It’s Time to Replace Ambition with Adaptation
The pandemic and climate crises make working ourselves to the bone in service of our own ambition seem a little silly. Let’s change that.
Earlier in the summer, while picking up trash on a beach near where I live, I had a revelation: Engaging in this rather mundane activity was the most useful I had felt in a while. The idea was both unsettling and freeing at the same time.
We’ve all been spending more time lately on activities that feel immediately useful: cooking meals, moving our bodies, making and mending things, growing gardens, and — like me with the beach rubbish — serving as stewards of the places where we live.
But while the litter-picking was initially a way to fill my time during the long pandemic summer, it also got me thinking about the very notion of how I spend my time. In February, right before the world fell apart, I was diagnosed with burnout. I had been working too hard, and despite taking some time off, I didn’t have a strong sense of how I was going to avoid repeating the cycle again in the future.
Then the pandemic added another layer of context. As our attention collectively went to our more elemental needs in lockdown, I wondered about the point of spending my days nestled…
