Call yourself titles
josem.co
josem.co
I had a phase where me and my friends all thought of ourselves as writers and artists. At the extreme, there was a buddy of mine who would answer simple questions by prefacing with, “Well, as a writer, I tend to X.” And X would be many secondary tendencies you might associate with writers: look at the world differently; ask annoying questions at parties; overanalyze pop culture; drink too much caffeine; procrastinate; joke about procrastinating, etc.
The problem is that most of us didn’t do the only X that matters, which is to actually write. And I think we knew this on a subconscious level, and it was why we were so angsty all the time. (Being angsty is another X that writers are supposed to do, so it was a vicious cycle.)
Writers who don’t write seems like a niche phenomenon of a narrow and privileged set, but I feel like I see this elsewhere. I’m an engineer these days, and I occasionally come across junior folks who have a similar thing going on. Especially in bigger orgs, you can see people struggle for years with this: there’s something about the job they like (perhaps what the job seems to say about them as individuals), but they have a hard time with the actual moment-to-moment work. I generally think it’s not my place to judge people, let alone gatekeep or call people out on it, but I sometimes feel that I did those folks a disservice by not telling them: hey maybe this just isn’t for you.
Nah, I think this is super common across titles that people romanticize, mainly in the arts, since there's no real barrier to entry. (Unlike, say, claiming "I'm a lawyer" or "I'm a doctor.") I've seen tons of people say "I want to be/I am a musician" and then spend a bunch of time watching YouTube tutorials, hanging out in musician/producer Discords, etc. and not actually, you know, making music.
For a lot of people, "I want to do X" actually means "I want to have done X," and then reap all of the benefits that comes from that: the sense of accomplishment, the fame, social media follows, whatever.
These days I'm usually very suspicious of people who make big public pronouncements about how they're starting X task, whether that's going to the gym, learning guitar, building something in Rust, or whatever. If you wanted to do the activity, you'd just do it without all the pomp and circumstance. Every time I've seen a friend on social media announce they're going to start a grand new adventure, they fizzle out after a month or two. The ones who get shit done will show up to a party looking amazing and casually mention, "Yeah, I've been hitting the gym."
Very strange that right after the arts are two titles that are highly romanticized. Back in the days I owned my own business and had a sizeable medical client base, I cannot tell you how many doctors had to buy a BMW because their other doctor friend has a BMW and you're not one of the "doctor club" unless you own one.
I come from a family heavily involved in the criminal justice system, and the lawyers, police, and judges I know have the same problems with falling in common tropes.
And don't even get me started on engineers. Give them 10 minutes and we'll tell everyone how liberal arts are the end of the world ;)
I've seen it as well.
Also, medical professionals tend to only be around other medical professionals for most of their 20's and early 30's, which really helps create a kind of insular and closed culture. Having to match for residencies and fellowship doesn't help (you'll get shipped somewhere you know nobody and be forced to work long hours and your only support network will be colleagues). It's not that dissimilar to how a cult operates when you really think about it.
It's no surprise they come to identify strongly with the tittle and will do things to fit in with the "club".
New York investment bankers and stockbrokers. I don't think any of us want to know all the American Psycho shit that goes down in those professions, but I do know of one anecdote (which I can't cite but may have gotten from Hackernews years ago): Apparently, the thing to do if you're in high finance in NYC is to live in a posh apartment in Manhattan. You could live in a (relatively, this is NYC) cheap apartment in Brooklyn or the Bronx and save a bit of money to put towards retirement or whatever -- but you will be looked down on by your peers and passed over for promotions. The higher-ups want to see you "hungry", as they think it makes you more loyal and driven.
I co-authored a book with someone, which ended up meaning I did 90% of the work and they could be prodded with considerable effort to contribute in a few areas and give feedback. But they were thrilled to have been an author and hand out copies etc.
No real harm from my angle. I have no issue with them being a co-author. Doesn't hurt me. But a perfect example of this principle. A former boss at a small company was a somewhat similar example. They liked being a $X. They came to not like doing the work of being a $X.
