Sustainable Ambition™
It’s clear and present for most of us that the pandemic is offering a moment to rethink how we live our lives. It’s in this unique moment when many of us are experiencing the colliding of our professional and personal lives inside our homes that we recognize that being on for work 24/7 isn’t sustainable. The imbalance towards work and busyness has become more acute. The need and desire for a new way forward is desired.
It’s time to rethink the Future of Work and build a foundation for professional and personal fulfillment that is grounded in the concept of Sustainable Ambition™.
Sustainable Ambition is centered on the idea of having a fulfilling career from decade to decade based on an individual’s personal definition of success and achieving that without burnout while honoring her personal aspirations and ambitions as they ebb and flow over time.
The concept is rooted in three pillars: Right Success, Right Aspiration, and Right Effort. The language of “Right” is inspired or borrows from a few concepts. One is from “The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt, in which he writes, “It is worth striving to get the right relationship… between yourself and your work.” (Emphasis added.) The other to mention is Goldilocks—not too hot, not too cold, just right—and most importantly just right for you. A core element of Sustainable Ambition is the idea that there is a self-defined, appropriate or desirable level that can be achieved along these dimensions. And embedded in this concept of “right” is the idea of individualized pursuits and personal choice.
Right Success is about defining (career and overall life) success on your terms.
As Ariana Huffington said in a 2013 commencement speech at Smith College, “The way we’ve defined success is no longer sustainable.” Our mode of defining success by societal terms doesn’t fit anymore, nor does the dogged pursuit to achieve it. In a Success Index study by non-profit Populace and Gallup, they found that while 92 percent of respondents agreed that society’s perceived definition of a person’s success is “if they are rich, have a high-profile career, or are well-known,” only 3 percent define it that way for themselves. In a 2018 Populace study, as written about in “Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment,” respondents from their own view defined successful people as those who followed their purpose.
What’s more, work by Morten Hansen, a professor at U.C. Berkeley who wrote, “Great at Work: How Top Performers Work Less and Achieve More,” found that purpose trumps passion for successful workers. Thus, Right Success should be rooted in identifying and aligning your work to your purpose, not necessarily just your passion. Purpose can take on a range of meanings from establishing a meaningful goal for oneself to doing work that contributes to others. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes in his book, “Flow,” “People who find their lives meaningful usually have a goal that is challenging enough to take up all their energies, a goal that can give significance to their lives. We may refer to this process as achieving purpose.” This definition can more broadly apply to individual pursuits and many topics or areas of enterprise. Around the idea of contribution, one might view the difference between Purpose and Passion through these examples: Purpose sounds like, “I love helping people reach their potential,” as opposed to a Passion that sounds like, “I love astronomy” or “I love writing.”
Another element of Right Success is living by your values, as Fred Kofman champions and defines as “success beyond success.” You’ll also find success when you are doing the activities you enjoy or want to master, so that means focusing on activities that create intrinsic motivation, activities that are satisfying to you or are worth it to you to put in the hard work to succeed. As Csikszentmihalyi articles in “Flow,” “The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.” (Emphasis in original.)
In the end, Right Success is not about societal definitions of success and outward recognition. It’s about Personal Reward™, reaping the rewards of your work aligned with who you are and what’s important to you.
Right Aspiration is about managing your work satisfaction and ambition from decade to decade.
The fact that our satisfaction with work flexes over the decades given the stage we’re in isn’t discussed much. Research we’ve conducted shows that for many professionals career satisfaction flexes over time—it’s different in your 20’s vs. your 30’s compared to your 40-50’s and so on. As Lori Gottlieb, the psychotherapist and bestselling New York Times author has said, “Our contentment looks different at different parts of our life.” Or, as William Bridges writes in “Transitions,” “Adulthood unfolds its promise in an alternating rhythm of expansion and contraction, change and stability.”
