The Monthly Round-Up: July
Ideas on becoming consciously ambitious and thriving in life and work
A sustainable approach to work goals. This is one of my recent Fast Company articles offering tips to ask before committing to work goals organized around three areas: make it clear, make it matter, and make it manageable. Because most employees want to perform well, but too often organizations and leaders aren’t setting them up to succeed. And the smart move isn’t to just work harder. It’s having better conversations before we commit.
Find your work at the intersection of craft and need. That’s Jodi Kantor’s (Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist at The New York Times) counsel to young people starting out in their career as shared in her new book, “How to Start.” Reese Witherspoon shared similar advice to a young person: identify and build your talent. I love these together, as it guides us to find what we are uniquely good at and then to hone that ability. We can better weather changes when we do great work that only we can do. As Steve Martin said, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” In Suzy Welch's model, this is a sharpened view of one’s aptitude.
Kantor also advises to focus on need, rather than default to the stated norm or going market opportunity (e.g., go into plastics, go into computer science, go into AI). This isn’t easy to identify or forecast, but it’s a good complement to the first. Suzy Welch speaks to this in her model, too, as “economically viable interests.” (Becoming You is a proven, research-backed method for understanding your values, aptitudes, and economically viable interests—and using that self-knowledge to make better decisions about your career and life.)
I appreciated this conversation with Kantor about the book on Design Matters with Debbie Millman.
Avoid burnout “concept creep.” I have to say—I agree with this assessment that we have a burnout buzzword problem. We do ourselves a disservice when we label any stress, over-extension, or exhaustion as burnout. Why? Because without proper diagnosis of what’s causing what you’re feeling, you can’t take the right action to resolve it. Plus, even if you use the term burnout, there are many causes. It’s helpful to be more nuanced in what we’re experiencing to get “conceptual clarity” so solutions are better targeted.
Try a phone ban, just like some workplaces. Some companies are starting to impose phone bans at work. I have to say, I kind of like this, too, to help us find relief from a phone’s constant distraction. While one expert in the article suggests research is inconclusive if phone bans work, other research has confirmed the distraction caused by phones even simply being in a room with us. This is worth an experiment to help you do more without depleting yourself.
Caring for yourself builds the capacity to care for others... Builds the capacity for great work. Wisdom from Kim Scott of Radical Candor.
Embrace self-compassion to blunt wasted mental energy. I appreciated this conversation with Kristin Neff, a researcher who created the study around self-compassion. In this episode fo the The Midlife Chrysalis podcast, she shares how self-compassion is a proven tool for resilience, growth, motivation, and emotional wellbeing.
A long summer reading list. What I love about this particular collection of books is that they help us see beyond the limitations we think are holding us back.
Laura Vanderkam, “Big Time”: helps us see that time is not the enemy; we DO have time to live the big lives we want.
Simone Stolzoff, “How to Not Know”: gives us a guide for moving forward through the fog of not knowing.
David Epstein, “Inside the Box”: shows us that constraints don’t limit us, they actually help us.
Vickie Lanthier, “High Agency Human”: teaches us that adversity is not in charge—we are.
Nir Eyal, “Beyond Belief”: shows us how to shape our beliefs to work for us, not against us.
What’s on your list? What should I add? I’d love to know.
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time.”
Want to get insights, tips, and tools on how to live with Sustainable Ambition? Join in here. Welcome!
Sustainable Ambition offers a strategic approach for pursuing our professional and personal goals in a way that is motivating, meaningful, and manageable from stage to stage, rather than be all consuming in a way that compromises other important aspects of our lives or sacrifices our well-being.