I think in many cases it's more like "I want to want to do X." They think it would be great to be flowing with words, musical ideas, technical ideas, ready and motivated to create, but presently they are not.
What's interesting to me is that sometimes even 'doers' feel this way. There are days when I absolutely love practicing and training and there are days when I wish I could reap the rewards without putting in the work.
If you actually want to get it done, don't talk about it, just do it.
Whilst "He writes software and poetry" doesn't? Or to a lesser extent?
Personally I say I build software, not that I'm a software eng :-). (And that I practice the guitar ... for real)
F.ex. if they've classified you as a software engineer, then ... I'm thinking it doesn't occur to most people that you might be a writer and musician too hmm
What I don’t think will ever really work, though, is getting introduced as a software engineer and being annoyed at people for it. Or, even speaking up, “that’s something I do, it doesn’t define me”.
It’s pretty hard to convince people of stuff by telling them. It’s just about impossible to convince someone your are not contained by an identity when it seems to have such a tight hold on you.
"What do you like doing when you aren't working" I say sometimes to others (what might you say to others?)
I’m an awful interviewer, mostly in the sense that I just don’t do it. I certainly don’t give people the warm fuzzies by asking them questions that seem like I’m taking an interest in them.
What I do have going for me is a willingness and ability to bounce around between many different planes of reality and meet people on whichever one they choose (or that I can lure them too). The boundary dissolving is first internal, being willing to try many different things, be many different people. And never cast those old selves aside. Even if you throw out the tennis racket, don’t throw out the tennis player.
And when you talk with someone, feel around, see where you can meet them. And then meet them there, without preamble or apology. If you think they’re interested in tennis, just go into a conversation about it with the confidence of already being at a match together. This feeling out is also rooted in the present moment. I’ve probably asked someone “where did you go to school?” around three times in my life just to try it out, and was bored with myself before I finished the sentence. Can’t imagine asking “didja play any sports?”. But a game on the TV in the bar that someone is checking for the score is enough to see if we can meet there. Often we don’t, and that’s fine, too.
Like write software, take photo’s and make films.
The difference between this and what the article's talking about is that you never wrote, and you never made art. If you had, you could've credibly called yourself those things while you were doing them, even if sporadically and/or badly.
> "We become a runner when we start running a few days a week."
The article makes the point that it's okay to think of yourself as a [title] once you start doing the things a [title] does. From that POV it's not encouraging delusion, just generosity toward oneself.
The advice seems to be "as long as you're writing, you're allowed to call yourself a writer. don't have an ethereal unachievable standard that needs to be reached first before you're allowed to use the title."
If you're not writing, you're not a writer, thus if you want to be a writer you need to write and just doing it once doesn't mean anything, you have to keep doing it, because if I once ate a vegan meal, it wouldn't mean that I'm vegan.
You are what you do. While you're writing you're a writer. The more time you spend writing the more of a writer you'll be.
If you want to call yourself a writer, you have to write.
That's why I always say, judge people not for their words, but for their actions.
I agree. Cemented in my mind is the use of the word "activist" by all corners of our political spectrum, and especially among techies in the last decade. At present when I hear the word I have to walk myself through dropping all the gut-reaction feelings attached to that word because of the behavior of people who didn't know what they were doing and acted very poorly. This is an isolated example of one, but I'm sure it translates across subjects.
Like, if you studied math or CS, or studied to become a MD... Maybe you're prone to take yourself to seriously because of it. There is and will always be a feedback loop in society because we are all humans and always seeking attachment (in the psychological sense) to other humans.
I have self-worth because I do not try to justify it relative to something I do not control, like a Ivy Leage graduating class, FAANG, or whatever, but instead of accepting myself as I am.
Thoughts?
"Keep your identity small", http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
I wonder if you've read it
Unfortunately, this is a losing strategy in corporate environments and you will be outcompeted and replaced by relatively average and territorial status seekers.
No I still don’t play the game, yes I wish I could turn off the “ick” and just do it.
This is not universally true. I would agree that overall things trend in this direction over time, but as long as a company is still growing and has the opportunity to win in the market, then collaborative doers can still beat talkers. Of course, politics are still the inevitable consequence of trying to coordinate thousands of people to figure out and execute on the right priorities without any individuals having anything close a full picture. If you're more of a heads-down thinker and builder then it's true you will be at a disadvantage against the social climbers—in the short run. But over time, provided the right feedback channels, the doers reputation tends to increase, while the talkers reputation decreases. Bullshit detection is 90% of the job of upper management in large corporations, it's a tough job and rare skillset, but when done right it results in an environment where good work and honest collaboration is possible and celebrated.
It’s incredibly hard to detect bullshit if you have no clue what the job entails.
I’m similar but I would say that being curious is the fundamental trait, and competence usually falls out as a side effect. It’s always fun to be around curious people, sometimes especially if they’re not experienced.
Part of the path of acceptance is also accepting what your roles are in your life. These roles aren't about what is projected onto you, which is where a lot of the internal strife stems from, but instead how you are trying to see yourself.
The blog mentions titles like "writer", and it's a great example of a role. You should absolutely refer to yourself as a writer if that's what you're doing. If you're in marine biology you should absolutely call yourself a marine biologist. You aren't status seeking here, you are recognizing part of your identity.
The important bit of that is "part of your identity". You aren't "just" a writer or a marine biologist, so what other roles are core to your identity? Maybe you're a caretaker too. Again these are all parts of your identity and recognizing them isn't a bad thing, actually the bad part stems from the miscommunication.
Often when people are meeting each other, they will single out the larger part of their identity, for simplicity sake. We misinterpret this and believe that they are just that one role and project all past ideas of their role onto them. Jake is no longer Jake the writer and other mysterious roles I don't know about yet - he just becomes Jake the writer. Remedying this miscommunication involves recognizing how all identities are formed of parts, not a lack of identity, so we can then start viewing others as the complex beings they are.
So what roles do you play in life?
I mean, it was enough for me to spend a few months in 2020 on a contract where I had easily 4x my previous rate to forever shift my self-percepction.
I've become a temporarily embarrassed high-rate contractor and I can't help it. Kinda shallow, but it's interesting that this feeling persists after three years.
It wasn't even a high rate by SV standards - just really high for my corner of the world.
Some of the greatest achievers in human history like great scientists or artists were very modest. Some were the opposite and liked to brag.
It does not matter much if you brag or not, if you have titles or not. What matters is if you achieved something important.
There's a great half mad Russian mathematician who didn't take much part in society, lived with his mother and worked in complete secrecy. When the results of his works transpired somehow, he was awarded the Fields medal, the highest distinction a mathematician can get. That distinction came with a large amount of money. He rejected both the medal and the money even if he was poor. He achieved results and that is what matters.
Depicting yourself something you are not is grave. It means that you are either insane or you want to deceive others.
Grigori Perelman, my personal hero:
> A reporter who had called him was told: "You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms."
Anyway, guy is a lunatic from a legal or social perspective and a genius otherwise.
Why can't people and the media respect his privacy?
He doesn't have a signed contract with society to produce math.
Personally I have an aggressively bad brain for lingo, so I try to get people to describe what they want in little words. If actually describing what they want in easily understood terms just happens to clarify things, well that’s a nice side effect!
It leaves room for both motivation and humility.
I never put it into practice I just find the idea interesting :)
> Avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overall proportion of who you are. Keep your identity small. The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you.
(I think a piece of that is a PG quote iirc)
If one is fine with that, then yes, call oneself a pianist I guess?
Personally I'd say I was "learning to play the piano".
Or what about someone says: "I'm a Software Engineer" ... but then can't write the first characters in a FizzBuzz solution and wonders "what's a for loop?"
For example, with the piano, you might be able to say that you can consistently play a certain song from memory with occasional mistakes, while having trouble learning new pieces quickly (if you might have difficulty sight-reading).
