Ambition: Can giving up be good for you?

From treating burnout to resisting oppressive systems, how can we achieve our aims without sacrificing too much?
Ambition: Can giving up be good for you?
Graphic: Jo Minor
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We all want to achieve great things. But in the wake of the pandemic, some of us have stopped to reconsider: What’s the cost of all this collective desperation to succeed? From treating burnout to resisting oppressive systems, how can we get the things we want in life without sacrificing too much time, energy, and psychological well-being?

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Featuring

Cassie Werber is a senior reporter with Quartz and the host of Work Reconsidered. Once of her greatest ambitions is learning to garden.

Sarah Todd is a senior reporter at Quartz. She thinks dogs shouldn’t just be allowed in the office, they should get salaries, too.

Jane Li is a former Quartz reporter based in Hong Kong.


Show notes

Ann Helen Peterson’s 2019 essay on Millennial burnout in Buzzfeed

Devon Price’s book Laziness Does Not Exist

Maris Kriezman’s June 2020 essay, “Where did my ambition go?” published in GEN

The medium chill,” 2011 essay by David Roberts in Grist

Reddit thread on antiwork

Jane Li’s article on China’s lying flat movement

Jane Li’s article on touching fish

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

This episode uses the following music:
Merx (Market Song) by axtoncrolley via FreeSound.org
Waiting Amin by Luke Holizna via Holizna.com


Read the full transcript here.