So this is Christmas, and what have you done?
The cursed female Millennial condition....
My friend Sarah messaged our female uni Whatsapp group this morning with a definite tone of embarrassment. It read: “I won an award last night, I was absolutely mortified…” - before expressing her fears that she would be found out as a complete fraud. But despite herself, there was a reason she had texted us: “I’m trying to be a better role model to the girls [her daughters] and be appreciative for the acknowledgement and celebrate the things that go well!”
Not only did I obviously reinforce that acknowledgement (she is a brilliant social worker who works harder than anyone I know, in incredibly challenging situations - and she doesn’t acknowledge her achievements in the way I think she should), but I could also relate to her embarrassment. Like all women, I excel in self criticism (the kind of thoughts most men rarely entertain). I also have a horrible habit of finishing every year reflecting on what I HAVEN’T done. Urgh.
So, sod humble brags, and allow me to unapologetically offer up my review of 2023.
This was the year I spoke in Silicon Valley alongside Prince Harry and Adam Grant (surreal, I know); was the warm up act in the corporate suites at the Champions League Final in Istanbul; spoke at the EU Commission and the Bank of England; headlined the Barbican stage; and dared to ask Elon Musk a question at the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit. This was the year I enjoyed much collaboration with great people. I started working alongside the brilliant China expert @ZakDychtwald and the fabulous US generations expert
on a mega global project …more on this in 2024. I’ve been working for two years on a documentary on the future of education with the multi-hyphen inspo Charlotte Riley and it was a real honour to showcase our reel at the Future of Education summit at Google in Madrid. I got to work with some of the finest companies in the world on multiple occasions, such as PWC, Clifford Chance, LinkedIn and Pictet. I have travelled far and wide, (sometimes virtually) from LA to New York, from Amsterdam to Istanbul, from Perth to Saudi Arabia - generating a real sense of the global conversation that is dominating different societies, sectors and cultures right now.I’ve published my first collection of essays; produced a complete course library on the future of work (the full catalogue of which is launching in Jan 2024); recorded Season 2 of the It’s All Relative podcast; turned this into a weekly Substack covering everything from Boomer beauty to Prosecco Mums, from 1960s recruitment to TikTok Shop. I hit a million views with one solo video on TikTok, managed to ignore all the weird comments on my YouTube channel and consistently put out a monthly column in City AM, one of which went semi-viral.
I’ve also spent a huge amount of time and energy writing my new book, which I’ve plugged enough in this newsletter - so let me just say I’m really excited about it and I hope you are, too.
This was not all me…. far from it. One of the major reasons I’ve been able to be so busy is that I have a magnificent team behind the scenes especially Christina, Harriet, Katy and Emma - and Rosie, critical childcare and support when I need it.
As I type this though, it all feels very exhausting. But in fact, when I scrolled through my calendar and photos reviewing the year there were really two achievements that stood out. Firstly, the decline in travel. I spent most of 2022 in airport lounges or hotel rooms; post-pandemic it felt exciting to see the world opening up again. But in 2023, I committed to cutting my travel down by almost 50% after realising what it was doing to my health, energy levels and kids (not to mention the environment). And if I was going to travel I would commit some non-business time in the places I visited, as I did in Rome recently.
Secondly, I have (mostly) adopted the four-day week so that I am able to look after my daughter on Fridays and switch off evenings/weekends. I stress I haven’t always achieved this but I have endeavoured to make it a priority and have in fact ended the year with the surprising conclusion that I have maybe spent too much time with my children and certainly not enough time with my friends. Nonetheless, this will continue to be a work in progress in 2024 - as will a few creative surprises which I’m looking forward to sharing with you soon.
All this is to say that I’m a recovering workaholic who, like most conscientious millennial women, grew up in a culture where we were told it was an equal world….. as long as you worked hard. The truth always was, of course, women had to work much harder than men (especially women of colour) and this reality inevitably sent us into overdrive and triggered a tendency to overcompensate. In my twenties, it was my female (and not my male) friends who had most direction and focus (even if encouraged not to display too much ambition). In my thirties, it was my female friends who had to be strategic and organised if they wanted children as well as a career. Now in my forties, though, there is a growing recognition of the consequences of all this.
Our generation of women were really the first to grow up in a culture that rewarded the diligent and hard working girls as much as the pretty girls. The generation that gained as much affirmation and attention from schoolwork and exams as our mothers and grandmothers perhaps gained from being submissive, in service to others, or physically attractive. We also entered a time when the knowledge economy and the digitalised workplace made it imperative that we traded more and more on our brains than anything else. Arguably, women are better placed than men to operate in the modern workplace: Women are really good at answering emails, taking on the additional, frequently unrewarded, often unseen, administrative burdens. We’re really good at multitasking and always being always on. It is almost as if we’ve replaced the always on call of domestic duties, with the always on call of corporate expectations. In many ways, it is a sign of feminist progress but we can’t deny the cost; a culture of overachievement, overwork and over-exhaustion that prevails as well as a niggling feeling that for all this hard work, we’ve failed to arrive at a satisfying destination point.
Somewhere in all this is my New Year’s Resolution for 2024. I don’t want to work less, but better. I don’t want to loosen my grip on my ambitions, but I’d like to value and be proud of my progress. I guess it’s always about balance, and having the confidence to stop once in a while, look around and say to myself, ‘oh I achieved that, that was cool’ (rather than be mortified Sarah!). Now that is definitely the kind of modelling I’d like us millennial women to set our daughters (and indeed our sons).
Thank you for reading and engaging with my content this year, and I wish you a peaceful and relaxing Christmas and New Year.
I’ll be back here from the second week of January with a full list of what I wrongly predicted in 2023, and what I predict for 2024.
Thank you
Eliza