The numbers aren’t wrong, but I think they’re measuring the wrong thing

To be fair to The Economist, I’m not about to argue with their data.

The incomes are adjusted for inflation, and they even admit that in Britain progress has slowed, with millennials here only slightly ahead of Gen X. (That’s basically the headline for those of us in the UK, and it gets one sentence in the whole piece.)

Partway through, while explaining why we were slow to buy homes, the article asks a question I’ve been pondering for the last two years myself. If money isn’t the problem, what is it exactly?

Their answer is…we stayed in education longer and got married later in life.

Which of course is an interesting answer. It’s just too simplistic for most of our realities. Because in the same year The Economist is declaring us a success story, Deloitte’s 2026 survey found that 45% of millennials feel burnt out, and 30% feel stressed or anxious most or all of the time.

So by all accounts, we’re a generation that is Successful on Paper, and yet, we still don’t feel it. I didn’t need a survey to tell me that.

If you’ve made it on paper and yet still feel flat in real life, you are the exact person I’m writing for.

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Every generation chased their own version of success

Boomers chased stability, the ‘work hard and life will reward you’ generation. The playbook that many of us are still following, even though the rules have changed.

Then there’s Gen X. They chased independence because they knew better than anyone else that no one’s coming to save you.

Us millennials, well, we were told we could have it all. As long as we worked hard enough, healed our traumas, optimised every inch of our lives, and somehow still managed to enjoy every minute of life.

Somewhere along the way, the brief grew to include building a personal brand, manifesting, having boundaries (but not being a bitch), keeping up with AI, being present, and of course, my personal favourite, don’t burn out.

Like anyone would put that on their goals list.

Gen Z took one look at the brief and said no thanks

Gen Z’s version of success fits into four simple words: I’d rather have peace.

I’ll be the first to admit, Gen Z’s attitude towards most things made me roll my eyes a little. But now I’m wondering whether they’ve worked out something we haven’t. Not only are they ignoring the brief, they’re not afraid to say so.

Since September, high school students across France have been out on the streets protesting against underfunded and overcrowded schools, and it’s now grown into a movement across Europe.

On the surface, peace and protest don’t go hand in hand, but I think they come from the same place. Whether it’s on the streets protesting or how they choose to work, Gen Z is refusing the brief they were handed.

Which feels familiar, because in the early 2010s, that was us. The Economist itself points to the millennial-led movements, from UK Uncut to Occupy Wall Street, as proof of how fed up we were with the status quo.

And yet fifteen-odd years later, I think a lot of us are exhausted by the number of unprecedented, once-in-a-lifetime events and have quietly accepted that this is the system we have to play in.

We stopped trying to change the game and just got very good at playing it instead.

Sure, some of us are trying to break out, but most of us are just trying to make the most out of a bad situation without burning out.

We’re not the burnout generation because we’re weak

Do you remember Anne Helen Petersen’s 2019 essay in BuzzFeed? I do, like it was yesterday. She called millennials the burnout generation and it went everywhere. Seven years on and the label has stuck, with many of us feeling it whether we want to admit it or not.

Being called the burnout generation so publicly makes us sound weak. We’re not. We’re the first generation trying to succeed in our careers, relationships, finances, health, personal growth and happiness all at the same time.

Life for us millennials has just become this one long list of things to optimise and be scored against. Like the annual performance review somehow leaked out of the office and bled into every part of our lives.

Send this to the friend who’s stuck between ‘heal your trauma’ and ‘don’t burn out’.

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It might be our economy now, but it doesn’t feel like ours

The Economist ends with “Don’t pity millennials. It is their economy now.”

Funny, because it doesn’t feel like it, and I’m sure I’m not the only millennial who feels this way either.

Think about the last few years. A lot of us were only just finding our rhythm again after the pandemic, and then AI arrived. Now every industry is changing, and as the generation filling the management roles, we’re the ones expected to lead everyone through it. As soon as it feels like you’ve caught up, something else lands.

Yes, we are earning more, but earning more and having more aren’t the same thing. So when someone tells me we’re richer than ever, my first response is: how much is left over at the end, after paying for everything? Shortly followed by: do you know how much it takes out of us to earn that in the first place?

