Offline with Jon Favreau - What Happened To Your Ambition? | Work Appropriate

Episode Date: February 26, 2023

Offline's crew is *offline* this week but we're excited to share one of our favorite recent episodes of Crooked's podcast Work Appropriate hosted by Anne Helen Petersen. In this episode Anne, along with guest Rainesford Stauffer, author of the forthcoming All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive, field listener-submitted questions about the real-life issues they're running into at work due to their ambition and discuss how ambition could be used as a positive force outside of work. You know, like in your actual life. Go figure. Like what you hear? Check out new episodes of Work Appropriate every week wherever you get your podcasts. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Hey, it's Jon Favreau. This week, Offline's crew is... Offline. God, I hate that joke. We'll be back next week, but in the meantime, I'm excited to share one of my favorite recent episodes of Crooked's podcast, Work Appropriate, hosted by Anne Helen Peterson. In this episode, Anne, along with guest Rainsford Stouffer,

respond to listener-submitted questions about real-life issues stemming from too much ambition at work. Then, to top it off, they get into how ambition can be used as a positive force outside of work. Like what you hear? Be sure to check out new episodes of Work Appropriate every week, wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, let's get into the episode now. Hi, everyone. I'm Anne Helen Peterson, and this is Work Appropriate.

Last month, I was back at my childhood home, wading through piles of saved artifacts from my junior high and high school years. And for complicated reasons, my junior high went through ninth grade, which meant that ninth grade was also like this pseudo moment of graduation. It was a big deal. We had this formal dance with the other junior high. And more importantly, we had a grade-wide vote for class superlatives. Now, this was small town Idaho in the mid-90s. And some of these categories were things like best looking. I still remember who won best looking, but there was also a category for most ambitious. The person who won this award was a close friend of mine, and the reason he won it wasn't because he had like a five-point business plan.

It was because he had a very clear plan for becoming a professional basketball player. A kid in Idaho, in ninth grade, pretty good, but you know, not like LeBron James in ninth grade good, telling everyone he was absolutely going to the NBA. And to a group of 14-year-olds, that was legible as ambition. It was big and bombastic, brash. 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 ambitious, you know there's no end point. There's just always more to strive for, which also means that there's no such thing as contentment. And so for this episode, we're talking to people about the vagaries of ambition when it comes to work and how to conceive of ambition as a potentially positive force outside of work. In America in particular, it's really hard to talk critically about ambition because it's absolutely one of our prized attributes. But here at Work Appropriate, we also get so many questions about what to do about ambition levels that aren't, you know, the same level as a ninth grader who's convinced himself he's going to make it to the

MBA. This is hard stuff, but I knew the absolutely perfect person to ask to be my co-host. My name is Rainsford Stauffer. I'm a freelance writer and reporter, and I'm the author of two books, An Ordinary Age, which came out in 2021, and All the Gold Stars, which will be out June 6 from Hachette. Tell me about this upcoming book, All the Gold Stars, because I am very excited for it. Thank you. This upcoming book, All the Gold Stars, is broadly about reimagining ambition and what that looked like in practice and on the page was kind of looking at the history of ambition, how it came to be either this thing that's very glorified in our society or penalized, depending on who you are, and interviewing people about how their ambition has shifted over the course of their lives, two different parts of their lives. So

it's a lot of hearing how people are ambitious outside of work about things like community, about play, about their pets. It was one of the most interesting and uplifting reporting processes I've done in a while. That's so interesting because I have realized that after a flurry of very ambitious book writing, and I'm still very, obviously, like I'm ambitious in what I want my newsletter to be, and I have this podcast, but also I just have kind of taken a step back from trying to push into brand new projects. And I've watched as my ambition has transferred into distance running. And so it's just like it's really, I think, healthy to challenge myself in a totally different part of my life than work.

