Stop Making Work Your Identity

Photo by Nubelson Fernandes on Unsplash

Several notable layoffs have occurred over the past few weeks, particularly in the tech industry, which has been jarring both for their size and how they have been carried out. At Google, for example, it was widely reported that many employees learned they'd been cut when they arrived at the office and their key cards no longer worked. While many of these cuts result from organizational “right-sizing” after over-hiring during the pandemic, there is no question that it has many people wondering if more is to come.

It's difficult to predict the future, even in the best of times, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. According to a December 2022 survey, 61 percent of business leaders say their organizations will “likely” have layoffs in 2023, while 70 percent will implement hiring freezes; additionally, 79 percent say that they’re likely to fire the so-called “quiet quitters.”

Additionally, a recent LinkedIn analysis found the percentage of remote job postings fell from a peak of 20 percent in March 2022 to 14 percent in November, which has led some to predict the impending demise of remote work.

What are you, the individual employee, to make of all this? The bottom line is it depends. It depends on your sector, your organization, your role, and your personal situation. And while there may not be a surefire way to future-proof your career from changes to come, one strategy you can employ right now is to separate your identity, or who you are, from what you do.

Meaning-Making Matters

Something that separates us from other beings is our need for and ability to engage in meaning-making, and much of that meaning-making derives from our relationship to work. This makes sense when you consider that the bulk of your time is spent at work. Over the centuries, as work moved from a system of exchange to more higher-order skills, work became something more than just work: it became a thing that defined us, that labeled and ordered us, a thing that gave us meaning and purpose. We don’t just “do work” anymore; we have become workers.

Economist Arthur Brooks, writing in The Atlantic, described the danger of objectifying oneself in terms of a single characteristic, “and thus encouraging others to do so as well. In the case of work, that might look like judging one’s self-worth–positively or negatively–based on job performance or professional standing.” As Brooks draws the inevitable line out, what happens to your self-worth when you can no longer do that thing that has defined you for so long? Who are you, without work, when you no longer have it?

As Brooks noted, when we define ourselves this way, we encourage others to do so. The question, “What do you do?” isn’t just a cocktail party conversation starter. It's a value judgment. We don’t want our kids to get into college just “to get a job.” We want our kids to get into the “best” college and become doctors, lawyers, financial managers, and the like. When what we do becomes who we are, our internal measures of success shift as well due to external forces. How we define meaning and purpose shifts. What we value as meaningful work shifts.

Many, if not most, people are looking for something they would describe as purposeful or meaningful work. But what does this mean? In a literature review of the connection between work engagement and meaningful work, Simon L. Albrecht defined meaningful work “as a positive psychological state whereby people feel they make a positive, important, and useful contribution to a worthwhile purpose through the execution of their work” (Advances, 2013).

On the other hand, employee engagement, as defined by Gallup, is “the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace.” The differences between teams with high and low engagement include absenteeism, turnover, customer loyalty, and profitability, among other measures. Engaged employees matter for the organization. But in the face of layoffs, hiring freezes, and threatened retribution against “quiet quitters,” it’s hard to imagine anyone is feeling much enthusiasm about work right now. Indeed, after a decade of upward movement, employee engagement declined for the second year in a row in 2022.

When we move from individuals feeling like they are making a "positive, important, and useful contribution to a worthwhile purpose through the execution of their work" to "the enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace" as measured by customer loyalty and profitability, we begin to tie individual identity with organizational commitment which inevitably leads to greater chances of burnout, not deeper engagement. What matters is no longer the employee's ability to create meaning through the work. The demonstration of commitment becomes the work.

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What happens when we stop defining ourselves by our work?

We may not be able to predict what will happen with our economy over the next few months, years, or decades. But something important happens when you let what you do stop defining who you are. Here are just a few of the possible outcomes:

• It turns “opportunities for growth” into actual opportunities. When what you do is your identity, it’s hard to separate constructive criticism from what feels like a personal attack. When you separate the two, you’re better able to focus on the content of the message and turn feedback into a productive opportunity to grow and get better. In a world where advancement is largely the responsibility of the individual, knowing how to seek out feedback and develop a growth mindset is critical.
• It changes artificial measures of success. When you no longer define who you are by what you do, you stop reaching for goalposts that don’t actually exist. You’re better able to stop “I’ll feel successful when” thinking: “I’ll feel successful when I get that promotion,” “I’ll feel successful when I make as much money as my peers,” “I’ll feel successful when I have a particular title.” The goalposts always move. And they’ve been set up to ensure that certain people never reach them. Those who will succeed in the future of work will define their own success and create their own goalposts.
• It makes change–even job loss–more bearable. Are you going to face a layoff the next year? Possibly. Possibly not. Your job is to do your homework and be as prepared as possible for whatever is to come. What is certain is that change is inevitable. You might lose your job. You might get a new manager, and your role may change completely. When your job is not your identity, you are better able to navigate these changes with adaptability and resilience, two key skills for the future of work.
• It diminishes disappointment when the “work family” goes away or does not live up to expectations. Related to the last point, there has been a move in recent years to use the word “family” when describing work culture. As devastating as the layoffs at Google were for those who received them, it is equally demoralizing for those who were left behind, no longer able to trust that the culture will protect them. When you separate who you are from what you do, you are better able to see work for what it really is. It’s not your family, your reason for being, and it definitely doesn’t define your worthiness in this world. It’s just work. Don’t let it matter more than that.