Because that’s the real story. The price of doing everything right to look successful, ticking every single box and yet still feeling like you’re behind.

So I want to know: does it feel like our economy to you, or are you still trying to catch up?

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I fully expected to stay at the company for much longer and wasn’t planning to be back on the market right now. But since I am, I’ve had some time to reflect on how differently I’m approaching this whole interview process.

The last time I was looking, my questions were pretty simple. Is it a good job title? Does it pay well? And will it look good on my CV?

If the answers were yes to all of them, I applied.

This time around though, I’m looking at jobs in a completely different way. If you haven’t guessed already, the most important thing to me used to be looking and feeling successful. But the reality of it is, being Successful on Paper means nothing if you are miserable deep down.

Having time away from working over the last 6 months or so has really allowed me to develop a better relationship with my career. I can still be ambitious, without my self-worth being tied to achievement and costing me my wellbeing.

The other part of this is of course the market itself. The rules have changed, but it turns out I was still playing by a few of the old ones myself.

Behind the paywall

The rest of this post is where I get honest about my own job hunt, with the real numbers and the boundary I broke along the way. It’s the stuff I don’t share anywhere else, especially while I’m still interviewing.

Sign up to Off Paper for less than a cup of coffee (£6 per month) and unlock the whole archive, including Part 1 of this series.

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By Monday, the client had changed their mind about what they were looking for and I’d gone from the perfect candidate to not relevant anymore.

Nothing about me had changed and perhaps in my earlier career, I would have taken this rejection personally and yet I didn’t. Because the job market has changed rapidly and this interaction sums up everything I’m learning along the way to getting my next role.

If you’ve been wondering why is it so hard to get a job right now, you might be playing by the old rules, which, let me tell you, no longer apply.

Companies want people who have fixed the exact problems they have

For most of our careers, transferable skills were the selling point. You’d got results in one industry or for one type of client, so you could do it for another. That was the pitch, and it worked.

Now companies want people who have fixed the exact problem they are trying to resolve. You either have the experience or you don’t and that means the pool of candidates gets smaller as they try to find the unicorn who can hit the ground running from day one.

And look, I get it. Having done senior leadership roles since 2022, I know the immense amount of pressure for businesses to deliver results. For some, they don’t have the time to onboard someone new who has to learn not only the way their business functions but also the tools and ins and outs of their industry.

Senior leaders need to be a player-coaches now

AI is impacting not only the size of the team but also what is expected from each person.

Earlier in my career, getting to Head or Director level meant focusing primarily on the business side of your function, with your team managing the day-to-day deliverables.

The clearest shift I’m seeing now is the rise of the player-coach. Someone who is strategic enough to lead, but still willing (and able) to roll their sleeves up and do the work.

I’ve seen this first-hand while interviewing. More than one company has told me the people they’d hired before were used to managing big teams but weren’t able to be hands-on. On paper, they’d been the right hire but in reality it didn’t work out.

Gone are the days where being senior meant moving away from the doing. Now the market wants both. I’m fortunate enough to have stayed close to the work even though I was in senior leadership but I know that many aren’t that lucky.

Companies are waiting until they can compare you

It’s common to apply for a job and not hear back for months, if at all. A friend told me she’d got an automated rejection email last week for a job she applied for in June. I’m not surprised.

Multiple conversations with external recruiters and internal talent teams have confirmed that companies are cautious in making a decision because it has to be the right hire (back to those exact skills again).

To add further complication to this, job boards like LinkedIn have made it incredibly easy for candidates to mass apply. Another friend hiring for a junior executive to join her team ended up reposting the role four times before she’d even built a big enough pool to find the right candidates because the ones applying weren’t suitable for multiple reasons (needed sponsorship, not the right level etc).

So what feels like weeks of waiting to hear back from a company often ends up being them waiting for enough of the right candidates to enter the pool so they can compare you vs the others.

Ghosting is now just part of the process

As someone who has been in a long-term relationship since before dating apps became a thing, ghosting has been a big learning curve.

Understandably, if you are mass applying for jobs, don’t expect rejection letters from every single one. That’s a given. But what I wasn’t expecting was to not hear back when you’re in the middle of a process. Some interview processes are brutal too, sometimes up to 6 or 7 stages and even then, you may not hear anything back.