Totally. And I think that even beyond challenging ourselves, I think it's cool to apply that level of attention and intention and time to things beyond work. And that was really interesting to talk to people about, how it felt like, you know, ambition had one kind of hold on your identity as a worker, but it also might manifest in all of these other parts of your identity that turns out you really do want to invest your time and your dreams and your imagination into. What is your own relationship with ambition? I know this is complicated. It is complicated because it would be a lie to say I'm not ambitious about my work, which is definitely something I get into in the book. I am very ambitious about my work. I do

have goals. I do have dreams. But I think the biggest thing that shifted about my relationship to ambition is that it's not condensed just to work anymore. Like this is a wild example, but I was really ambitious about adopting a cat. That was the dream that I had for myself in this phase of life. And a lot of intention went into it. A lot of planning went into it. I have two cats. I adore them. And it is every bit as good as I imagined it would be. And so when I think about my relationship to ambition now, I think from the serious to the silly, a huge part of coming to terms with ambition is also understanding that like there is an end point. Like ambition doesn't mean constant growth. It doesn't mean that like as soon as you achieve one thing, you leave that thing and then you're like adopting the cats. I'm reveling in this moment of two cat adoption. But I think that's counter to what so much of society tells us in terms of like, you have to always be striving towards the next thing. Yeah, exactly. I think that we're constantly told that we need to be looking toward what's coming next. And if we're not, we're behind or we risk being behind.

We're slacking. We're letting everything go. We're dropping the ball, all of these things. And I think, honestly, that's the kind of striving that can be really harmful because at some point it stops coming from you. It stops being something you are striving for and is more about chasing down the next thing. And we know there's always going to be a next thing. And on one hand, that's great. It's wonderful to have new dreams and new ideas

or new things that you want for your life and are working toward. But I don't think we ever get the counter messaging of sometimes your ambition stops. Sometimes your ambition changes. Sometimes your ambition for a certain thing stops. And that doesn't mean you've dropped the ball on that dream or you've changed your mind and that's a bad thing. I think it can be so much more stop and examine, like, what do I actually want from my life? And I at least have seen a lot of people questioning the positive attributes of ambition, like this understanding that ambition is always a good thing and kind of pushing back and exploring, okay, what if my ambition has gone away? What if I don't want to have the same relationship that I had with ambition? So have you, I'm sure you have

connected those dots a little bit. I've tried to connect those dots, both in the reporting and for me personally. I do think, I'm sure that some of it was brought about by the pandemic. I'm sure it's an intersection of things where people, I think, collectively are pausing and going, okay, ambition, yeah. But what am I ambitious for? Who is benefiting from that? Why does it feel this way? And I think that that, to me, seems like a really stark counterpoint to this idea that the most important thing we're going to do is hustle. It almost even doesn't matter what for, as long as you have a goal and you're busting it to reach it. And I think one of the biggest shifts that comes to mind for me in terms of people I it to reach it. And I think one of the biggest shifts that

comes to mind for me in terms of people I've talked to and just how I think about this is realizing that, first of all, the absence of ambition is not inherently a bad thing. And second of all, I think ambition can be a lot more collective and a lot more expansive than it's given credit for. And I think that when we funnel it into this completely work-driven, completely output-driven striving, we really miss the imaginative or community-centered components of it that I think most of us are ambitious about having in our lives in some form or fashion. Right. Like what if the ambition was that no person in my community was unhoused. Right. And I don't understand why things like that, or I think it's really important that we have paid leave for all,

or I think it's really important that we have a union in my workplace. It blows my mind that these are not considered accomplishments or goals the same way achieving a degree or a certain title at work are considered a status oriented goal. It really blows my mind. And I think that when we broaden the definition of what ambition can be and is supposed to be and who it applies to and who gets to have it, we come away with something that doesn't look so stiff or so rigid. It's a lot more community focused, I think. We have, I think, a nice cornucopia of different ambition related questions for you today. So the first is from Claire.

Traditionally in my field, in order to be a female software engineer, you have to be absolutely exceptional and one of the top performers. Well, my ambition is to have the same privilege as my white male colleagues, and that is to be just average and be able to do my job in an average way, but still get recognized as contributing positively to the team. I want to have a very strong work-life balance, and I don't want to devote all my time to my career and climbing the career ladder. However, I feel like I'm letting women down because I'm trying to break that glass ceiling and bring more women into the software engineering engineering space. My question is, how do I do both? How do I exist as an average software engineer without feeling guilty, without losing my job? And how do I use that to bring and make

space for other women as software engineers? All right. So I think a lot of people from marginalized identities will feel this tension in some way, like there is an obligation to advance the cause and you are letting some part of your identity, your sex, your race down if you are just happy with where you are. So Rainsford, what are your thoughts on this one? Oh my gosh. I'm excited to hear yours because I think that this is, I think this is a hard one. I think by now it's obvious or it should be obvious and cannot be said enough how much the pressure to be exceptional deepens in equities, how much that trope of being the best one, the most exceptional one, the one that always goes above

and beyond intersectsex with racism and gender discrimination and ableism and is, despite being the talking point of being extraordinary and it being exceptional and it being great, it's really harmful. And we know that. And so I think we have to say that first, just upfront. But when I listen to this question, it sounds like the ambition is to do the job, contribute positively, and make things better for the people that come after you. Right. And that should not be penalized as not doing enough.

