Slow ambition: the antidote to burnout

Forget tech bro morning routines and hammering away all day; this is the era of slow-burner ambition, firing up alongside the day job.

We all know about fast ambition.

Rise early, meditate, clear your mind, go for a long run, stretch, eat a wholesome breakfast and then hammer away at your entrepreneurial ambitions all day.

Expect everyone else to pick up everything around you, so that you can stay entirely focused on your fast ambition and grow, excel, rise, dominate, succeed, win.

Fast ambition is competitive (even if you’re just competing with yourself).

Fast ambition makes you feel like you’re on fire. The flames are tall. The heat is powerful. You are the fire; you will destroy anything on your path.

Until you burn out.

Because actually, there is no one there to pick up everything else around you while you remain entirely focused on your goals especially if you’re a woman.

So, instead, you will notice that you don’t really have the nourishing morning routine, because you’re making other people’s breakfast and hanging out the laundry.

And you don’t really have loads of day-time hours to work, because there are appointments and admin and house clearing/cleaning.

So, there are a few hours to cram in your work and not so many hours around that for creative thinking and deep thinking and big thinking and world domination.

This is why we crash: we are dreaming the dreams, setting the goals and working towards them - but we don’t have the infrastructure to support us.

Or: why we back away from our careers altogether. We decide there isn’t enough time for it. We’ll just piece a life together ensuring everyone else is looked after.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

Here’s where slow ambition comes in.

Slow ambition is for those who have various responsibilities but are not willing to shelve their career dreams entirely.

It is for the creatives and writers and entrepreneurs who want and need to keep going but know there has to be another way; a better way.

There is.