Limiting belief: Spending the time to develop a new skill should lead to something productive.
Reframe: Learning for joy and curiosity is enough — and it fuels everything else.

There’s been a common thread on social media lately — at least among my female millennial peers — reckoning with a prior fixation on productivity and ambition and expressing the need for a slower, more intentional way of living. I’ve certainly been doing some reflecting myself, attempting to identify ways I can better align how I spend my time and energy with what’s most important to me. In fact, my word of the year entering 2025 was “alignment.”

That doesn’t mean shying away from productivity and ambition entirely. Rather, it calls for redefining what these words can mean for our lives, beyond the professional.

Human Design tells me that as a manifesting generator, one of my biggest lessons is to give myself permission to let go and move on when something isn’t right and to embrace the idea that prioritizing excitement and joy is not selfish. Instead, it is what allows me to have the most positive impact in the world.

I used to think that I wanted to continue climbing the ladder in my field, having already gone from starting as an intern to now leading the department. Earlier this year, however, I realized that I no longer feel this need. And that’s ok. It’s ok to change my mind and to not continually strive for the next promotion.

But that doesn’t mean I’m letting go of ambition. My personal reckoning is that I can continue to learn new things, challenge myself, and grow in my strengths — and that it can have absolutely nothing to do with a career or degree or tangible milestone.

My top CliftonStrengths talent is “Learner,” something that didn’t even crack the top 10 when I did the assessment at the beginning of my career. This means that I am naturally curious and have an innate desire to acquire additional knowledge and gain new skills. An “insatiable” appetite for information. Combined with my Human Design, I think it’s clear that I am not someone who can be comfortable with stagnation.

So, my commitment to myself and to you, whoever you are, is to continue to learn new things and to develop my skills just for the sake of excitement and joy, not with a specific goal in mind. A few specific areas of interest:

• Photography: Something I have always had a passion for but haven’t actively pursued in years. Recently, I bought a new mirrorless camera and will brush up on skills before a big vacation coming up later this year.
• Cooking: I love to cook and bake when I actually make time for it. I’ve just kind of picked things up from watching my mom while growing up and experimenting on my own, and would really like to take some skills courses like cake decorating or knife skills. Feeling more confident in these areas will help me to enjoy it even more.
• Writing: Part of why I started this blog is because I miss writing, which was the main thing I wanted to focus on when starting my career. Personal narrative was never really a strong point though, so this has been an interesting challenge.
• Some kind of physical activity: Yoga? Pilates? Hiking? TBD.

I’m also reading and traveling a lot more than I have in recent years, which is such a good way to learn about the world. Reading, no matter the genre, can open our minds to new ideas and possibilities. And, I can’t say enough about the value of travel. Definitely more to come on that.

Creating my own curriculum of what I want to learn, discover, and grow into is giving me the freedom to do something for the joy of it. It’s also helping me to continue to move forward in my own, self-defined sort of way, without the need for external validation.

In the words of Eartha Kitt, “I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.”

Journal Prompts:

• What’s something you’ve always wanted to learn just for the joy of it?
• How might you approach learning as a way of being, not just achieving?