For a language, you might be able to say that you can have a half-hour conversation without using English/your native language without too much difficulty, but you can't speak about technical or philosophical topics, and you might still be working on understanding how to use certain grammatical tenses.
Then, there's less reason for doubt from other people or yourself, as your skill level is communicated more objectively and less subjectively. The framing also gives you a nice clear path for what to work on next (for example, learning how to talk about a specific topic and understand a new grammar tense).
I recall seeing someone (I think in NY) trying to revolutionize math education by making certain that the concepts were easily graspable enough that students couldn’t not get it. His idea was that if someone labels themselves as “not a math person”, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
The labels we use to describe ourselves and others are very powerful and can impact our mindset and actions. We should be careful to use that to our advantage.
If such a label becomes self fulfilling
(Also doesn't risk sounding arrogant like "I am a ..." when one just got started)
“I don’t believe in titles, I believe in work.” — Virgil Abloh
Also! Paul Graham on keeping your identity small: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
Call yourself one internally. Don’t be public about it until someone else acknowledges it. You can convince yourself and that’s all that is required to have the OP effects outlined in the article. Just don’t go to the gym and tell the front desk you’re there to “train” like you compete in athletic competitions (origin of athlete) when you brought in your 40lb weight in your stomach.
I highly encourage anyone to try things. If you want to become an athlete or an artist. Call yourself one inside, internally, or write it down, post it’s or journals, just don’t go around in public with this “emperor’s new clothes” mentality.
The sooner I called myself a scientist in life, the better.
Calling yourself a surgeon without all the medical degrees and certifications is ... alarming.
Calling yourself a scientist -- while it does imply a stereotype academic type in a white coat -- to me means you have an inquiring mind about the natural and physical world, that you observe carefully, that you experimentally test things, and you are prepared to change your mind based on evidence. Anyone can be a scientist: even a 10 year old.
It impressed me that on radio station Triple J in Australia, every Thursday they'd do a phone-in show with Dr Karl Kruszelnicki who would answer science questions. He would dignify everyone with a question by calling them "Doctor" in a kind of tounge-in-cheek way, and would give a prize if they'd done an experiment to test aspects about the question they had, and would use the phrase "you've done an experiment".
He really did a lot to bring the idea that science was not some far-away esoteric thing you need a degree for, but something that was in every-day life and anyone could do.
If you feel compelled to label yourself as X, then you're probably not actually X.
"If it were illegal to be a <DevOps Engineer> and you were on trial, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"
Yes, they are outward and superficial, but also, they are the sorts of things which lead to having faith, hope, and love.
Don't tell me that someone who does nothing else but attend a particular church service every week for 30 years will not be changed in some noticeable way.
That said, it’s not easy to see why he’s “right” if you’re operating under external validation. Getting out of that mindset is, imo, the most difficult challenge. I’ve had friends who have struggled for many years and want to change, yet are sucked back in. It doesn’t exactly help that society is oriented towards that axis.
Saying “don’t do that” isn’t very effective. Instead, I think it’s better to express those ideas more clearly and see where it takes you. For instance, “I want to be recognized by my peers because…” and then follow along until you realize that you just want to be accepted and belong, and that’s ok. But then you’ll find it substantially easier and “truer” to find good people, instead of impressing a bunch of strangers who don’t care about you even if you’re cool. And then focus on how you’re gonna spend the rest of your time without worrying about other peoples judgments.
It helps you be consistent.
For example, at some point I went from "guy who happens to do yoga" to a "yoga guy." At that time, what would I do when landing in a new city? Look up a yoga studio. Because I was a yoga guy. A guy who happens to do yoga wouldn't necessarily do it.
It's not about asserting who you are to others it's about facilitating your own decisions to be what you want. "a guy who's trying to be more active" may still eat a whole cheesecake. An "athlete" would not.
