Who Am I Without My Job? A Scary Thought Experiment

Recently a scary thought hit me: who am I without my Job? What happens if I remove my work as a programmer from my life. What remains? Who am I, really? Try this thought experiment yourself.

Well, I’m Misha — a human being. I have some skills, knowledge, experience, acquaintances. What is sufficient grounds to call yourself someone? When you meet new people, what do you tell them about yourself? What do you need to say for others to truly know you?

And I got a bit stuck on this question: what remains if I remove my job as an employee at an international company?

Turns out, it’s crucial to draw a boundary between yourself as a person and your main activity. The absence of such a boundary and complete, inseparable identification with your work leads to burnout. It’s extremely risky to heavily depend on some business, someone else’s idea, or a large number of people who created it or work at that company.

If you don’t establish this separation, any problems or changes at work will automatically be associated with and perceived as your personal problems or changes. And the reverse seems true too: any problems or changes in my personal life will automatically affect my work performance and reflect in it.

There’s this show called Severance. It raises a similar question. It describes a technology that allows completely separating your work self from your free-time self. People enter the office through a special elevator where the severance happens. And then these personalities never intersect: they have different memories. So the free-time personality is completely separated from the work personality. A safe solution, essentially.

How are you doing with this? Do you have an answer to the question of who you are? Have you managed to draw the boundary between your personality and your work?