It’s Time to Replace Ambition with Adaptation

Women are in the midst of a revolutionary reckoning with our ambitions. We’re not resigning en masse—because who can afford to quit her job in this economy?!—but we are trying to figure out a new set of goals and guidance for our professional lives. Thanks to long-simmering inequality and stubborn sexism, clarified by the pain of the pandemic, our ... See more

There is truly a bottomless pit of advice on how to do work faster, harder, and more efficiently, and all of these ideas have been comforting to me at various times in my career. Now, having made myself sick living like that, I find myself looking for new advice on how to adhere to some other approach, one that does not focus primarily on beating t... See more

Be ambitious about the process, not just the outcome. (To use my own hobby as an example, when I bake, I put on some good music, I take my time, I eat too much batter. That way, if the recipe implodes–like when I accidentally mixed up powdered sugar and flour–the whole thing isn’t a wash.)

Let more than one thing hold your ambition, or meaning. (Th... See more