The same way, if we don't, then we won't reach our full potential. This is why the concept of depression is so frightening, because once you stop believing in yourself, your performance goes down, which stars a vicious cycle that makes you think of yourself negatively.
I did have one fun flight though, during which I did not feel the need to immediately correct them.
Humans use labels all the time. A title is just a label with some shared cultural meaning. Anything else you load onto it is arbitrary, and withholding those labels until that arbitrary threshold is met is just as silly as assigning the title when nothing is done whatsoever.
I don’t really like this.
Be well and please, try to forgive yourself a little bit.
Either you actually want to become an athlete, or become an artist, or become a pianist, and you need to accept the mediocrity of beginners and the effort and commitment it takes to achieve something ; which you might fail at.
Or you just want to exercise, draw, or play the piano, but don't want your life to revolve around that, not put too much energy into it, and accept to remain at an enthusiast level, and never become an athlete, artist or pianist, and there's nothing wrong with that. And maybe at some point you'll realize you really enjoy one of these and become athlete artist or pianist. Otherwise you can embrace your mediocrity and enjoy doing things for the sake of doing things rather than trying to become something.
It feels like calling yourself early on sets the unrealistic expectation that you need to live up to that title, and become dissatisfied because athletes run everyday, artist draw everyday, pianist play everyday, and since you're one you ought to, but you don't want to so you don't like it, and what you should do for fun becomes a chore.
Now maybe that's a framing because you really want to become something, and that's what carries you through pain, but I don't know how well that's gonna work when overdoing something will inevitably drive you away from it
At the same time, it feels a little bit like the secret or "manifesting."
I suspect the world is full of "traditional" or otherwise "unscientific" beliefs where the supposed mechanism ("manifesting", "chi", etc) is objectively hot garbage but there's nevertheless a grain of truth in the inputs and outputs. The ones that persist today are the ones that are really hard to study. The relevant field here would be psychology; heard of this thing called "the replication crisis"? So I don't expect to get conclusive answers about what degree of truth or nonsense is in most of these ideas any time soon. As usual there are no easy answers, not even "science" or "common sense".
They tend to be emotionally polarizing to boot, so probably not even unlimited money would solve them.
Similarly, when working with a trainer, I don’t let them dictate everything, even when it comes to strength programming. I choose what works for me.
E.g.: The fact that I enjoy photography and want to occasionally take out photo equipment doesn't make me photographer. The fact that I enjoy making contribution to OpenStreetMaps doesn't make me a cartographer.
In the end, I can enjoy hobbies "sparsely" and I don't have to go all in nor frame myself in the role. Thus, article's advice would contribute to hobby burnout, thus - I don't need to be X to enjoy Y.
With post topic: I don't need to be an athlete in order to enjoy going to a gym, I find being amateur works better most of the time (as sometimes it's always good to embrace the title).
Kylee starts falling off the wagon with regards to her diet, and Amy intervenes, telling her: "You're a bodybuilder now." It's an attempt to get her into the mindset if "I'm a bodybuilder, therefore I do bodybuilder things like stick to my diet during contest prep".
Being a writer is such a vague thing and could mean anything. It's an open ended title, and the usual follow-up question is 'What do you write about?'.
You have the freedom to inject anything into the answer. Spout politics, complain and rant about current events, the person du jour etc
And to some degree that's true, we're all experiencing similar emotional gamuts despite the titles we wear.
The world is plenty full of people who do titled work without a title. The difference is less about the work being done, and more about the social grouping.
At least prefix your title with "amateur" or just call yourself an enthusiast. Otherwise you're just lying to yourself and others, and that's how impostor syndrome starts.
I like math. I read math textbooks on the weekends sometimes. I would never call myself a mathematician.
> You don’t need to do something for years, or even professionally, to call yourself by your new title.
Wow. Okay.
But please don't call youself a Senior Software Engineer if you've just started programming.
I think that's crossing the line into Dunning-Kruger territory.
Mental hospitals are full of people calling themselves titles.
The examples that tend to come up here are things like Lawyer or Medical Doctor. And yet, every person in those fields is still subjectively different from the next in terms of knowledge and qualification.
