Sustainable Ambition: The Book

Resources and Tools to Support Your Sustainable Ambition Journey

Thank you for reading Sustainable Ambition: How to Prioritize What Matters to Thrive in Life and Work and being a part of the Sustainable Ambition community!

I’d love to know about your ambitions and goals, what’s important and matters most to you now, and what challenges you might be facing to make things sustainable for yourself.

Get in touch!

And find tools, resources, and reference materials below to support you on your journey. Thanks for being here!

Warmly,

Kathy Oneto, Founder and Author

Sustainable Ambition Tools and Resources

To ensure you can practice Sustainable Ambition and make progress on what matters most to you, here are a number of tools and resources to help you implement the method and support your journey.

  • The Sustainable Ambition Toolkit: Get templates, tools, resources, and more that connect with the book here.

  • The Sustainable Ambition Assessment: The assessment can help you determine where you want to put your attention as you start to implement the method across Right Ambition, Right Time, and Right Effort. While there is value in applying the method sequentially, you may find you need or want to put more immediate attention toward a particular area. You can find the assessment or send it to a friend here.

  • The State of Ambition Quiz: Through my research on Sustainable Ambition, I’ve discovered that we move through different states of ambition as we grow and change. Each state brings its own opportunities and challenges, so understanding your current state can help you find more possibilities and peace in your journey. Determine what state of ambition you might be in and get insights and practical strategies tailored to where you believe you are today. You can find the quiz to take or send it to a friend here.

  • The Sustainable Ambition Evaluation Tool: This online evaluation tool can help determine if an ambition, goal, or project is a Sustainable Ambition. This is an online version of the tool I share in Chapter 12. You can find the evaluation tool or send it to a friend here (coming!).

  • Practice reminders: If you’d like reminder emails for practicing Sustainable Ambition over time, sign up here.

  • Podcast playlist: Dive into inspiring conversations with the experts, authors, and friends featured in the book. Access a curated Spotify playlist of interviews that complement the book’s themes here. These discussions bring the book’s concepts to life through expertise, real stories, and practical insights.

  • Self-coaching questions: As another form of a check-in, find a self-coaching guide you can use yourself or to coach others on optimizing their Sustainable Ambition in the moment. Find the guide here.

  • Book club or circle group: Do this work with others through a book club or personal or professional circle of friends or colleagues. Use facilitator guides you can find here.

  • Newsletter: Sign up for my biweekly newsletter to get the latest tips, ideas, and tools on Sustainable Ambition here.

  • Podcast: Subscribe and listen to the Sustainable Ambition podcast on your favorite podcast player or at here on the website.

  • Other Sustainable Ambition books: Track your Sustainable Ambition progress over time with the Sustainable Ambition 12-Month Workbook + Planner or explore your curiosity with My Little Book of Curiosity. Learn more here.

Help Bring Sustainable Ambition to Life

I would be grateful if you’d help others discover Sustainable Ambition and create a movement where more of us can thrive in life and work. If you’re so inclined, please consider the following:

  • Rate and review Sustainable Ambition on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever you purchased your book.

  • Give a gift copy to a friend, family member, or colleague.

  • Recommend the book for your book club or create a circle to be each other’s community and force multipliers.

  • Share your ahas and what you love on social media by tagging #SustainableAmbition and #SustainableAmbitionBook.

  • Send your favorite episode of the Sustainable Ambition podcast to those ambitious people around you who want to thrive in life and work.

Go Deeper with Sustainable Ambition

FOR INDIVIDUALS

If you’d like to take the principles further and work with a coach one-on-one or in a group setting, learn more here.

FOR COMPANIES, ORGANIZATIONS, AND CONFERENCES

Sustainable Ambition concepts and practices can be applied in organizations and companies and presented at conferences. Learn more here. Offerings include:

  • Keynote speaking

  • Interactive workshops and master classes

  • Discounted rates for bulk book purchases

  • Sustainable Ambition train-the-trainer and content licensing

Sustainable Ambition Quick Reference

I would be grateful if you’d help others discover Sustainable Ambition and create a movement where more of us can thrive in life and work. If you’re so inclined, please consider the following:

  • Sustainable Ambition mindset: Use the mindset to see if you’re guiding your actions consistently with the method. It consists of three parts: (1) being conscious about the ambitions you choose and using self-defined success as your guide, (2) realigning toward what matters most now across life

    and work and taking responsibility for making courageous choices, and (3) building resilience, knowing that sustainability is a constant, personal practice.

  • Sustainable Ambition Method: Sustainable Ambition lives at the intersection of three elements, aligning the right ambition

    at the right time with the right effort. The method can be applied at any moment in time against your life and work ambitions or against a single ambition.

  • Sustainable Ambition meaning: Sustainable Ambition is a collection of self-defined, meaningful, motivating goals that are most important and right for you now and are aligned to your desired effort and sustained energy. The meaning serves as a check for applying the method—it’s the outcome you should expect. It can also serve as an evaluation to see if you’re on track.

  • Right Ambition: It is self-defined and aligns with your personal definition of success, not society’s. It is rooted in what you want, not what you should want, and is about achieving in a way that is personally rewarding to you, focusing on your own fulfillment and satisfaction. With this lens, the question becomes: What do you want to do?

  • Right Time: It considers life and work together and means courageously choosing where you want to put your attention based on what matters most in your life and work now. It points you to prioritize and pace your ambitions accordingly and asks you to accept and understand that life and work are naturally integrated and that time is finite. The question becomes: What is it time to do?

  • Right Effort: It is being discerning about the level of effort you put toward your ambitions rather than treating them equally, and about how you manage your effort and energy to make your life and work sustainable. It calls you to take responsibility and puts you back in control to make your life and work integration sustainable, acknowledging that just like time, effort and energy are finite. It calls you to be judicious about where and how you optimally use your effort and have a plan for how you restore, protect, and support your energy and effort and build your resilience. The question becomes: What do you have the effort and energy to do?

Recommended Reading

Success

  • The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success, by Albert-László Barabási

  • Status Anxiety, by Alain de Botton

Right Ambition

  • How Will You Measure Your Life?, by Clayton M. Christensen

  • Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation, by Dr. Ayelet Fishbach

  • Great at Work: How Top Performers Work Less and Achieve More, by Morten T. Hansen

  • The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level, by Gay Hendrick

  • Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values, by Fred Kofman

  • All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive, by Rainesford Stauffer

  • What Do You Want Out of Life? by Valerie Tiberius

Right Time

  • The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World, by Dorie Clark

  • Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, by Anne-Marie Slaughter

Right Effort

  • It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be, by Paul Arden

  • Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business, by Jenny Blake

  • Everyday Vitality: Turning Stress into Strength, by Samantha Boardman

  • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman

  • The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work, by Christine Carter

  • Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture Is Bad for Business—and How to Fix It, by Malissa Clark

  • Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Great Things, by Adam Grant

  • The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

  • Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown

  • Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most, by Greg McKeown

  • The Resilience Plan: A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Your Work Performance and Mental Health, by Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier

For Career Optimizers and Explorers

  • Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One, by Jenny Blake

  • Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career, by Herminia Ibarra

  • Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

  • The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger Than Your Business Card, by Christina Wallace

  • One Person, Multiple Careers: The Original Guide to the Slash Career, by Marci Alboher

  • Your Finest Work, by Merideth Mehlberg

  • Switchers: How Smart Professionals Change Careers—and Seize Success, by Dr. Dawn Graham

Other

  • Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being, by Dr. Brian Little

  • Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, by Tom Rath and Jim Harter

  • Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi