45. You May Not Be Behind But You Are Losing Time

As much as I love Gary Vee, this is where we come up at opposite ends, because as much as he is correct in saying you have more than enough time to be who you want to be, I disagree with the idea that at age thirty-six you are still a baby.

Once you've passed age thirty, you should have your foot on the gas and be going full speed ahead.

That isn't me saying you should have it all figured out, because newsflash, nobody ever has it all figured out. However, you should definitely know enough to make quick decisions, even if they don't take you to your destination.

Of course, this is all relative to what you want out of life. If your dream is to live what society would deem as a pretty average and ordinary life of clocking in, clocking out, one holiday a year, see a friend on the Saturday, spend Sundays with family and then the routine starts all over again, then yes, you do have plenty of time to figure it out.

For those who want to live an extraordinary life, one where you live in your dream home in the UK, with perhaps an apartment in Tribeca, driving a Rolls-Royce Cullinan, which you park in the Harrods car park for some retail therapy on an average Wednesday, before heading over to the Peninsula to check in with clients on a Zoom call who you only have to communicate with once a week leaving the rest of the week free to do whatever you want such as travelling everywhere between Tokyo, Switzerland and Rio all because you spent a few years building systems that run on autopilot…that needs your attention, now!

Why would you wait? Why would you slow down?

I think it may have happened somewhere between the rise of wellness culture and the conversation around burnout when the idea of 'you're not behind' became a method of self-soothing. And who knows, perhaps my disagreement with that notion makes this article a toxic one.

Yet, we started treating the idea of speeding towards our dream life as a problem, as if moving aggressively to what we want is a symptom of disaster, but what is the alternative?

In this article, we'll explore why speed, real speed, the kind that comes from knowing what to do next rather than panicking, is still one of the best advantages ambitious women have, and why the shift toward accepting delay has cost us more than we want to admit