Worker wants success but has ‘no desire to hustle’
Hi, Carolyn: In 2019, after 10 years in another industry, I switched to the industry I had always aimed for before pesky things like the Great Recession got in the way. I have been relatively happy with this switch and decided I wanted to gain a better perspective by getting a graduate degree. I truly believe in the kind of work I do, and I want to make sure I do it in the most knowledgeable way possible.
Simultaneously, I am starting to realize just how unambitious I am. I have zero desire to be the try-hard I once was. I want to keep work in its box so that I can have a full life outside of work.
This feels incongruent to getting a graduate degree, even though I am enjoying my experience immensely – and it is free because I have a fellowship. I hope I can have a successful career post-graduation, but it feels like I might have to hustle a bit to do so. I have no desire to hustle.
Do you have any tips on how to lead a meaningful and successful career without ambition overrunning my entire life? How can I be successful without being ambitious?
Maybe I Suck
Maybe I Suck: Recognize they’re two different things. Success is reaching your goal, whatever that goal is. CEO, supporting a family, supporting a personal life, making a difference, making enough to get by. Ambition is reaching for ever loftier goals.
You can be unambitiously successful by finding your niche; pushing yourself hard enough to succeed in that niche, by your definition; and doing your job well enough to stay there. (Unless you change your mind again, and again, which happens.)
This is not an obscure formula; it’s everywhere around you. There are a few stars and a lot of character actors. There are a few CEOS and a lot of workers. There are a few deans and a lot of instructors. Every good team counts on its utility players, its third line, its bench. Not everyone below the peak level represents a failure to reach the top.
A hierarchy where everyone is ambitious, meanwhile, sounds more like a feeding frenzy than a productive and welcoming workplace.
If you’re inclined to work eagerly and well at a profession that means something to you, and to skip the whole middle stage where you try to push yourself up the pyramid only to watch in frustration as you get passed over by the competition, then more power to you, I say.
Not only is there honor in good work at any level, but there’s also serenity in choosing it vs. being relegated to it.
This isn’t to say ambition is bad; we need some to progress as a society (and some to keep in check). We need leadership and competition and hunger. What we don’t need, as individuals, is pressure to reach for things we think we’re expected to want instead of what we want. So unleash your inner tortoise. Put your degree to moderate use.