The Year I Gave Up On Prestige
When I examined my trophy-chasing behavior, I realized it wasn’t serving me—and I didn’t need it anymore
In the final moments of 2021, I’ve been reflecting on what was perhaps the biggest change in my life in the last twelve months: It was the year I gave up on chasing prestige.
Several things contributed to this. One was when an ostensible career highpoint in 2020 turned out to be one of the worst experiences of my professional life. I sat in my therapist’s office in February of 2020 and realized that if this is what success in my chosen industry felt like, I’m not sure I wanted it anymore.
It was a stark and identity-shaking realization, one that my therapist said I was lucky to figure out relatively early in life, when I’d only invested a decade in this path, rather than three. Shortly thereafter came the pandemic, when the whole idea of building a shiny and impressive professional self behind a screen started to feel hollow and frankly a little dumb. I felt a drive to create a richer off-screen life and more practical skills —the kind that don’t belong on LinkedIn, but might be more useful in a climate-disrupted future.
The second factor was moving away from a large city where virtually everyone I spent time with was chasing prestige in some form. Living in a slower, quieter place, I started to see that people can and do live entire lives — lives that are very nice! — without caring about job titles and career milestones. As a result, I talked far less about what I do for a living. Spending time around these people made me curious about what my life would look like if I cared less about those things, too.
Finally, I spent even more time in therapy unearthing why this trophy-chasing behavior was so prominent in my life. Understanding why I had created a life so obsessed with prestige — it had everything to do with the child version of me, and how she learned to survive in the world—helped me see that I didn’t need to do that anymore. The whole game became less compelling.
So as the dust settled on 2020, I entered 2021 with a new mindset. I no longer cared about writing for prestigious publications, something that used to be a central driver of my life and career. I no longer looked forward to the rush of validation that came from posting a new article or piece of career news on social media. I stopped constantly wondering what professional achievement or advance may lie just around the corner if I kept putting myself out there.
Instead, I simply focused on how I wanted my life to look and feel right now, this week, this month. I would only commit to doing work if it fell into one of two buckets: One, it paid well and thus allowed me to further my non-writing life goals (buy a flat, save money) or two, it brought me creative joy or satisfaction.
Strange things happened. First of all, I worked less, because I didn’t take on every single piece of work that came my way, and I was more discerning about whether a given piece of work actually remunerated me properly for the time I would spend on it. As a result, I made more money, which allowed me to further my financial life in ways that felt impossible when I lived in a city. After all, it’s hard to save money when what you’re actually working for is prestige.
In addition, the professional jealousy I used to feel when people posted about their achievements online all but evaporated. One reason, of course, is that I spent less time online obsessively tracking those “some personal news” updates. But the other is that I simply didn’t care as much. I was more focused on how my life felt to me, rather than how it looked to other people. I had also learned the hard way that career success is often rewarded with … more hard work and burnout. This was something that I was finally sure I did not want, no matter how impressive it looked to others.
I still wrote, quite a lot actually. And through both growing an audience on Medium and launching a paid component of my newsletter, I scratched my creative itch and did what I love to do: pay close attention to the world around me and connect with readers. Meanwhile, the writing work that paid my bills and filled my savings account was not impressive to others and often didn’t have my name attached to it. Oddly, that felt like a huge relief.
Do I still have moments where I feel pangs for the kind of prestige and accolades that once drove my whole life? Yes, I do. But when I remember what I’ve gained — more free time, less anxiety, more savings, less time lived on a screen—they usually pass pretty quickly.