And, the amount of effort and leaning in (meaning engaging in one’s career with full ambition and not stepping back or out) one can do changes as one enters different life stages. For example, new parents and those with young families now have new responsibilities that may require that they lean out a bit. We need to start thinking about on and off ramps, as Anne-Marie Slaughter writes about in “Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family.” Right Aspiration asks us to pay attention and plan a bit more. As Csikszentmihalyi states in “Flow,” “These seemingly easy questions are almost impossible to answer for someone who has lost touch with his own experience. If a (person) has not bothered to find out what he wants, if his attention is so wrapped up in external goals that he fails to notice his own feelings, then he cannot plan action meaningfully.” So, notice your satisfaction level over time, listen to the whispers you are hearing, and explore new curiosities as they show up. Be prepared and know that change is likely to come in one form or another from decade to decade or even year to year. Creatively and proactively envision and plot a course towards what’s next and have a pulse on if you are wanting to be in the fast, middle, or slow lane of your career, or swerve onto a new path that’s right for you, not society’s should. Know that you can choose who and what you want to be and how you want to craft a life. Be honest about your ambitions and motivations over time, and powerfully own the choices you make for your life at any moment.
So, Right Aspiration is about managing your work satisfaction and ambition from decade to decade, paying attention and adjusting to it so it is sustainable over time. In the end, it’s about building a Regenerative Career™, which is that much more important in today’s work world where we are asked to constantly learn and reinvent ourselves.
Right Effort is about directing your energy so your work doesn’t unintentionally take over your life. It considers 7 P’s: perspective, pace, priorities, productivity, place, pause, and play & pleasure. Note that Right Effort is not about finding work-life balance; rather it’s about building Work-Life Resilience™.
Perspective asks you to shift your mindset around time and choice. It empowers you to recognize that time is finite and that you are in control of where you put your focus. Pace (and patience) is about being aware of the level of effort you want to put in at different stages of your career and life. Sometimes it makes sense to work really hard, because you’re inspired, in flow, or pushing to get to the next rung. But it shouldn’t be guided by our addiction to be busy, nor the “should” of working long hours. The level of effort put in to any endeavor needs to align with the rewards you are seeking and getting out. Right Effort asks us to realistically look at our priorities across work and life and helps us to say “yes” to our most essential priorities right now. Like Shonda Rhimes demonstrates in her book, “Year of Yes,” what we say yes to also demonstrates what we are saying no to. And, we must revisit these “yes” and “no’s” over time. Balance isn’t a static state once found; it requires constant monitoring and readjusting. Productivity is about making the most of the time and energy you have. It’s not necessarily about doing more; it’s about using time and effort wisely. Place is about finding the right environment that will support the type of life you are seeking. This one may admittedly be hard to attain unless you work for yourself, as companies need to change to accommodate this view. Yet, you do have the choice of trying to find a company that invests in its employee experience, has built a great culture, and supports a sustainable workload. For example, an early stage start-up likely isn’t one unless you are the founder and dictate the terms. Pause is about finding short to longer periods of time to get recharged and reinvigorated. Too many of us get to a point of physical exhaustion and mental fatigue. Pauses can help you get energized for the next aspiration in your sights. Finally, play & pleasure is about fueling yourself and building resiliency. Pauses will help with this, too. But you need to find activities that will bring you joy and fill you up.
A simplified summary to implement the above:
Right Success: Listen for and embrace your purpose, values, and flow (intrinsic motivations). Get clear on your “Why” and your “What.”
Right Aspiration: Navigate your path from decade to decade. Pay attention and keep a pulse on your work/life satisfaction level. And, know your ambition right now—understand your “How Far” and “By When.”
Right Effort: Manage your energy with the 7 P’s. Guide your actions by being in choice (perspective, pace, priorities) and intention (productivity, place, pause, play & pleasure).
Close
We must rethink how we work. We need to recognize that not all of us are motivated to live to work, but rather would appreciate having careers that support our lives or are more positively integrated. We need work that is fulfilling and helps us live fulfilling lives. As Jonathan Haidt articulates in “The Happiness Hypothesis,” work is one of the fundamental elements of leading a meaningful life, and a critical component of happiness is finding the “right relationship” between yourself and your work. (Emphasis added.)
Applying the concept of Sustainable Ambition allows us to be engaged over the course of our career and is more compatible with a desire to also lead rich, holistic, fulfilling personal lives and avoid burnout. That path will look different for each individual, but with a focus on Right Success, Right Aspiration, and Right Effort we can craft a new way to work that is more sustainable and holistically fulfilling over time.
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The Sustainable Ambition Self-Assessment is intended as a reference to help you understand where to focus your efforts first on your journey of Sustainable Ambition. Plus, you’ll find ideas on steps to take next to get you moving towards sustainability.
So, let’s get you started in helping to craft a more sustainable career and a more integrated work/life to make life work for you on your terms.
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