Personally, as an ex-recruiter, I can’t imagine leaving someone hanging without a response. Maybe I’m the only one that thinks it’s common courtesy to give candidates an update when you’ve promised them one. Or perhaps most businesses don’t understand how a frustrated, ghosted candidate will tell more people about their negative experience than someone who, even though they weren’t successful, still got feedback.

Being ghosted is less about you and more about them. Now I just see it as poor company culture and leave it at that.

Location, location, location

Six years removed from the pandemic and businesses are expecting people in the office. Most expecting 2-3 days attendance in the office, more if you’re a senior leader.

So is the job market bad right now? According to the various posts I’ve seen on LinkedIn this week, hiring has picked up significantly. But only within the M25. Great news for us Londoners, not so much for the rest of the country.

It’s not you, it’s the rules

Just like apps changed dating, AI has changed the way companies hire. And the old rules we’ve all been playing by never took that into account.

There’s no scenario for any of us to reference. For businesses that are hiring and for those of us looking, it’s a whole new way of learning.

Some companies are doing a really good job of it. They’re upfront and honest, and they actually give feedback. But for every company doing it well, there seem to be more that aren’t.

So it’s less about luck and more of a numbers game. Most of the time, you’re not even being rejected by a person, it’s the applicant tracking system (ATS).

Which is why you can’t take it personally. Because it’s not about you.

So, which of the old rules are you still playing by?

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About the author:

Hi, I’m Priyanka, the face behind Successful on Paper which is my attempt at a modern day version of Cosmo magazine, if it was written by Carrie Bradshaw. If you’ve done everything by the book and are still wondering why it isn’t enough, you might be the exact person I’m writing for and I’m so glad you found me. When I’m not cosplaying a magazine writer, I’m building a portfolio career using all the skills I learnt in my nearly decade long marketing career.

Want to go a little deeper?

💌 Sign up as a paid reader for the gritty behind-the-scenes and personal stories that I don’t share anywhere else, plus the entire archive unlocked instantly. Try it for free for 7 days

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☕️ Got a burning dilemma that you don’t know who to turn to? Send it in for the Reader Dilemmas and I’ll give you my honest take, the same way a friend would

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I’d spent the last year of my career balancing a demanding senior leadership role while supporting multiple family members battling cancer. By the time February rolled around, I was too exhausted to juggle them both and just knew I needed time to support myself before deciding what to do next.

I wish I could tell you that I had an epiphany. I didn’t. The first month or so passed in a blur, but I guess that’s what happens when you are grieving. You can spend months anticipating the loss of someone you love but you don’t experience it truly until they are gone and then it hits all at once. Again. And again. Until you are drowning so deeply in the grief that it takes you months to swim up for breath.

For me, the first glimpses were in May or at least I thought so.

It had been a few months and I figured it was time to get back to some sense of normality. That’s what you do, isn’t it? You take some time off, dust yourself off and get back in there. And with a CV like mine, it wasn’t long before I started to get interviews.

At first, there was relief. I was offered a lucrative short-term contract role after making it through to the final call with the client, but ultimately turned it down because of some concerns that came up during that conversation.

Then I realised I wasn’t in the right state to go back. There was this deep sense of exhaustion that I couldn’t shake, no matter how long I slept. It wasn’t long before I realised I was still grieving and clearly not in the right headspace.

So I decided to take the summer off. Properly off.

For the first summer in a decade there were going to be no adult responsibilities. Just time to rest and get back to my usual self.

In July I spent a total of 9 days at home and came back with this deep desire to create and share my story. Encouraged by my best friend, I started exploring content creation and dived head first into all things hooks, editing and b-roll. For the first time in a while, I felt the same warm buzz I felt when I initially found SEO at the beginning of my career, and decided to see where that took me. The buzz was short-lived as I realised how much effort it took to be consistent and how keeping up felt like another job in itself.

August started and ended with what felt like a never-ending decluttering session.

I had this innate feeling to review and clear out every element of my life, like I was preparing and creating space for something new. I didn’t know what for, I still don't know, all I knew was I had to do it. It was also during this period that I started Successful on Paper and wrote my first article on adult friendships becoming another admin task. While creating short-form content was challenging, writing long-form was second nature and how I got into marketing in the first place.

