There’s some wisdom in Paul Graham’s advice, but I’d be wary of promoting it too much: I think that it’s easy for people to take it too far, to the point where it starts causing psychological damage. At least in my experience, there’s a connection between identity and motivation, and if you try to make your identity too small, you also start to suffer from a lack of motivation and feelings of pointlessness.
(I’ve been working on an essay called “keep your identity strategic, not small”, but haven’t gotten it into a satisfactory shape; but this Melting Asphalt essay touches on some of the same points)
There’s some wisdom in Paul Graham’s advice, but I’d be wary of promoting it too much: I think that it’s easy for people to take it too far, to the point where it starts causing psychological damage. At least in my experience, there’s a connection between identity and motivation, and if you try to make your identity too small, you also start to suffer from a lack of motivation and feelings of pointlessness.
(I’ve been working on an essay called “keep your identity strategic, not small”, but haven’t gotten it into a satisfactory shape; but this Melting Asphalt essay touches on some of the same points)
FYI, this essay exists:
https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/uR8c2NPp4bWHQ5u45/strategic-choice-of-identity
I wrote https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/keep-your-identity-large/ on a similar topic which you might find interesting.