In a post-boss babe world: too tired to keep grinding, too hungry to stop dreaming
If you are of a certain vintage, you will remember boss babe. Boss babe was a self-made, usually white, woman who was killing it. Her business or career took off because she leaned in, started hacking all the productivity, and took out all gratuitous exclamation marks from her emails. Her work ethic was born from the need to survive. There was little work to go around following the financial crisis of 2008, so she doubled down on what she could control: her ability to grind. Given that she was good looking, thin, and able-bodied, she was taken at least somewhat seriously and got what she wanted. Her politics were corporate feminist—she did it and you can too! All you need is the right mindset!
Boss babe’s star fell as we became burned out babes during the pandemic. Eight hours a day of Zoom calls is a strange existence to have. Burned out babes realized that work is not the only source of fulfillment to us.
That collective burnout has turned into a much needed examination of our relationship to work. We would work hard on our own thing, if the thing was meaningful to us, if the thing would make the world a better place, if the thing respected our boundaries and paid well. But aligned work is hard to come by. So we are quiet-quitters and soft-lifers. We did an Ali Wong and leaned out and lied down. We know we have to participate in capitalism to survive, but we try to let it exploit us as little as possible. A lot of former grinders and hustlers had children and say that they just want to hang out with them now. Many also are nursing significant health problems that emerged from neglect and abuse of our souls and bodies.
However, as we are in the midst of a paradigm shift but have not completely landed anywhere just yet, boss babe still lingers. She is complex—a symbol of what is possible but not easily achieved, an ideal, an inspiration, a cudgel. We still pine for some version of success that is self-made and authentic to who we are, and judge ourselves for not being as disciplined, hardworking, or focused as her. Some of my clients are stuck between the guilt of realizing that they just don’t want to work all the time anymore and the yearning to realize their dreams, which demand a lot of hard work.
For anyone who struggling to navigate the aftermath of boss babe or any deeply internalized work ethic tied to survival and self-worth (which is to say all of us), yet haven't totally gotten on board with leaning out and lying down, I want to offer this:
Work can still be cool and important. There are so many problems that need our creativity and focus. And you can work on those things without gassing up your savior complex. You’re not going to save the world, but rather do your part in solutions based in collective action.
It’s okay to identify with your work. There are people in this world who have no attachment to their jobs, which is fine. But I suspect most of my readers are the earnest and proud folks who find meaning through work, and that’s also fine. Also be sure to have other things in your happiness portfolio. Work will not always go well or make your happy—and it will never, ever love you back—so have other sources of joy, identity, and meaning.
If your drive to work is a left over coping mechanism or the relic of an old survival strategy, your homework is to sit in the void and establish a sense of safety.
If you’re guilting yourself for not working all the time, start measuring your work through the value you create instead of the number of hours your butt is at your desk. It’s value that will drive your business or career further. You will find that you cannot create value for 40 hours a week. People only really have a few hours of magic in them a day, so make them good, and if you can, spend the rest of your time eating yummy things, giving care to yourself and others, and hanging out with cool people.
You have to simultaneously create balance and be okay being imbalanced. Finding balance is hard, but made easier with your personal resolve to show up to the things that matter to you with your presence, time, and energy. And whatever balance you achieve will inevitably tumble away with the demands of life, but you know this will only be a temporary phase as you figure out how to rebalance. Imbalance isn’t a bad thing, as we are all capable of doing hard things, but we start to wear ourselves down if we stay there.
The sort of success that boss babe embodies is never really self-made. It takes a lot of privilege and help, both of which get left out of the boss babe narrative. Make sure you’re leveraging your privileges and asking for the help you need.
If you want to work together on any of this, please reach out. About me: immigrant, Stanford grad, ex-Silicon Valley, and happy expat living in Berlin. I help marginalized folks define and create their own success.
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