Plot twist: apparently “taking some time off” still requires a financial plan

Enjoyed the story so far? Behind the paywall, I'm getting honest about what happens when a short break starts needing a financial plan. The options I'm weighing up, and why the most sensible one is the one my loved ones understand least.

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Here, I share what I’m getting up to, and I hope it inspires you to make memories that aren’t work achievements.

I’ll just say it. The second half of the year is better than the first.

I could be biased (August baby), but as soon as the -ber months hit, the energy changes. Somewhere between the back-to-school vibes of September and the nostalgia of December, the calendar fills up back to back. There’s always another event to go to, always something to look forward to.

But as I’m writing this, I’m starting to wonder if I’ve romanticised it.

Because if you’ve ever worked in a corporate job, you’ll know this is also the hardest stretch of the year. You’re trying to wrap the year up strong and hit your targets, all while end-of-year review sits quietly in the background. Not to forget that planning for the next year also starts with the dreaded questions - What’s the strategy? What are the numbers we have to hit?

It’s a lot.

If last month was all about dark academia, this month is all about pumpkins and spooky season.

PLACES I’M GOING

Thanks to TikTok, I’ve found so many seasonal things to do in and around Manchester this year, so I am going putting on my wellingtons and head into the countryside.

The Hollies Farm Shop has been around for a while but popularity especially on socials seems to have blown up after Molly-Mae was spotted in the cafe. The influx of crowds meant the business had to temporarily close shop until things got under control. Hopefully there won’t be any influencers visiting on the same day we head down there too.

I am not looking forward to Scare City whatsoever. I scare easily these days, sometimes my partner makes me jump because I don’t hear him come into the room. But I’m going to have to suck it up and go because if he can do all of these cosy autumnal activities with me (like the cute pumpkin patch at Bates Farm) then I have to give him something.

If you still haven’t planned your cosy autumnal days out, I definitely recommend searching TikTok for ideas.

WHAT I’M WATCHING

It wouldn’t be the spooky season with without a cult classic would it? This year, I’ll be watching The Craft, which I haven’t seen since the release in 1996. I don’t remember much of the plot line apart from the levitating scene, which we tried on a friend at a sleepover and freaked ourselves out.

I’m also excited to watch Verity in the cinema, Anne Hathaway is having one helluva year and the trailer looks great. While I haven’t read the book, I did completely spoil myself on the story but looking forward to it anyways as I like all three leads.

Another book adaptation is Prime’s original miniseries Carrie. I’ve seen the trailer and it looks intriguing. I haven’t heard too much about this so fingers crossed it is as good as it looks.

WHAT I’M DOING

So tell me, what's on your spooky season list this year? Leave a comment and let me know. I’m always looking for more to add.

Leave a comment

About the author:

Hi, I’m Priyanka, the face behind Successful on Paper which is my attempt at a modern day version of Cosmo magazine, if it was written by Carrie Bradshaw. If you’ve done everything by the book and are still wondering why it isn’t enough, you might be the exact person I’m writing for and I’m so glad you found me. When I’m not cosplaying a magazine writer, I’m building a portfolio career using all the skills I learnt in my nearly decade long marketing career.

Want to go a little deeper?

💌 Sign up as a paid reader for the gritty behind-the-scenes and personal stories that I don’t share anywhere else, plus the entire archive unlocked instantly. Try it for free for 7 days

🧪 Read the Challenges and Experiments stories where I explore something new and take you along for the ride. Only available for paid subscribers

☕️ Got a burning dilemma that you don’t know who to turn to? Send it in for the Reader Dilemmas and I’ll give you my honest take, the same way a friend would

🤳🏽 If you want to see more of my life outside of Successful on Paper, you can find me on Instagram and TikTok

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💬 If you found this post interesting, feel free to like or comment so more women like you can find it

📣 Know someone who needs to read this? This post is free to read, so send it their way

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From becoming a Director within the first five years of her career and managing a multi-million pound portfolio at one of the Big Four advertising agencies, to starting a portfolio career, Priyanka has come a long way since picking up Cosmo for tips on going from desk to dinner.

When she's not working, she's usually on a plane somewhere around Europe or, this autumn, working her way round every farm shop nearby.

What do you say when someone asks what you do?

