Untangle your self-worth and your work

When you are passionate about your work, it can easily bleed into every other area of your life — you read about work-related topics in your free time, you think about a particularly challenging problem in the shower, you journal about your work, etc. It also changes ones social circle: hanging out with an ambitious and curious start-up crowd easily leads to work as the default topic in a gathering of friends. Once you have work deeply embedded in your interests and social life, it does not take a huge mental leap to “work is what defines me as an individual”.

That then leads to a precarious “all eggs in one basket” situation that leaves you vulnerable in cases of professional failure (“My start-up is not doing well; I am a failure”) or burnout (“I’m cynical about my work; nothing matters”).

It took quite a bit of time to disentangle my self-worth and my professional identity, but it makes life so much better. - Toxic Productivity / Many technical people mistake a passion for their craft with a passion for their work