You’re Successful on Paper.
You did everything by the book, so why isn’t it enough?
Hi, I’m Priyanka and I asked myself the exact same question. I got very good at playing the game: work hard, progress, earn more and always think about what’s next. That’s the exact roadmap that helped me make Director in five years when it usually takes seven or eight. I led a £3.3 million portfolio for one of the big 4 advertising agencies, managing the agency’s third biggest client.
I was by all accounts, Successful on Paper.
I was also burnt out.
I thought it was the workload, it never was and if you’ve been told the same, I promise you, it’s not. For ambitious women like us, it’s never about the workload. We can (and often will) work for hours without any issue.
The problem has been and always will be alignment. And yes, I know that’s a wanky overused term on the internet these days but it’s true.
In the midst of climbing the corporate ladder, I also trained as a Mindset Coach to support the large team I took over but had no training to help. The penny dropped in week one of my training when I realised that my values didn't align with the client I was working on, and I came to the conclusion:
A life built on other people’s expectations will never feel like yours
Burnout for ambitious women always has to do with living a life that was never yours in the first place. We inherited a set of rules and followed them blindly, without even questioning ‘is this really what I want?’.
And now, we are seeing more and more millennial women recognising that being Successful on Paper means nothing if you are constantly looking for an exit plan.
What is Successful on Paper?
Think of it as Carrie Bradshaw meets Cosmopolitan magazine. Or at least the Cosmo we thought we’d be reading by now (RIP). This is for the women who grew up on both and ended up with a career neither of them prepared us for.
And I promise, there won’t be a single desk-to-dinner outfit guide in sight.
Instead, I’m writing about the stuff we actually need to talk about in the group chat and using my life as the case study.
Successful on Paper is meant to be your Sunday morning read. Coffee in hand, bathrobe on, getting cosy with something that isn’t another doom scroll. And a space to talk about the things you’ve been thinking about but haven’t felt able to say out loud to the people who know you.
Like any good magazine, there are sections:
Work
Careers, ambition, money and our relationship with work, and whether the unwritten rules we follow make any sense.
Self
Who we are underneath the titles and achievements. Identity, beauty, ageing, confidence and the ongoing process of becoming more yourself.
Wellness
Our bodies, our health and the never-ending pursuit of feeling better, including whether taking care of ourselves has become another form of self-improvement.
Life
Friendships, relationships, culture and all the messy bits of being a person.
What you’ll unlock when you subscribe
Free
Observational essays across work, self, wellness and life
The comment section where you can have conversations with other ambitious women who are in the same boat as you
Off Paper (go paid for £6 per month or £60 per year)
Writing about challenging the status quo is one thing, living it is another.
Off Paper is where I take you behind the scenes of what happens when I actually do it.
In real-time challenges and experiments, like this one:
The personal stories I don’t share anywhere else, like this one:
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If you’re reading this now, you’re early
Subscribe for free and you can say you were here before Successful on Paper looked quite so successful on paper. Or go Off Paper now and keep your rate for as long as you stay subscribed, even when the price goes up.
Because 'that's just how it is' has never been a particularly good reason to stop asking questions.