Oooh, such a good question because this is a trap! Haha.

My name is Priyanka and I am the founder of Successful on Paper where I write about how work impacts the lives of ambitious women across life, wellness and our identity.

Why is it a trap?

Because it’s the typical question everyone asks and 9/10 times we always answer with our job title rather than the other things about us that are equally, if not more interesting and important.

These days I very rarely respond with what I do for work.

What’s something people always assume about you that isn’t true?

That I’m extroverted and the life of the party when in reality I love nothing more than getting cosy with a good book or bingeing a TV show.

What part of your identity exists completely outside your work?

A fun, flirty, living-in-the-moment kinda vibe that is always up for a new adventure.

What did you think working life would be like before you started, and how wrong were you?

I thought it was so glamorous because everything I was consuming at the time told me so. Whether it was the Cosmo articles telling me how to go from desk to dinner, books like Lipstick Jungle that just showed this fabulous life in the city, or even The Devil Wears Prada.

There was this romantic notion of starting at the bottom of the ladder and climbing up, that just wasn’t true in real life, and it really hit me hard when the illusion wore off.

What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve done in the name of looking professional?

I don’t know if it’s more embarrassing or cringe, but going through the severance process without realising just to get ahead in my career.

What’s something you thought was important at 25 that feels completely irrelevant now?

Having a fancy job title for sure, especially if it showed my seniority or level of importance, was huge for me. It’s only been the last 2-3 years that I haven’t cared about my title.

As long as I make an impact, like the people I work with and get paid well, I’m happy.

What do you think we’ve collectively confused with “success”?

Being important at work.

When did you first realise you were ambitious, and has your definition of it changed?

After I met my partner in my 20s, I wanted to have a family and realised that having a 9-5 job wasn’t going to give me the flexibility and freedom I needed. So I started a couple of side hustles and started to make extra money.

I eventually decided to be childfree by choice but that drive and ambition never went away. The biggest difference is I would work myself into the ground in my 20s and 30s, which isn’t a priority right now.

Now it’s more about the impact that I can make on the team I’m managing, the wider business and, more importantly, society as a whole. I can’t work on something I don’t believe in.

What are you no longer willing to sacrifice for success?

My health and happiness! I experienced burnout in my career because I worked with clients who weren’t a good value fit, but I knew it would set me apart, and while it got me ahead, it impacted me in more ways than I’d like to admit.

What’s a workplace trend you genuinely don’t understand?

Listing legal requirements such as pensions or time off as benefits on job adverts. IMO if your benefits are legally mandated, they aren’t a benefit. Also, don’t get me started on pizza parties.

What do you think we’ll look back on in 20 years and think was completely bizarre?

How quickly we are expected to adopt AI and the negative impact on our nervous systems. The constant updates and feeling of falling behind is prime for chronic anxiety.

If you could introduce one completely unreasonable workplace rule, what would it be?

I have no idea how it would work but people have the same level of flexibility as uni students do with their part-time jobs. It would make things so much easier for everyone, especially parents and people who have dependents. At the beginning of the month you just pick the core days you can work and then flex as needed. Logistically it would be a nightmare but I think it would change people’s attitude to work for the better.

What’s your “I am absolutely not answering emails about this” hill to die on?

Negative feedback about my team. Those need to start with a conversation, not a write-up, so I can support them in the best way possible.

What’s the first thing you do after a horrible workday?

Shake the day off or cry! Usually listening to ‘Unwritten’ by Natasha Bedingfield does the trick.

If your career had a warning label, what would it say?

Highly reactive substance: will explode in uncontrolled situations (lol).

So that's me. From next month, someone else is in the hot seat. In the meantime, over to you: if your career came with a warning label, what would it say?

