Are you out of date?
Readtime: 3 minutes
A few days ago I was at my dining table with my laptop filling in a biography of me for a professional community I’ve joined.
Writing about my ‘other interests’ caught me out. I initially wrote that I'm really into the gym and music festivals. Both are true. Except that I've only been to the gym one or two times a week recently, down from three or four normally. And I've got exactly one festival in the diary this year.
I sat there looking at what I'd written.
Is what I’ve written about me still true?
The gym reduction started because of an injury, which was real, but also became a convenient explanation that outlasted the injury itself. And then the habit just slipped.
The bit about festivals was different version of the same problem. I've got the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona in a couple of weeks and I'm really looking forward to it. But it's the only festival in the diary this year, and I don't know whether one festival a year counts as a real interest. Maybe I keep saying it because it used to be a bigger thing for me, and I just haven't updated how I describe myself.
I changed the bio to “outside of work I’m often plotting how to spend more time listening to music in the sunshine”.
Why we keep saying it
I think the version of yourself you describe out loud tends to be the version you most want to be true.
So these descriptions can keep going long after our actual behaviour has moved on. Maybe there’s a bit of discomfort in admitting you've changed. "I used to be into X" feels like a small confession. "I'm into X" feels confident and current, and a bit more like the person you'd like to be.
So you keep saying it.
This is fine, up to a point. Some of the descriptions are aspirational, and the behaviour does catch up. You say it enough times and you start to do it again. But other times the gap just keeps widening, and the bio drifts further from the truth.
The bigger version
Bios are a pretty trivial version of this. Where it gets more interesting is with career identity.
A lot of the senior people I work with are still telling a story about who they are professionally that was true five or ten years ago.
I do this too. I still tell people I used to be a partner at KPMG, even though I left nearly four years ago.
The turnaround guy
I know someone who still describes himself as a ‘turnaround guy’. He built his reputation pulling two struggling businesses out of difficult places about a decade ago, and it's the story he leads with when he introduces himself.
But he's not doing turnaround work anymore. He's running a stable, growing business and most of his time goes on developing his leadership team.
If you asked him to describe what he does, he'd give you the turnaround answer. If you asked him what he'd actually been doing the last two years, he'd give you a completely different one. Both versions would be true, but only one of them would be current.
Two questions worth asking
I think it's worth asking two questions about these older descriptions of ourselves.
Is this a sleeping habit I want to wake up? Or have I moved on, and it's not really who I am or want to be?
One says start doing the thing again. The other says update the description.
The gym thing, I think, is the first one. A habit that's sleeping, that I want to wake up.
The festival thing is the second. One good one a year might actually be the right number for me now. The interest hasn't gone, it's just changed shape, and what I say about myself hasn't caught up.
The turnaround guy will tell you he's somewhere in the middle. Most people do. But somewhere in the middle isn't really an answer. The description either needs to update, or he needs to go and do another turnaround.
The description is always telling you something. Worth listening to what.
Thanks for reading.
Mostyn
P.S. If you feel your identity is too tied to your corporate role, you’ll find my Successful but feeling stuck (here's why) YouTube video helpful.