemic hit at year ten and I started spending more time at my computer, I picked up a new habit: doom-scrolling LinkedIn. I quickly learned that every person in my network (except for me) is the VP or something or the Manager of someone else. I spent hours wondering when I veered off-course or what I hadn’t given to my career that everyone else has; I canceled plans for a sabbatical after deciding I haven’t done anything comparatively impressive to deserve it.
The only thing worse than career-stalking was going to my own profile. One that once filled me with pride—touting frequent promotions and weekly contributions to a business magazine—now only made me pause to wonder, “Have I lost my ambition?”
My role on paper is the same as it was nine years ago when I met my friend (there have been some twists and growth in responsibility, but just let me be dramatic). And I can’t quite decide how I should feel about that. The high-achieving A-student in me feels like I’ve lost control of the steering wheel. The confidence-lacking part of me doesn’t know what to ask of mentors and managers. The empathetic part of me recognizes that we are coming out of a global pandemic. The therapy-going part of me wonders if I’d even be happy if I had a fancy title. The running, writing, volunteering part of me knows I find ample meaning outside of my work.
A week after our walk, my friend sent me an email.
subject: ambition is dead, apparently
These two articles found their way to me after we went on our walk and it reminded me of what we were talking about. I don't think there is anything that revelatory about either except to say, I think they're probably right??
The Cut (obviously) and Elle (?) weigh in!
In Losing My Ambition, a columnist announces that thanks to pandemic, she has abandoned ambition in favor of “no goals” and “just vibes.” Her pre-pandemic hustle included finding and starting a new job with a higher title and salary just three months after giving birth. When she was forced to simultaneously work and caregive through pandemic, she reconsidered what she always assumed she was working toward.
Work asked us to keep our productivity apace despite managing an unprecedented health scare that was visibly stealing lives in front of us every day. […] It’s hard to want more of that, to strive for an even higher spot in that poisoned hierarchy.
She cites the Great Resignation and America’s “parental primal scream” as proof that she isn’t alone.
People want to work—we have to—but many of us are no longer willing to trade our well-being for a chance to claw at the decaying American Dream.
A journalist echoes this sentiment in her essay What Comes After Ambition? then redefines what it means to be ambitious:
For ambition to be sustainable, it has to be personal and complex, not just about rising through the ranks. For every woman who is burned out after placing too much value on work as a key component of her identity, the task isn’t letting go of ambition altogether. It’s relocating those ambitions beyond the traditional markers of money, title, and professional recognition. Ambition does not have to be limited to a quest for power at the expense of yourself and others. It can also be a drive for a more just world, a healthier self, a stronger community. And it’s definitely achievable in soft pants.
Perhaps, like these authors and the women they write about, I have not lost my ambition. It’s just that now, through added life experience (including life in a pandemic), my ambition has simply changed.
These are the people I need to be following on LinkedIn.
On this month’s Hidden Brain episode “Who Do You Want To Be?”, psychologist Ken Sheldon shares that most of us don’t actually know how to set a direction for our lives. We don’t have the skills to do that “programming” because we are easily distracted by the environmental factors in any one point in time.
We focus on meeting our goals, but we likely have not set the right goals for ourselves in the first place. Using the example of high-performing lawyers, Sheldon explains that when we perform well in our job, we are more likely to lose sight of what we actually want. Distracted by extrinsic motivation (ie, spot bonuses and positive feedback) and what others want for us (ie, my parents wanted me to be a lawyer), we lose sight of who we want to be, what makes us happy, and the intrinsic motivation that compelled us toward our job in the first place.
This results in what he calls “non-concordance,” or doing what we think we should do or what we think others want us to do, and not what we actually want do. I just learned this phrase, but I’m at a point of non-concordance myself.
The way to resolve non-concordance is through the same process of discovery taken by artists and creatives. It requires us to pose the question we’re grappling with (ie, “What is bothering me?” or “What is making me unhappy?”) then let the question sit in our unconscious while we go about our daily lives. As we go along, we’ll be struck by random moments of inspiration. Once we experience many of these aha moments, we can assess the possible solutions they bring forth.
Equipped with fresh insights, I am no longer unsettled about what I shared with my friend on our walk (or now you).
Entering my mid-thirties and thirteenth year of work, my non-concordance goes far beyond the temptation to quit one job and start another. That is what my twenties were about. This is the start of a longer journey: one of rediscovery.
Through endless LinkedIn scrolling, I lamented my failure to achieve goals that I now recognize may no longer be (or perhaps were never) my goals. I should not be asking, “Have I lost my ambition?” I should instead be asking, “What is my ambition?”
This new path of inquiry will lead me to fulfilling, meaningful, and joy-filled answers. I’m in no rush, but I already know that whatever the answers are, I would never have found them on LinkedIn.
Have you been thinking about this too? Do you have a similar (or different) perspective? Start a conversation with Ro and the Unabridged Ro community or share this letter with a friend.
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Really dug this one, Ro!
insane timing with this essay Ro!
I am right there with you and on the other side of my laments-- what does my new ambition look like now? where does it want to take me? I thought for so long it was ambition itself that burnt me out, but I think it was simply ambition on a path I didn't want to be on anymore.
Looking forward to seeing where the heck we both end up :)