What Comes After Ambition?

“Yes, I’m ambitious,” a friend told me recently, “but climbing the corporate ladder does not interest me like it used to. A title, a bump in pay—it’s not satisfying. What I need to feel successful and fulfilled is completely different. Am I doing something that brings satisfaction? Do I feel like I’m learning? Do I feel like I’m contributing? Do I ... See more

And I think that’s one of our enduring understandings of what ambition has to be something massive, something that rules your life and every decision you make, something that never stops burning, and crucially, something that somehow lands people in this mystical land of perfect contentment. If you’ve ever known someone whose primary attribute is a

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“That is partly why ambition has become something of a dirty word. We assume that being ambitious means following a pre-written script and climbing a never-ending ladder, sometimes at the expense of other people… But ambition isn’t broken. It is still what it has always been: the innate human desire for growth, a desire that is both universal and h

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Adaptation may look different for different people, but I think it starts with facing this disconnect head-on: Our individualized, highly specialized career ambition is no longer a suitable match for the world we’re living in. Hastened by the pandemic, many knowledge-economy workers are, as British broadcaster and journalist Bidisha wrote in the Gu... See more