Lifecrafting: The Hidden Mental Load of Building the Life You Actually Want

Have you ever heard the term "lifecrafting"? It comes from a new piece of research out of UCL — and it describes something you might already be doing without knowing it: using your mental energy to deliberately think through the why behind your decisions and craft the life you want over time. In this episode of MissPerceived, Professor Leah Ruppanner digs into this fascinating concept, connects it to her own research on the mental load, and then asks the harder question: is lifecrafting actually available to everyone — or is it a privilege reserved for those with the most resources? And why are young people booing at commencement speeches?

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction — what is lifecrafting?

01:00 The UCL research: Frampton, Gould & Cox on lifecrafting and the mental load

01:45 How lifecrafting connects to Leah's "Meta Medicare" mental load type

02:18 Do you lifecraft? And has it gotten harder over time?

03:00 Why we encourage lifecrafting in young people — and why it's now backfiring

03:30 The commencement speech backlash: why students are booing

04:44 Structural forces that crush lifecrafting: inflation, AI, broken care systems

05:30 The gendered problem: women lifecraft for others, men lifecraft for themselves

06:00 Is lifecrafting only possible for the rich?

07:06 Individual agency vs. structural headwinds — a sociology superpower moment