I think that that's kind of how you do both. I think making space for other people means giving yourself the permission where you can to have the kind of career and the kind of balance between your work and your life that feels good to you, and in turn, hopefully giving other people the chance to think about what works for them too. And I also wonder, I'm sure it depends on the workplace, but I think that there's a tangible element of this that could be less about what you do in your job and with your workload and more about what you do in the workplace and whether there's a chance to make tangible changes in your workplace that materially benefit your co-workers or other people who are going to enter your field. First things that come to mind, salary transparency, unionizing. I wonder

if it's less about what you do with your own career and more about considering, okay, if I feel good about where I'm at and I want to get to a place where other people feel good about who I am and where I'm at, it's more collective action on making the whole workplace more inclusive and more welcoming and I think, frankly, more sustainable. Yeah. What you've said reminds me of so many examples that I've seen of people, whether they're women or people of color, or they have proven themselves exceptional by really sacrificing all other parts of their lives. Part of the way that they have succeeded is by modeling that the only way to succeed is to allow work to cannibalize the rest

of your life. And while that is a representational win, I do not think that it is a win for, you know, sustainable management of anyone's work-life balance. How can you show that you can have a sustainable career that is not filled with striving, that is not filled with burnout, that is not like constantly evacuating all other responsibilities? How can you do that? Like, that's a great model. And that is not like constantly evacuating all other responsibilities. How can you do that? Like, that's a great model. And that is actually an incredible skill that you can pass on through mentorship as well. So like there, like you said, I think there are so many different ways that you can help other people in your organization that do not rely so heavily on an incredibly individual path, because it's also not replicable. No one's

individual path can be someone else's path. It is not so simple as to say, I did this, now you will be able to do this. Instead, if you make it, it's kind of like the principles of universal design. If you make it possible for not just white males to succeed in this organization, for not just white males to have this sort of sustainable protection against layoffs, whatever it is, you're making it possible for the people that you are trying to make space for. Yeah. And I just want to say on the idea of mentorship within your organization, totally. But also, if there's any opportunity to connect with a student who's studying the field or a young person, I think that there are a lot of young people who are trying to take their first steps

in their careers who, in my opinion, are rightfully totally scared out of their minds that reaching a point where they don't feel all of the ramifications of economic precarity, feeling like they could be fired at any moment, feeling like they don't even know how to get a job, let alone keep one, and are sitting there wondering, okay, do I trade every other facet of my life, my physical and mental well-being, my goals outside of work? Is that an even trade? I think being able to reach out to those people and have conversations like this one is a total game changer. It's something that definitely would have blown my mind when I was 19 or 20 years old and felt like the way to do anything was to try everything, which was not a great strategy. Yeah,

mentorship made me think of that. Totally. The only people that I would think of as like people to ask to be mentors would be people who are like, who were all stars because they had no life, because all they did was work all the time. And what a revelation it would be to have someone who thought of ambition as mentorship. Totally. And I think it's also like, I wouldn't have known who to ask. And so I think just having that line of dialogue open, I think that is a hugely ambitious thing in and of itself. For our next question, we're going to go to the other end of the ambition spectrum.

This question is from Emily, and our colleague Ari is going to read it for us. How much ambition is too much? I started working relatively late compared to my peers at 27 because I'm disabled and I can't help feeling like I have to try my absolute hardest to catch up. What do you think, Rainsford? We can answer the question for this person, but also maybe let's start larger with this question of how much ambition is too much. And at least in your reporting, what have you seen as representations, as experiences of too much ambition? So many places I want to start here. I think the immediate answer is that I think ambition for me

and what I've heard from other people over the course of my reporting is that ambition becomes too much when it cancels out all of your other needs. Your needs for rest and tending to your health, your needs for relationships with others, your need to do absolutely nothing when you can. When ambition becomes the single most dominant force that you feel like is making all of the decisions for you, that's when, to me, it tips in too much territory.

