What happens when your career becomes your whole identity
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Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity
#2Think only problematic insomuch as your career doesn't equal your higher calling, i.e. your career is status driven or following the herd.
Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity
#3work as identity burnout as lifestyle - erza klien had a good podcast about this llast year.
Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity
#4Think only problematic insomuch as your career doesn't equal your higher calling, i.e. your career is status driven or following the herd.
My career is not a high paying one, or one that involves chasing trends. It is a thing I love doing and would be doing on the side if I had another career; I’ve done that in the past. It is still most of my life by default and this does feel like a problem.
It is a differently shaped problem than “infinite overtime and trying to constantly present as Rich Enough” but it is a problem.
(I am an artist who mostly draws independent long-form narrative comics.)
Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity
#5My mother was very much like this. When she retired, she found it quite hard to re-adjust. Fortunately she has a few hobbies to fall back on.
Personally, I find it quite a hard balance to get right. On the one hand, tying your identity whole-heartedly to your profession seems dangerous. On the other, being entirely apathetic about it seems like a waste of a life (that is, one spent mostly at work). I try to hang somewhere in the middle, but it's something I try to stay on top of.
Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity
#6“ The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?”
http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html
If you aren’t honest with yourself about why you got into a profession it may wear against your psyche and burn you out. The lawyer knew chasing status would require a sacrifice of happiness, time, and relationships but didn’t want to admit it.
Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity
#7In my experience extreme workaholism can often be a way to avoid or defer major life decisions that someone doesn't want to make or even consciously recognize. High status careers are often structured, full of positive feedback loops, and well compensated, all of which can strengthen the urge to defer existential questions about meaning, purpose, community, and identity until some unspecified future date, even (perhaps especially) in highly rational or analytical thinkers. Eventually the debt comes due but sometimes not until many decades later.
Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity
#8In my experience extreme workaholism can often be a way to avoid or defer major life decisions that someone doesn't want to make or even consciously recognize. High status careers are often structured, full of positive feedback loops, and well compensated, all of which can strengthen the urge to defer existential questions about meaning, purpose, community, and identity until some unspecified future date, even (perha…
Boy, did I learn this the hard way.
Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity
#9My mother was very much like this. When she retired, she found it quite hard to re-adjust. Fortunately she has a few hobbies to fall back on. Personally, I find it quite a hard balance to get right. On the one hand, tying your identity whole-heartedly to your profession seems dangerous. On the other, being entirely apathetic about it seems like a waste of a life (that is, one spent mostly at work ). I try to hang som…
Love your job and you'll never work a day in your life. Live your job and you won't have any love left to give.
Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity
#10In my experience extreme workaholism can often be a way to avoid or defer major life decisions that someone doesn't want to make or even consciously recognize. High status careers are often structured, full of positive feedback loops, and well compensated, all of which can strengthen the urge to defer existential questions about meaning, purpose, community, and identity until some unspecified future date, even (perha…
Boy, did I learn this the hard way.
How so?