Finding Your Miracle Year(s)

What if ambition was not the driver?

Nov 29, 2023

From 2017 to 2018, over a period of 11 months, I had my annus mirabilis (marvelous year), in which I had multiple, seemingly independent breakthroughs in my life.

Professionally, I made the demanding transition from being a senior user-researcher to becoming a senior product manager at one of the hottest unicorn startups of the time, Uber. Academically, I graduated with an MBA from Duke Fuqua’s School of Business. Personally, I trained for and climbed the 3,000 foot granite monolith of El Capitan for the first time.1

This was a mystery of a miracle year.

Dwarkesh Patel describes2 an annus mirabilis as a pattern across a range of creative professions when “high achievers experience a year of extraordinary productivity.” Clearly I’m not a genius, but this year was one of significant wonder in the arc of my life.

Was I exhausted? Profoundly.
Was I stoked? 100%
Did my personal relationships suffer? Without a doubt.
Was it worth it? Absolutely.

I also hold that it won’t be my last.

As Patel notes, the power of youth and freedom in shaping these miracle years is outsized, “There are so many distractions that come from being successful. And then there’s aging itself, which brings family, dullness, and complacency.” I am certain that only being responsible for myself played into the burst of productivity I experienced. But it was not the singular thread.

One driving force was simply unvarnished ambition. Nothing felt impossible. And once I committed to those goals, there was no turning back.

Must miracle years be relegated to the fleeting attributes of ambition, youth and freedom? Does age itself necessitate dullness and complacency? I argue all of these things are possible, but not inevitabilities.

Anne Helen Petersen excellent essay3, “Are You In The Portal,” touched on this with the provocation that maybe what drives us when we are burdened by more responsibilities in life is a swell of creativity.

What a novel idea, that creativity, not ambition, can be as powerful a driver.

It’s certainly not something embraced in mainstream work culture, where we worship at the altar of hustle and try-hard.

The only creativity going into my annus mirabilis was how to fit it all in. Like an all-encompassing thousand-piece puzzle, I willed my way forward and learned what was possible when I combined a strong sense of purpose with clearly defined goals, broken down into achievable, visible milestones.

Lately, though, I’ve found myself driven by a force that I cannot distill into specific objectives. My desires feel more commanding and meaningful. As a product lead, entrepreneur, parent, partner, climber, sister, and friend, my attention and time have never felt more bifurcated. And yet, the unifying thread willing me forward this time is not expertly crafted goals for each area of my life, rather a sense of creative possibility. It’s an empty canvas, not a big puzzle this time.

A former IDEO colleague of mine, Lisa Baird, talks about creative design as rooted in three things: craft, process and mindset.4

As I reflect on the upcoming year, I rather like the idea of applying this framework. That is, how might I lean into craft or mindset, rather than process in 2024?

My miracle year was grounded in the process of ambition.

I sought my own delights by scaring myself silly scaling a big wall of granite.
I secured a fit for the future I imagined in the form of a new career that would ensure greater security and earnings upside.
I guaranteed a certain response from the world around me by graduating with a prestigious MBA.

But what would a year grounded in the attributes of craft look like, where beauty, coherence and harmony led the way? What might 12 months with a focus on mindset produce, where novelty and departure are the objective functions?

I believe my greatest professional, educational and athletic endeavors are yet to come. But what if ambition was not the driver?

What would that annus mirabilis look like?

2 Things That Caught My Attention This Week:

📰 Paternity leave changes men’s brain: I am thrilled to share this HBR article and study by a friend of mine Molly Dickens. Fathers are made, not born. And, turns out, a key factor in those neurological changes is spending time with their kids. No shit. But now, we have science to back it! Here’s to pushing for more “fatherhood brain training” aka parental leave, as normalized in the workplace.

📖 Greenlights: Speaking of fatherhood training, did you know Matthew McConaughey takes his family with him to all movie shoots? I’m only slightly mortified to admit I read his memoir last week, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this quick read. There’s something inspiring about a man who owns his vanity, recognizes how much luck has played into his success and doesn’t give two shits about what people think, “There is magic to showing up in life as we are.”

With thanks to this amazing group of women for the edits and feedback! Emma Dorge Karena Miche Priest Becky Isjwara and Justine.