And personally, I think when I think about my own ambition and when I've gone through phases where it's like, ooh, too much, when I stop being able to answer why I am ambitious about a given thing or when the honest answer is something that has more to do with meeting a metric or chasing down something I'm supposed to want or trying to catch up than it does anything having to do with me, that's when I know that the scales are probably feeling a little bit out of balance. And I'm probably feeling that. I'm probably feeling really frustrated in my ambition when I stop being able to answer that question. Right. And this person asking the question, it seems like they don't necessarily feel like they're struggling in their job or whatever, you know, at this point in their career, the only thing that is making them feel deficient is comparison to their peers. And I

think that's one of those cases where it makes total sense. We are taught over and over again to compare ourselves one-to-one to our peers, but we're all running our own race in so many different ways. And we just do not hear that lesson enough. We don't. Sometimes we don't hear it at all. And it just makes me want to scream into the void that quote-unquote being ahead, being behind, those solely exist to keep us running. Because kind of like we were talking about earlier, catching up is a myth. The goalposts are always moving. And it's a myth that I have followed down every path that's led me down. This idea that I'm going to catch up, I'm going to get

my life on track, I'm going to do everything in this order, it's going to turn out fine. And I think that the hard thing about that is that, first of all, we know on track doesn't hold up for everyone because it depends so much on your preferences and on your circumstances. But I think that when we think of trying to catch up, the goalpost is always going to be moving. And I think when we're ambitious just for trying to catch up to wherever we think we ought to be, it shapeshifts as soon as you think you're almost there. There's always going to be the next thing. And I also think this person, they don't share anything about what their disability might be, but at least people that I know in the disability community, oftentimes there are things that make it impossible for you to gauge your progress, to gauge your life in any way in the same way as someone who is able-bodied. And who knows when there's going to be a flare-up? Who knows when you're just going to have to slow down time? There's too many factors that are going to make this person always feel deficient if they're using the same yardstick as people that are the same age. Your route to where you are today took a different

route than some people imagine the like post high school career of a high achiever, how that should go. How have you grappled with comparing yourself to other people that are exactly your age? That's a great question. I'm still grappling with that. And I just want to say one quick thing. I'm by no means an expert, but I think that one thing that might help is that our construction of how we mark time and productivity and all of these things is so inherently ableist that it blocks so many people out by default. I'm chronically ill. And I know just even in my own personal experience, my body is not, quote unquote, keeping up the way it did a couple years ago. My symptoms are completely different. It's all

over the place. I don't know how I'm going to feel day to day. And that has really done a number on me thinking, well, I should be able to do everything that I did before. And it's like, really? Says who? Because your body is certainly not saying that. So I think that that's actually been part of how I have thought about my path or reconfigured this sense of comparison and being behind. Honestly, I think the thing that helped me was realizing that comparing yourself to others is normal. And I say that up front because I spent a long time feeling ashamed that I had not lived up to whatever path I thought I was supposed to be on or wasn't where my peers were at a certain stage of life. And then I would get sucked into feeling

bad for comparing myself when I theoretically knew better than to do that. Right, right, right. You're like, I know better and yet I'm still doing it. So like, the shame is dual fold. It is. And it's like, I'm scrolling on Instagram, like everybody comparing, you know, me feeling like crap alone in my sweatpants, having no idea what I'm doing with the things someone chose to share. So I say that because I think we all do it, whether we want to admit that out loud or not. But I think that one of the things that's come to light for me over the past couple years, even beyond work, there's been a lot of personal upheaval, a lot of health upheaval, a lot of grief, a lot of transitions that I just did not see coming. And I think that that's required me to get a lot more patient with myself about the path that I'm charting. And I think in turn, required me to get a lot more patient with myself about the path that I'm charting. And I think in turn, it's made me think about all of the people I'm sitting there

comparing myself to and thinking, I didn't know this is how my life was going to look and feel even two years ago. And there's something in that person's life that I have no idea about that I'm sure they didn't see coming either. And I don't know. I think the other thing that comes up for me in terms of comparison is that I've noticed that when I dig a little deeper, I'm often not comparing myself to a peer or a friend or some random standard. It's more I'm comparing myself to who I could have been if I had made other choices. Right. It's like a sliding doors version of yourself. Absolutely. It's kind of like the what if self, who is inherently always going to be more informed

and more interesting than we are, in part because they have the benefit of all the current knowledge being projected onto them. And when I sit there and I'm thinking, well, what I'm really thinking when I'm comparing myself is I could have done this or I should have done Y, I should have done X, Y, Z, all of these things. I think it helps me to kind of recalibrate and think, but you made the decision you made with the information you had at the time and the circumstances you were in at the time. And if we've decided that we have other ambitions and we want to make different choices, we can try to do those. But it does

no good to compare yourself to a theoretical self because that's not what happened. And that's okay. Yes. A friend of mine used to say, if things were different, then things would be different. And it's so simple, but I actually take solace in that understanding that like, they didn't go differently than they did, right? Like we can't go back and correct that. So our discussion right now actually is a really great transition to our next question, which is about the ambition hamster wheel. And especially if you are running in high achieving circles and how hard it is to resist that constant comparison to others.

