A few weeks back a man posted a thread on Twitter outlining how, in the past 10 years, he’s managed to be appointed a chief executive and earn a PhD while dealing with the arrival of six kids. The trick, he revealed, was having the “Weekly Review Habit” where he keeps an eye on his “goal and vision alignment”. Cool.
Within hours he had received thousands of replies, many of them pointing out what he had neglected to mention: that he had the time to align his businessy chakras because he has a full-time stay-at-home wife; who presumably has been pregnant for most of the past decade.
The man took to Twitter again to try to repair the damage. He apologised and trotted out a few complimentary platitudes about his partner. (She’s the rock of the family, etc.) But it was already far too late. The thread was taken down. He deleted his Twitter account.
It was an interesting and all-too-rare clash between the self-regarding productivity guru industry and what happens in the real world: because it illuminated how in most western societies, we have a deeply impoverished idea of how to define success.
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Success largely takes place within the business world, and is limited to a number of signifiers: qualifications (PhD), a position of status within a company (chief executive), both of which imply but never explicitly state – that would be crass – the only meaningful way to rate success: money. If you have a fancy job title, you’re well paid. But because of the myth-making “successful” people are allowed to indulge in, they can convince themselves that it’s not about the money at all. Only people with money will tell you that it’s not about the money.
Part of the success myth also seems to involve staunch self-reliance. They made it with hard work and creativity, passion, effective habits, blah blah blah. What’s never acknowledged is luck. Being in the right place at the right time. What’s never acknowledged is the help they received. The story of one person’s success is, in truth, the story of many people giving aid along the way. Neil Armstrong was the first person on the Moon, but thousands of people put him there.
During lockdown, we realised the value of the people who work in the warehouses of supermarkets, or at tills, or who delivered takeaway food. They were the ones who kept things ticking over
In the case of Twitter Thread Man, one of those people who helped hugely in putting him on his career moon is his wife. But she didn’t even rate a mention when it came to outlining his magic success recipe. Leaving aside the narcissism of that omission, it demonstrates the insidious idea that running a household or shouldering the burden of the welfare and development of other human beings aren’t generally regarded as success-oriented activities. They are ancillary services. There’s no money in it.
Yet there was a brief period during the first lockdown when perhaps we started to realise that the traditional ideas about success – about which jobs should be regarded as important – were all wrong. Obviously, nurses were overworked and underpaid. Parents suddenly realised the value of teachers. Because teaching is really difficult. We realised too the value of the people who work in the warehouses of supermarkets, or at tills, or who delivered takeaway food. They were the ones who kept things ticking over. But just like Twitter Thread Man’s unmentioned wife, we never gave them any credit; financial or otherwise.
Herself is prone to saying that everyone should have a housewife; not just to carry out all the cooking and cleaning, but to remember stuff, to make arrangements that others in the household might not think of. She recently had a few days off from her day job, time she mostly spent making complicated preparations for dog and child care so she and I could go away for a few days.
It was the same week that this thread appeared on Twitter. Which she showed me and suggested I write a column about. She’s the rock of the family.