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Instead of setting goals that I will probably fail (lol), I’m setting the tone for September that still gives that ‘new school’ vibe without putting more on my plate by creating The Curriculum:

WHAT I’M READING

I’ll be putting down my Emily Henry until next Summer and venturing into a new genre with dark academia. I’ve chosen two books that are very similar and while reviews have been mixed online, I’m treating this as an experiment to see if I enjoy the idea of old universities, secrets and mystery:

I’ve also been saving these Substack articles as they’ve come across my feed over the last few months and can’t wait for a rainy Sunday to read in bed:

Wise & Wealthy

How to bet on yourself without telling anyone

You don’t know what you’re capable of until you actually start something…

Read more

4 months ago · 5471 likes · 133 comments · Darius Foroux

House of Becoming

If No One Is Coming to Save You, No One Is Coming to Stop You Either

One of the hardest realisations in life is that no one is coming to rescue you…

Read more

7 months ago · 6760 likes · 102 comments · Nayara Beaumont

Ben by Fax

Aliveness and where to find it

My theory of life is just to maximise the amount of time spent in quadrant four…

Read more

a year ago · 1313 likes · 35 comments · Ben James

WHAT I’M WATCHING

September is traditionally the month I start my annual The Vampire Diaries rewatch, but after barely watching any TV in August, I’m keen to cosy up and watch something new. Sticking to the academia theme, I have three options:

WHAT I’M CREATING

Now that my busy summer of European travel is over, I can finally start the three projects I have been dreaming about for the last couple of months:

Making a Seasonal House Menu

Influenced by Shelby over at Pretty in The Pines, I’ve started to pull together delicious autumn inspired recipes to start cooking as soon as the autumn equinox arrives. While this may seem like a lofty and unrealistic project to some, I love cooking and this allows me to gamify the age-old question ‘what’s for dinner tonight?’ without needing to have UberEats on speed dial

Revamping our Bedding

After five years of living in our new build apartment, it is time for us to start making the place feel like ours and this month, I’m starting with the bedding. Our current bedding situation is simple, we have a pillow each and the duvet but for autumn, I’m looking to play with seasonal colour combinations and textures. Here are some inspiration ideas from Pinterest:

Successful on Paper

Obviously. After months of back-and-forth, I’ve finally figured out what Successful on Paper will look like moving forward. ICYMI, the shift in direction covers expanding beyond just work, ambition and success and into topics across self, wellness and life. After speaking with other ambitious women this summer, I’ve recognised that these topics are just as, if not more important to being Successful on Paper and this article is just an example of some of the content coming up.

Regardless of whether you are still riding the summer coattails hard or you’re sipping a PSL whenever you get the chance, I hope you agree the September can be a reset without needing a full reinvention. You can borrowing the energy of September without turning yourself into a project again.

Now I want to know what’s on your September curriculum. What are you reading, watching, making or cooking? Leave yours in the comments, I’m always looking to be inspired by others.

Leave a comment

About the author:

Hi, I’m Priyanka, the face behind Successful on Paper which is my attempt at a modern day version of Cosmo magazine, if it was written by Carrie Bradshaw. If you’ve done everything by the book and are still wondering why it isn’t enough, you might be the exact person I’m writing for and I’m so glad you found me. When I’m not cosplaying a magazine writer, I’m building a portfolio career using all the skills I learnt in my nearly decade long marketing career.

Want to go a little deeper?

💌 Sign up as a paid reader for the gritty behind-the-scenes and personal stories that I don’t share anywhere else, plus the entire archive unlocked instantly. Try it for free for 7 days

🧪 Read the Challenges and Experiments stories where I explore something new and take you along for the ride. Only available for paid subscribers

☕️ Got a burning dilemma that you don’t know who to turn to? Send it in for the Reader Dilemmas and I’ll give you my honest take, the same way a friend would

🤳🏽 If you want to see more of my life outside of Successful on Paper, you can find me on Instagram and TikTok

Subscribe now

💬 If you found this post interesting, feel free to like or comment so more women like you can find it

📣 Know someone who needs to read this? This post is free to read, so send it their way

Share

The irony is that as a certified Integrated Nutrition Health Coach, I should know better. I understand that wellness isn’t one-dimensional and yet I still found myself believing there was a particular set of metrics I needed to hit in order to feel well.

And that’s when I realised this wasn’t really about my Oura ring. I’d somehow turned wellbeing into something I had to achieve.

Wellness culture has turned wellbeing into a scorecard

We’ve taken something inherently nuanced and turned it into a scorecard. There’s an enormous amount of information out there telling us what wellbeing is supposed to be. Hitting 120g+ protein, fibremaxxing, 10k steps, zone 2 cardio and 8 hours of sleep. Each individual recommendation might be perfectly reasonable but collectively they’ve created this impression that there is a correct way of being well.