This question is from Chloe. How do you avoid comparisons with more successful friends? If you've chosen a career path, that's considered more of a lifestyle career. I'm 10 years out of law school and most of my friends have made partner or gone in-house. I chose a career in the government to facilitate my family responsibilities. Young kids, no family safety net nearby.

And much as I try to work out, write a novel, engage in other forms of self-improvement or life enrichment, there are days that I question whether I've shortchanged myself. So I think that all of our advice that we previously offered applies to this situation. But I also think that this person might benefit from a reframing. And what I mean by that is that if you have been a goal-oriented person your entire life, and for better or for worse, the way that you think about how your life goes is by setting goals and then achieving those goals. How can you think about the goals that are within your current life, right? Like how can you reset your goals so that they are things that actually really matter to you?

And maybe that will give you that feeling of achievement that you see off in the distance of these friends achieving. Does that make sense? I think it totally does. And I think it is also kind of a reframing of successful, which I think is such a hard word because I think that we're kind of funneled into this one definition of what that's supposed to look like. And honestly, I think that that's why it's so disorienting for so many people when they do hit whatever achievement box, whatever box of success they feel like they need to check. Yep. And then kind of feel like, oh, I still feel exactly the same. What's next? I think that success ebbs and flows so much depending on not just who you are, but the new parts of yourself you discover and you grow into across your life. I think it's impossible to predict 10 years ago what would have made you feel successful and fulfilled and ambitious right now, 10 years out. I think we try. And I think that

that's a great goal to have. But I think that a lot of us would feel a lot better if we reframed it as knowing this is something that's definitely going to change. And part of my ambition is going to be, like you said, setting those goals that feel good to me in the circumstances I'm working with right now. Because if you hadn't made these choices 10 years ago, there's a chance that you would just question yourself in the other direction too. Right. What if I had done it this way? Right. Like what if I don't have a family? Is that because I chose this route? All those sorts of things. I do think this goes back to something you mentioned earlier, which is that oftentimes when you feel like a failure in terms of ambition, it's because your understanding of success is so thoroughly yoked to work as success. That work is the only way that we can think of ourselves as obtaining success in any way. There's all sorts of people that I know who are incredibly successful in their jobs,

but are failures in relationship, failures in their role, their family, their failures in their community. It's like, you know, if you're, I don't know, if you're like a video game character and you have four sources of power and like your work source of power is at a hundred and everything else is at zero. Like this person has not had a full night's sleep and years, there's a failure at sleep. So if you can reframe and think about all of these other things that you are like totally killing it at. Like this person is killing it at being a well-rounded mother. Yeah. And I think about that in the reverse all the time. I think about people who are working inside the home instead of outside the home, people who aren't working at all. And we see that as inherently less successful and

inherently less ambitious when it takes so much work and so much dedication. And so I think that what we've taken away from this question is our ideas of success are way too narrow. And I think that when they're narrow, they get really boring. We're allowed to have multiple sources of ambition or multiple kinds of dreams. They're allowed to exist in different domains. And I don't think that we talk about that enough. Right, right. It is so boring to be number one in sales at your job. I want to hear about your ambition to complete a woodworking project. That is interesting to me. And you can be competent at your job and also ambitious at other things is the long and

short of it. You can. And I've had moments of my own ambition where, to be honest, it's been really work-focused. It was really self-focused. And that's what I kept thinking. I was like, this is so boring. You're ambitious, but you're boring. This is not fulfilling to you. This is so stale.

Yeah. There's so little of yourself to give to other people. Yes. And ultimately, for what? I mean, this is also a larger conversation about like, what are people for? What are we here to do? How will we be remembered? All of those things. Like, if you are ambitious to be the number one person in sales, like is that connected to other things? Like I am ambitious to provide a solid living for my family. Okay, great. But are you also there for your family to give them the forms of stability that also matter apart from just monetary stability, right? Like all of this is so complicated. It is.

