Diversified Portfolio of Identities

We would never put all of our money into one stock. But many of us put the entirety of our identity into one area: Work. [Don’t Work: Part 07]

Series: Don’t Work | Part: 7 of 10 | Reading Time: 5 mins
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This is part of the series, Don’t Work, exploring our identity and meaning around work.

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I. Concentration Risk

We would never put all of our money into one stock. But many of us put the entirety of our identity into one area: Work.

No wonder, that when that identity is disrupted, we become lost.

“If your existence is all about work, and work goes to shit, then life goes to shit too.” David Heinemeier Hansson, from Diversify your life

And that disruption is guaranteed at some point. It can come in big, obvious ways:

• we lose or quit our job

• we leave a company we feel part of

• we take a break or transition our career

• we get passed over on a promotion

But the agitation can also happen in many more subtle ways:

• we have a bad quarter

• a bureaucrat introduces a new metric that changes how our work is valued

• a new process adds another distraction away from the work we know matters

• we stop doing the work we love to take on that bigger management role

• we receive negative feedback from someone in charge

• our skills lose relevance as we age

• we lose our drive and wonder if it’ll ever come back

What will we do when our identity shows holes?

For many of us, the plight is existential. With so much of our identity at stake, the very question of who we are is in jeopardy. Our identity, like our life, turns out to be mortal.

So what do we do? We double down, magnifying our focus even further. As the Pulitzer-Prize winning anthropologist Ernest Becker wrote, “The prospect of death, wonderfully concentrates the mind.”¹

We’ll push ourselves harder, in order to raise the bar on that identity. While, at the same time, reinforcing and defending our current position. Again, Becker:

“This despair he avoids by building defenses; and these defenses allow him to feel a basic sense of self-worth, of meaningfulness, of power. They allow him to feel that he controls his life and his death, that he really does live and act as a willful and free individual, that he has a unique and self-fashioned identity, that he is somebody.”

That identity, at first slowly, then all at once, comes to consume our daily lives. It comes to overwhelm all other aspects, which become crowded out by the obese and expanding mass of work.

What fragile beings we are, with so much stock in one thing. We monitor our identity intensely like the daily ups-and-downs of the market. Everyday needing the value to go up, never able to withstand even the slightest, momentary dip.

Because without this identity, who are we?

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II. Diversification

“It’s [...] smart to diversify your identity, to invest your self-esteem and what you care about into a variety of different areas—business, social life, relationships, philanthropy, athletics—so that when one goes south, you’re not completely screwed over and emotionally wrecked.” Tim Ferriss

There is an answer. Or at least an option.

But it’s not one that our culture (or our leaders) will endorse. In fact, it betrays many of the virtues of focus, single-mindedness, and forever-striving that we have been trained for.

It’s an option we, ironically, already know pretty well: diversification.

When it comes to our money, it’s a nearly impeachable strategy. But it’s nowhere to be found in our personal lives.

• With our money, we seek to smooth the ups-and-downs of the market through diversification. With our identity, we look at our entire selves, then push all our chips into one narrow slice.

• With our money, we develop an asset allocation strategy, keeping an appropriate balance across stocks, bonds, alternative assets, etc., evolving it as we age. With our identity, we haphazardly focus on the most obvious thing in front of us right now.

• With our money, we continually rebalance our assets as the market changes and our needs change. With our identity, we assume it’s fixed across time, disregarding the natural evolution of life.

We can take a new approach. One that isn’t just about avoiding risk,² but about having a rich, multi-dimensional life.³ One that considers our identity not as just this-or-that, but a portfolio of things - able to fuel different sources of motivation through the natural evolution of our life.⁴

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III. Example in Action

So how would we implement a diversified portfolio of identities?

It’s easier to explain with an example. Here’s a shot at how my identity portfolio has evolved and may evolve going forward:

For another example or way of looking at this, check out the Octopus framework from

Dave Kang

.

Note the following: 

• Your domains may be different.

• Your definitions may be different (e.g. what is your work?).