The more metrics we have to measure ourselves against, the more opportunities there are to feel like we’re failing. Instead of experiencing wellbeing, it becomes something we have to achieve.

Ambitious women already know how to play the scorecard game

She’s used to knowing what success looks like and being rewarded for going beyond her targets, especially when it comes to her career. At work, hitting the target gives her something tangible: a promotion, a client, more money, a fancy title. She’s learned how to turn vague ambitions into measurable outcomes.

The exact skills she’s learnt at work now apply to wellbeing. She turns the metrics into goals, tracks them, optimises them and judges herself against them. And with that begins the all-or-nothing approach.

We’ve taken the achievement mindset that makes us successful in our careers and applied it to looking after ourselves, then wondered why we feel like we’ve failed.

On a high-capacity week, she does everything. But during a busy or stressful week, she can’t and instead of adjusting the standard, she decides she’s failed. She’s planning her wellbeing around a version of life that doesn’t actually exist. The same black-and-white thinking that can make you successful at work doesn’t work when you apply it to your wellbeing.

I didn’t need more data. I needed to trust myself.

Which brings me back to me obsessively checking my Oura ring every morning. After years of pushing beyond my limits, I knew that I needed to start looking after myself and I needed reassurance that I was doing okay because I didn’t trust my body anymore.

As a chronic overachiever, failing at something as important as my wellbeing hit me hard because it changed how I perceived myself. How could I nail every part of my life but fail at looking after myself? That’s exactly how I ended up trusting the algorithm more than I trusted myself.

It wasn’t until I went on a business trip where I was so busy that I didn’t have a chance to check my app every morning that the illusion started to wear off. As I got into bed that night, I looked at my stats from earlier in the day, which showed I was stressed, when in fact I felt fine.

That's the thing about optimisation culture, it doesn't just give us more things to do. It can make us outsource our own authority. It’s the belief that there is a correct score we need to hit in order to be doing wellbeing properly.

Your body isn’t a performance review

There is no perfect wellness scorecard and no single routine that you should execute every week. As your capacity changes every week, so should your approach to wellbeing so it can flex with your actual life.

Looking back now, my problem wasn’t that I wasn’t doing enough. I’d actually set a Gold Standard for myself and somehow treated it like the bare minimum. Not only that but I was using this ideal version of my life as the benchmark for my actual life. You know, the one where I’m sleeping well, eating well and have all the time and energy to do it. So it makes sense that every time real life got in the way (which of course it would), I would read that as failure.

What changed things for me was creating a Minimum Effective Dose: the smallest habits I needed to do that genuinely moved the needle. For me, that’s an early morning walk before work, a nutritious meal and an early night so I have more energy the next day.

That’s the bare minimum I can do, even on a busy week. The walk might only be 10 minutes instead of 45. The nutritious meal could be something I prepped earlier and froze or even a yummy salad from The Salad Project. And sleep, I’ll never need an excuse to get a full nine hours of shut-eye.

On a good week, I might do more but either way, once I’ve done the minimum effective dose, I’m done. Anything else is a bonus. It might sound like I’m trying to do as little as possible, I’m not. I’d rather have a super simple routine that works than a 12-step one that I fail to maintain every single time.

The Gold Standard tells you what wellbeing could look like if everything goes to plan. The Minimum Effective Dose tells you what matters when life doesn’t.

And yes, before you ask. I still wear my Oura ring. I just check in every now and then instead of first thing in the morning, because I’ve finally started to trust how my body feels rather than looking at an app.

So, what would your Minimum Effective Dose be this week? Tell me in the comments below

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About the author:

Hi, I’m Priyanka, the face behind Successful on Paper which is my attempt at a modern day version of Cosmo magazine, if it was written by Carrie Bradshaw. If you’ve done everything by the book and are still wondering why it isn’t enough, you might be the exact person I’m writing for and I’m so glad you found me. When I’m not cosplaying a magazine writer, I’m building a portfolio career using all the skills I learnt in my nearly decade long marketing career.

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What should have been a simple 20-minute walk back from the venue ended up as a two-hour journey, as one side quest led to another after leaving a club we had no idea how we got into.