And it's so bound up in everything else. Because I think that, you know, because work is so materially connected to quality of life in ways that I think a universal basic income, paid leave for all, I think there are fixes to that. But I think in the absence of them, I think it's really hard to say, hey, you need to spend less time at work. You need to disconnect from this because it still feels like the harder we work, the better shot we have at security and at feeling happy and fulfilled despite all of the things we know to the contrary. And I think that the point that it got

to in a lot of conversations I had with people is that the focus had to shift from doing less at work to more, what am I going to add in? And as the result of adding more things in, it kind of automatically took care of the overwork that was unmanageable and needed to be put back in its place and kind of put back into balance. That's obviously a lot easier said than done. But it did kind of fascinate me that sometimes the solution isn't always to do less. It's to add more of the things you're feeling like you're missing that you could be ambitious about. Totally.

And sometimes that's inconceivable to people when they are working too hard because they're so tired. And the only thing they want to add back into their life is rest and you know you can be ambitious about rest that is you totally yeah it's like it's a great ambition and then you can maybe get to that place where you can think about the other things that you actually want to apply your ambition to. Our next question, I love it so much. It is about a lack of ambition that could be very aptly renamed contentment, but also how this might cause a problem in the future. So we're going to hear from Emma. How can I tell if my lack of ambition is a problem? How much professional development or networking is enough? I've been a post-degree librarian for just over 10 years now, but have

worked in libraries for nearly all of my adult life. I continually struggle with being self-guided, figuring out how much professional development or participation is enough. For context, my first job out of library school ended up after about five years being the perfect recipe for burnout, even without the unfended mandate for professional development. But then I, in what still feels like a stroke of luck, found a well-paying job one town over from where I grew up. It's a good salary outside the tenured faculty librarian tract, which is often unusual to find, and the place is small, so the rank I am is the rank I will stay. I like this life, but what else do I tell my well-meaning family members who send me job listings that have maybe a higher

salary but are halfway across the country with a lot more responsibility or stress. Moreover, how do I balance now prioritizing time for life outside my job with an appropriate level of professional development and networking, just in case the seeming golden goose ever croaks? Okay. So first let's talk about this performance aspect of ambition because Emma is happy in her job and she likes her life, but she feels self-conscious about letting other people know that, or at least like the way that she responds when they're trying to essentially map ambition onto her. Oh my God. The performance of ambition could be its own.

It could be its own everything because could be its own everything. Because so much of how we think about ambition, when we talk about it, we are talking about how we perform ambition, how it looks like externally, how it shows up in our conversations or on our resumes or on, God help us all, LinkedIn. It's just, it's in everything. I think the performance of ambition a lot of the time gets in the way of what we are actually ambitious for. Right. And I thought of this all the time because when I wrote my first book, I never thought I would get to do that.

And I was working a job. It was in the midst of a still ongoing pandemic. It was a lot going on. And I remember just being shocked that it had happened, elated that I had gotten till the end and was completely thrown by the very well-meaning question of what are you doing next? What's the next project? What's the next thing? Are you going to apply for this thing? Are you going to do that? And that's obviously a very specific example, but I think it happens all the time. When I talk to students, it's like the worst question that you could ever ask someone who's

about to graduate high school is, what's next? What are you doing next? It's like, there's no grace given to the fact that you made it this far. You made it into this job. You made it into this chapter. And I don't think we get very many moments where we can kind of like press the pause button and go, well, damn, I didn't think I'd make it this far. I don't know where I'm going next, but like right now I'm going to celebrate that this feels pretty good. And I think the emphasis on performing ambition really strips away ambition's humanity, which I kind of think is what this question is getting at. I just,

I love that this person said, I like this life. Because to me, that's the crux of what so many of us are trying to achieve through our ambition. We're trying to get to a life that feels good and fulfilling. And how just liking your life is not considered an ambitious thing blows my mind. Well, and capitalism socializes that in us, right? The idea that we're always lacking in some way and the only way to fill that lack is through ambition. So it's not anyone's fault that they feel that, oh, I'm making over $100,000 a year. Oh, I bought my first home. I have a family and we feel secure. Like all of those things are never enough or they never feel like enough because we are surrounded with messages that say, you need to do more. You