• Your weighting will be different.

• % identity does not = % time spent.

• You may combine domains into one (e.g. Work + Creativity + Community).

This is not meant to be a rigid, calculated framework, where you plug-and-play your identity. There is no “One Model” to rule them all. Nor is there a prescriptive: “in your 20s, follow this formula.” So I hate to make this too simple or static for you. 

And you, astute reader, may notice the contradiction in my own story that the very concentration in my early career is exactly what gave me the opportunity to diversify it later. It’s true!

Or perhaps, like me, you’ll recognize that concentration was useful before, but now life requires something different. That this advice (like any advice by the way), is context dependent.

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IV. Implementation

If you’re onboard, here’s some practical advice about how to make this happen:

1. Assess Your Allocation

• Identify your current allocation - Where are you today? Which areas of your life feel over- or under-represented? Just as you’d review your financial portfolio, ask yourself what domains might need more attention. 

• Identify your full Identity Stack - Across the entirety of your life, what is important to you? What may be important to you in the future? Recognize that your identities will shift over time.

2. Rebalance Continuously

• Pay attention - Maybe you've just had a child - raise the Family allocation. Or perhaps your health has taken a back seat - time to rebalance accordingly. Accept the fluidity of your identity.

• Experiment - Test new identities. What if you became not just a professional, but also an artist, athlete, or community leader?

3. Reinforce Your Path

• Never waste a crisis - certain pivot points, like Midlife, offer the perfect opportunity. For example, after years of following a singular path, you now have the opportunity to create a life of your own.

• Diversify your tribe (credit:

  Michael Karnjanaprakorn
  ):⁵ it helps to have a tribe that understands and supports the different aspects of your evolving identity. Surround yourself with people who can guide you in different areas. You may have to look outside your primary identity sphere.

Maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe I’m on the right track but missing a deeper point: that there’s another Zen-like level where we absolve ourselves of any identity.

Or maybe you want your work identity to be everything. You are comfortable sacrificing yourself at the altar of ambition. Okay, that’s cool. Just maybe don’t have kids. And maybe don’t screw it up for the rest of us.

So here’s the choice: stay narrowly defined, risking collapse when life inevitably throws change your way, or embrace a diversified portfolio of identities that can carry you through the expected ups and downs. By recognizing this, we can start living a richer, multi-dimensional life, unshackled by the weight of one all-consuming role.

Next up, I’ll talk about how I’ve tried to reconnect with something tangible, after achieving a “scaled” level of success.

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This is part 7 in the series, Don’t Work, exploring our identity and meaning around work:

Part 1: Work identity serves, then severs

Part 2: Unraveling the layers of working identity

Part 3: The Value of Disappearing

Part 4: How to be unproductive

Part 5: Beyond our basic ambition

Part 6: The “Hard Work” Delusion

Part 7: Diversified Portfolio of Identities

Part 8: Scale down, after scaling up

Part 9: The very easy, not-painful-at-all, 5 super simple steps to changing your career

Part 10: When you don’t have a “calling”

You can support this writing by commenting, hitting the ❤️ or 🔄 below and/or sharing it with a friend. It helps others find my work.

1. Ernest Becker was actually paraphrasing Samuel Johnson, who wrote: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” I prefer the paraphrased version.

2. See Self-Complexity Theory. Linville, P. W. (1987). "Self-complexity as a cognitive buffer against stress-related illness and depression." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(4), 663-676.

3. See Role Enrichment Theory. Wayne, J. H., Musisca, N., & Fleeson, W. (2004). "Considering the role of personality in the work-family experience: Relationships of the big five to work-family conflict and facilitation." Journal of Vocational Behavior, 64(1), 108-130.

4. See Identity-based Motivation Theory. Oyserman, D. (2009). "Identity-based motivation: Implications for action-readiness, procedural-readiness, and consumer behavior." Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19(3), 250-260.

5. Mike’s interview with

Kevin Dahlstrom

is highly recommended to see someone evolving their identity over time: “Designing a Life You Don't Need to Escape.”