The passport might be saying 40, but that night I felt like I was in my 20s again. And in the middle of it, I realised something slightly embarrassing: I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made a fun memory with my friends.

Which got me thinking: have adult friendships just become another admin task?

It seems like we are constantly catching up. Over dinner, coffee, WhatsApp or Instagram. Catching up often means finding a weekend that works for everyone, sometimes a month in advance. We have normalised this so much that I wonder if we’ve confused knowing what’s happening in someone’s life with actually being a part of it. You can know exactly what is happening in someone’s life and still not actually be living any of it with them.

We used to build friendships through shared life experiences

Being friends in your 20s happens quite naturally because you’re sharing so much of your life together. University, first jobs, terrible housemates, nights out, first heartbreaks, even being broke and trying to figure it all out. You don’t need to schedule “friendship time” because you’re living alongside your friends, and memories happen almost accidentally.

But as your 20s turn into your 30s and beyond, adulthood fragments everyone into different life paths. The conditions that naturally created those shared memories are replaced by high-pressure careers, caring for children, romantic relationships and, in some cases, completely new geographic locations.

We have become very good at staying in touch

Whether it’s double tapping on holiday pics on Instagram or sending a 4-minute voice note on WhatsApp, you can go days, even weeks without needing to physically see someone, and yet you know exactly what’s happening in their life. You’ve gone from being a character in your friend’s life to becoming an observer of it, watching from the sidelines through whatever they choose to share online.

In my case, this has been genuinely life changing, allowing my friendships to survive not only the busyness of our lives but also the distance. Yet the sobering realisation is that I’ve become very good at maintaining friendships without actually creating much new life inside them.

When did catching up become the default?

There’s nothing wrong with catching up over dinner, drinks or even a coffee. But when every interaction starts to feel like an update meeting with your line manager, friendships can start to feel like admin again. You exchange updates, discuss what’s happened since you last caught up and promise to do it again soon.

A friendship can survive on contact. I’m not convinced it can thrive on it.

Paris showed me what I was missing all along

My 40th birthday celebrations spilled over three months, and yet that night in Paris will be the memory I hold closest to my heart. Because somewhere between the dancing, the side quests and the two-hour walk home, I realised how long it had been since I’d done something with my friends that wasn’t just catching up. That night, I was actually living something with them.

Shared experiences don’t have to mean expensive trips

In my case, shared experiences do often mean hopping on a flight, as the friends I made when I lived in Barcelona have spread across Europe. But for you, that might not be the case. You don’t need everyone to fly to Paris or plan an elaborate girls’ weekend in the South of France. Your next ‘catch up’ could be something small and slightly different from the default.

A themed dinner for a film you’ve been looking forward to or even doing a progressive dinner à la Desperate Housewives, where you go to a different location for each course. Anything that creates the possibility of a future ‘remember when we...’ conversation. Because maybe we don’t need more time with our friends. Maybe we need more life with them.

Maybe next time we say, ‘we really need to catch up’, we can ask, ‘what should we do together?’

When was the last time you made a genuinely new memory with your friends?

Tell me in the comments. No one from the office is reading, I promise.

Leave a comment

About the author:

Hi, I’m Priyanka, the face behind Successful on Paper which is my attempt at a modern day version of Cosmo magazine, if it was written by Carrie Bradshaw. If you’ve done everything by the book and are still wondering why it isn’t enough, you might be the exact person I’m writing for and I’m so glad you found me. When I’m not cosplaying a magazine writer, I’m building a portfolio career using all the skills I learnt in my nearly decade long marketing career.

Want to go a little deeper?

💌 Sign up as a paid reader for the gritty behind-the-scenes and personal stories that I don’t share anywhere else, plus the entire archive unlocked instantly. Try it for free for 7 days

🧪 Read the Challenges and Experiments stories where I explore something new and take you along for the ride. Only available for paid subscribers

☕️ Got a burning dilemma that you don’t know who to turn to? Send it in for the Reader Dilemmas and I’ll give you my honest take, the same way a friend would

🤳🏽 If you want to see more of my life outside of Successful on Paper, you can find me on Instagram and TikTok

Subscribe now

💬 If you found this post interesting, feel free to like or comment so more women like you can find it

📣 Know someone who needs to read this? This post is free to read, so send it their way

Share