need to have more. You need to spend more in order to arrive at that vaunted feeling of completion, when ambition will suddenly disappear, and it doesn't happen. Like it can't happen. Otherwise, capitalism would stop. Like there would be no one buying new things if everyone was in at least our rapid growth kind of disposable capitalism. If everyone felt the same way as Emma, then we just wouldn't be growing the same way that we do. And I think that growing, I'm talking about like the economy or whatever, but basically all these well-meaning relatives are just trying to give her more stability. They want to ensure a path forward that is somehow safe or immune from precarity. Doesn't in our current economy unless you have tons and tons

and tons and tons of money that is somehow protected in some way. So what would you say? What would be the wording that you would have her respond to her family members, for instance? My first thought was to send these messages to the spam folder, which I realize is not a practical, realistic piece of advice. And I think your point is exactly right. I don't think capitalism just encourages it. I think it relies on it. Just like I think it relies on the idea that someone else is ahead, which means someone else has to be behind. And all that guarantees is that all of us are running toward this direction of hyperproductivity all the time.

Because we're terrified. And rightfully so. I think in regard to response to family members who are well-meaning, who really feel like this is the path that you should go down, I think that two things immediately come to mind. I think that one of them is to just say, thanks, but I like this life. Right. And leave it at that. It's radical, right? That's radical, but also a great demonstration. It is. And I think that it's such a simple sentence, but when you think about it, it says so much because how many of us can say that? I hope a lot of us can, but I think most of us are put

in a position where we are supposed to be inherently dissatisfied. And I think that a lot of the time that spun is super ambitious or super motivational. Like there's always something better out there. Don't you want to go get it? And I think the other way is really quietly radical to say, my ambition is for this. My ambition is to do more of this, of what I'm already doing. And I think that one version of responding to your family is saying exactly that, that I like this life. And I think that when you name the things you like about it, it would hopefully create a point of reflection for other people to go, you know, yeah,

this job's got a higher salary. It's way over in the city across the country. But look at the things it's lacking that this person has built into their life that they love that matter to them. Right. And I think, I mean, this is kind of a hackneyed or overly simplistic way of thinking about it. But maybe what if we also think of someone who is incredibly ambitious as someone who is always unhappy? Totally. I think prior to working on this book, which I credit less to the process of working on a book and more to the conversations with people that I got to have as a result of working on that, I think that it dawned on me that some of the points of my life where I was the most ambitious on paper, I was also completely miserable. And I think that it made

me show up in negative ways as a friend, as a sister, as a human being who exists in communities of people. And it took me a long time to come to terms with that because I also felt like I was never ambitious enough, but also like I wasn't enough of any of these things either. And I realized that, you know, yeah, ambition, but for what? Like where does it end? And where does do the other things, the other qualities that are important to have and cultivate in my life, where do those start? And it sounds like this person has a really incredible balance of that. Yeah. I do think we have to address the second part of the question, which is something that I have been writing about recently, which is this feeling of like, oh, I found this contentment job. But as any Gen Xer, millennial, and now Gen Zer knows,

the bottom can drop out at any moment. So how do you deal with that? How do you live in your contentment but also create enough of a safety net that you aren't also stricken with this feeling of fear? If anyone comes up with a specific answer to this, please let me know so I can apply it to my own life. Seriously, but also when I think about something like professional development or this idea that you can never entirely take your eye off the ball, I try. Emphasis on try because this is very much a work in progress. I try to think of two key things. And the first is whether this would materially benefit my quality of life by way of a better

work environment, income, insurance, things that might really materially change circumstances that allow me to show up in my own life in ways that feel better and are hopefully more supportive of other people. And the second is if it's something that's genuinely optional, like you don't have to go to the professional development thing, you don't have to seek out these other opportunities. If it's something that's not a requirement of your job and not tied to your quality of life, I think about whether it makes me curious, whether it excites me, whether it helps something beyond me that I want to contribute to. And I feel like if you ask yourself some of those guiding questions, whatever they are for you, in five years, will you regret not doing it? Are you kind of interested

in it? I don't think it's a bad thing to try. And I don't think it's a bad way of keeping doors open that might have otherwise been closed. Right. And maybe a test too for me would be like, would I do this even if I couldn't put it in a neat line on my resume? Absolutely. Because I think that we really underestimate those experiences. I think that sometimes we understandably get really attached to what can be documented as an obvious achievement or obvious goal because we're trying to collect these proof points that we're valuable, that we've done these things, and so we'll have

