Not the best, not the worst

Resisting achievement culture

Hello, my dear readers. This post has nothing to do with quitting the city, and everything with quitting outdated measures of success. I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while. I hope you can relate. Let me know.

I came across this print at a small music festival last summer and was immediately drawn to it. I felt seen. Not only do I love the drawing, but it also captures a mood, an attitude that I think we need more of. It sits on my desk. It’s my motto 100%

Print by Sepulcro

Wait what? Aren’t we supposed to want to be the best, or at least the best version of ourselves? 

Coming of age in the nineties shaped my outlook on life. Being a Streber (the German word for someone who is striving really hard to succeed) was the worst. You could be good at something, but only if it didn’t take too much effort. And you could, under no circumstances, brag about your achievements. It was all more Kurt Cobain and less Taylor Swift.

This attitude stuck with me. I never felt I fit into the extreme achievement culture I got to know working in London over the last decade or so. It was greatly at odds with the slacker spirit I grew up with. 

Today the workplace has become a place of intense competition and often performative hustle. To be professional means to be highly ambitious (and to make your colleagues aware of that). Whether you’re in full-time employment, freelance or your own boss, the pressure to outperform your competitors and show it off is huge. Social media has given us the tools to market ourselves and promote our services. Every author and creative is now ‘award-winning’, or worse ‘multi-award winning’.

But achievement culture and obsession with status isn’t just limited to work. It permeates all areas of life. There’s a seemingly endless need for self-improvement and becoming the best version of ourselves (a phrase that just makes me want to vomit). Every crisis or failure must be reframed as an opportunity for personal growth. (FFS can’t we just have a shit experience anymore?) But whatever the latest markers of a ‘successful’ personal life are (and it could be ‘prioritising rest’) we need to demonstrate that too. 

Our current economic climate is forcing people to compete. Our social structures favour individualism, and many creatives (others too, but that’s what I know most about) have to battle with precarious working conditions. Surviving in this neoliberal world order is based on a scarcity mindset, a scarcity system. If there’s more for you, there’s less for me. Also, ambition isn’t paying off anymore. Hard work doesn’t guarantee a career, a stable job or a fancy title. The chance to buy a house is out of reach for most. At the same time, working conditions have worsened. Gen Z is disillusioned with work (rightly so) and ‘quiet quitting’ is on the rise.

The only time we’re allowed to scale back our ambition just a bit is when we’ve gone out too hard. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read or witnessed this story. The overachiever burned out, unable to continue to work in the same way, learning the hard way that this is unsustainable. Like we have to go to a very dark place first to have this epiphany about our messed up success metrics. Only then it is ok to say, you know what, I’m going to take it easy for a while. You’ve earned your right to downshift. Otherwise, you’re just lazy. What kind of culture is that? What are we trying to prove? 

And it’s not that success is making us happy. In fact, rates of burnout have never been higher. There’s a sense of collective exhaustion that’s spreading through all layers of society. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review weighs up the perils of achievement culture and discusses several books on the topic, stating that the driver behind extreme ambition isn’t greed or ego, but often status anxiety. 

“The pressure to perform is baked into our larger society. As a result, children are increasingly absorbing the message that they have no value outside of their accomplishments.” – Jennifer Breheny Wallace

I think we need a mindset shift. And I’m not interested in ‘reframing success’. I’m questioning the relevance of success altogether. We need a new kind of value system, a different idea of worth. As long as we’re chasing this kind of external validation, we’re never going to feel at ease. We need to recognise the intrinsic worth in everyone and everything. We need a gentler, softer way of working and being in this world., where greater value is put on relationships and collaboration. 

To be the best, to win, and to outperform your competitors in the end is about setting yourself apart. And maybe that is where the problem lies. In the regenerative discourse, this idea is often referred to as the ‘story of separation’. As long as we want to win, someone else has to lose. If we don’t see ourselves as part of a whole, separate from nature and each other, we’ll continue on this path of individualism and competition. We’ll keep pursuing an idea of progress and growth that is built on exploitation – of the planet, others, and ourselves. 

I don’t think being the best is what is required of us now. With old systems crumbling and new stories only just emerging, we need to embrace our entanglement with each other and all living beings. It might be painful. It’s definitely messy. But instead of being your ‘best self’, how about just being yourself? Your grumpy, exhausted, excited, enraged, ecstatic or whatever self. We all have a part to play, however we show up.

Can we change the cultural narrative around ambition and achievement? Instead of focusing on success, competition, and individual gains, could we shift towards care, solidarity and wellbeing of the collective? 

As for the slacker vibe, it’s definitely having a moment. Maybe the pandemic ushered in the end of ambition? Just recently there have been some great articles on Substack that point towards a gentler, more accepting approach to work. Emma Gannon, who has written a book about ‘The Success Myth’ just published a guest post about ‘the unexpected joy of being a nobody’ by a former editor who walked away from it all. Also Marlee Grace’s post about ‘the life changing magic of giving up’ is so on point.

“You may fear that giving up means not caring but I assure you it is the container for the most generosity and care that you can have inside you.” – Marlee Grace

As January is traditionally the time for resolutions and goal setting for the new year, it could also be a good moment to think about what we can do less of, what we can give up, and what we’re not even going to try. And see what emerges…

I don’t want to crush your ambition... only a little bit. It’s liberating!

x

PS. The next post is definitely about city quitting again. A story from…

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Same vibe. I love everything by Anna Erhard.