I’m not claiming nothing objective is being used; I’m claiming that the title application is subjective, because humans determine when the title is applicable - not some external source.
Have found your insights to be true for me.
I do not know yet, if that helps. But it should stop me from doing nonsense.
If you act as someone's personal servant (for example, are owned by a cat), then you're Batman.
I suspect that it is effective, because of its lasting power.
It doesn't really do much for me, but that has more to do with my personality, than the effectiveness of the technique. I tend to be a fairly hard-core realist, and can't really fool myself.
I am, however, quite used to powering through the "Jon Snow Trough"[0], [1]. That's pretty important, in developing a long-term skill.
[0] https://petapixel.com/2014/10/13/dunning-kruger-peak-photogr...
[1] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...
Is a beginner runner still a runner? Is it necessary to add a qualifier? When do they become a runner if they aren't one already? Why is there resistance to labeling a beginning runner as a runner?
I think there is a vast difference between someone asking what I do for a living and replying "I'm a runner" versus someone asking "do you work out?" and replying "yeah, I like to run."
However, the difference in the mindset of the person replying to the workout question: "I'm a runner" versus "I like to run" is pretty profound, especially in the beginning stages of becoming a runner.
This effect has been explored.
> Motivating voter turnout by invoking the self
>Abstract: Three randomized experiments found that subtle linguistic cues have the power to increase voting and related behavior. The phrasing of survey items was varied to frame voting either as the enactment of a personal identity (e.g., “being a voter”) or as simply a behavior (e.g., “voting”). As predicted, the personal-identity phrasing significantly increased interest in registering to vote (experiment 1) and, in two statewide elections in the United States, voter turnout as assessed by official state records (experiments 2 and 3). These results provide evidence that people are continually managing their self-concepts, seeking to assume or affirm valued personal identities. The results further demonstrate how this process can be channeled to motivate important socially relevant behavior.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1103343108
Additionally, affirmations (which what this particular intervention actually is) have been shown to be beneficial in many areas. This is a nice overview:
>The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention
>Abstract: People have a basic need to maintain the integrity of the self, a global sense of personal adequacy. Events that threaten self-integrity arouse stress and self-protective defenses that can hamper performance and growth. However, an intervention known as self-affirmation can curb these negative outcomes. Self-affirmation interventions typically have people write about core personal values. The interventions bring about a more expansive view of the self and its resources, weakening the implications of a threat for personal integrity. Timely affirmations have been shown to improve education, health, and relationship outcomes, with benefits that sometimes persist for months and years. Like other interventions and experiences, self-affirmations can have lasting benefits when they touch off a cycle of adaptive potential, a positive feedback loop between the self-system and the social system that propagates adaptive outcomes over time. The present review highlights both connections with other disciplines and lessons for a social psychological understanding of intervention and change.
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-psych...
“rich, handsome, successful”
Done.
AKA lying. I have total respect for someone who wants to improve their life, but you dont need to lie, just be honest with yourself and others. the author even admits to it:
> We become a runner when we start running a few days a week. An amateur one, a beginner in the world of runners, but a runner nonetheless.
so you are not a "runner". you are an "amateur runner". and thats totally fine! I personally am an amateur runner. I dont go around telling people I am a runner, because at the end of the day, all I would be doing is lying to others, and lying to myself. Its OK not to be perfect at something from the beginning. just stick to it and try hard. when you really feel you've stepped up to that next level, then sure, go ahead and remove the "amateur".
Who would object to using this built-in capability for positive purposes for once? Baffling.
Remember, it's not a lie if you believe it
poes law in full force here
I was able to run two Ragnar relay races, even though I’m a 275lb dude, partially due to this idea. I don’t run anymore because of continued injury but I became a runner and did so for over a year. It likely helped my fitness tremendously. And, I wasn’t lying to myself or anyone else. I was running three times a week and competed in two races. I was learning and designing my own interval running patterns. I was a runner.