more safety as a result of them, as faulty as that may be. I get the impulse. But I think that doing something, because it is something that makes you curious, even if it can't go on the resume, I think that those can pop up in really unexpected ways later down the line. And I think it those can pop up in really unexpected ways later down the line. And I think it gives you the chance to surprise yourself. Right. And if you think of networking as actually forming solidarity with other people with similar jobs, I think that's useful in terms of like finding another job in your field. And then I think back on a conversation

that we had about finding new jobs earlier this year. And our guest host then, Laura Mariani, was talking about how if you're thinking about switching industries, the best thing to do is to reach out to all of your contacts who work all sorts of different jobs and talk to them about what their jobs are like. If you aren't actually making friendships with anyone, right? If you aren't invested in your community, who do you have to reach out to? This is something that I actually think afflicts a lot of people is they find themselves laid off and then they're trying to do their job search and they realize, I was so focused on my job that I have no network. And you don't have to call it a network. You can say,

I have no friends, right? And I don't, like, that's a bleak thing to say, but it also, like, you're isolated, you're stranded. And what our question asker has the opportunity to develop as she is in this contented job is that network both within her profession and outside of it. Absolutely. And I think that you framed it perfectly where I think networking has this awful connotation of like very stiff handshakes and exchanging business cards and it being very transactional. And when you look at it more as like, I'm building a community of interesting people who I learn from and like being around and would ask for advice or would give advice to. I think that number one, it becomes way more robust and

way more interesting. And number two, I think it opens you up to things that you wouldn't have seen coming. In five years, if you're not quite as content in this job, if you're thinking, okay, maybe I'd like to do something else, all of a sudden you've laid the groundwork for so many possibilities without having to sacrifice the feeling of contentment you've got right now. Yeah.

I guess for our closing, if someone is just having that general feeling of ennui around like feeling like they don't have enough ambition, what is the piece of advice that you give or maybe the best piece of advice that you've received that we can offer to them right now? That's a great question. I know it's a hard one. It's hard because I think it's so layered because if you feel like you don't have enough ambition or maybe the reverse, you feel like you have too much of ambition. I think the thing that has helped me and has come up in a lot of different conversations with a lot of different

people is that the best ambition is the kind that's self-defined. And by self-defined, I don't mean individualistic because I actually think that's a huge pitfall of ambition, where we think of ambition or striving or work as things that happen into my life and the conditions that I'm in, the circumstances that I'm working with, not the ones I wish I could have. And I've landed on a version that feels like I'm getting enough of everything. Like I'm getting enough striving over here. I'm getting enough contentment over here. I'm really savoring my ambition. That's something I've thought about a lot is that sometimes we're so busy striving through it, it becomes this really treacherous thing. Whereas I think when we slow down and we think about how do I want to be ambitious in my

work? How do I want to be ambitious in my community, in my friendships, in my relationships with other human beings? How do I want to be ambitious in my home and how I take care of myself and my every day and my quality of life? I think all of a sudden, when you start filling in those blanks for yourself with things that feel true to you, that feel responsive to your life as is, there's no such thing as not enough ambition. There's no such thing as too much ambition. When you can answer those

questions for yourself, I think we walk away with a much more comforting, motivating definition of what ambition can be. What a perfect note to end on. That's an ambitious ending. If people want to find you, where can they find you? I am at Rainsford on Twitter, which I am on way too much. And I'm Rainsford underscore Stauffer on Instagram. Thank you again. This has been just wonderful. Thank you so much for this great conversation. Thanks so much to Rainsford Stauffer for joining me today.

And thanks to you for listening to Work Appropriate. If you've got a workplace quandary you want help figuring out, get in touch. You can find submission guidelines at workappropriate.com or send a voice memo with your question to workappropriate at crooked.com. We're particularly interested in more of your questions about managers, how to be a good one and how to deal with bad ones. So send those our way. Work Appropriate is a Crooked Media production. I'm Anne Helen Peterson, your host. Our executive producers are Kendra James and Sandy Gerard.

Melody Rowell is our producer and editor. Allison Falzetta is our development producer. Music is composed by Chanel Critchlow. Additional production support from Ari Schwartz. And special thanks to Katie Long and Sarah Geismar. You can follow me on Instagram at Anne Helen Peterson or on Twitter at Anne Helen. You can sign up for my newsletter at annehelen.substack.com. Next week, by popular demand, we are getting into unions. Be sure to subscribe to Work Appropriate and your favorite

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