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Whoami

whoami, something most people use to describe their professional selves and display their accolades. But this post deviates slightly from that narrative, and asks in a more humanistic tone. Who am I? As in, not what you do as a profession, not what skills you have, not what company you work for, not what trade you engage in, but what kind of human being are you? How do you react to situation? How do you interact with other humans? What kind of temperament do you have? Are you adventurous and daring, or laid back and accepting?
These questions often get overlooked when performing introspection of your life, and too often we let the career preference dominate the conversation. And it’s easy to understand why that happens, because work is literally what we do for most of our lives. But yet, we cannot forgot that we are humans first, assuming roles that fit into society. We’re all monkeys in a suit, role playing what roles that we like to do, role that we’re good at playing, and roles that are beneficial to you and to the society. I’m a monkey. You’re a monkey. Steve Jobs was a Monkey. Kim Jong Un is a Monkey. We’re all just wearing different suits and costumes, playing whatever role we assumed.
We’re humans, who engage in a profession. We cannot conflate these two segments of our lives, lest the considerations about professions overshadow our human side, which so often it does. You can see this happening all over LinkedIn, where people hyper focus on the careers they have and the roles they play. I think using LinkedIn as a place to showcase your professional skill is fine, but trouble starts once you start building your identity around it. Recently, I saw a profile which proudly proclaimed “if I could live my life in the digital world, I would!”. That person has totally amalgamated career with personality, and while we each may have our own views, that’s something I’m deeply uncomfortable with.
Questions to explore your humanity which should be answered NOT in the context of the workplace, but just, you. As a person in a society.
  1. How adventurous and open to new experiences are you?
  1. How creative and inclined to arts are you?
  1. How sociable are you?
  1. How much do you value physical fitness?
  1. Are you a funny person who likes to jest?
  1. Are you a reliable friend who can lend a listening ear and empathise with others?
  1. How spontaneous are you?
  1. How much do you value your family ties?
  1. Are you a spiritual person?
  1. What are your vices and addictions? How have you come to terms with them?
  1. What are your Pet peeves and irritates you immensely?
  1. What sort of human behaviour can you absolutely not tolerate?
There are of course many other questions, but the central theme here is about emotions and sensations, which is what we humans are at the core.
And it’s also important to answer these as you are, not who you think you are, or who you wish you are. Too often we delude ourselves with imageries about what we wish to be instead of who we really are. Ideally, we all want to be courageous, creative, funny, magnanimous and all values positive. But is that who we really are in our everyday interactions? In answering those questions, you need to think of multiple, not only one, instance of which you acted that way. Even better still, get someone whom you are closely related to you to answer those questions for you, as they would have observed and judged your every single action from a third party perspective.
We should all focus a little more on what it means to be human, and embrace it in everyday interactions. I don’t think there’s a need to be reminded about how we should maintain our professional expertise (get more certification, do more courses, upskilling, doing side projects) as most of us are already very indoctrinated with this mindset. The danger is that in pursuing career excellence, we forget how to be human.
Some things I personally try to do:
  1. Be aggressively happy
  1. Be aggressively positive
  1. Be aggressively reliable
  1. Be aggressively integrous
  1. Be aggressively active
Aggressively is added because, to some degree we’re all a little of the above. Sometimes we’re happy, positive, reliable, integrous and active, and those sometimes might lie to you that it’s enough.
No.
I want to push those embodiments to the limit by being aggressively over the top with them (but not obnoxiously)
I find that these characteristics make you a better person to be around with.
So the next time you meet someone, don’t judge them by their careers, but judge them as a human first, and know that we’re all monkeys in different costumes.
To expand more about careers and self, and given that I said we should focus more on the self, it does not mean that we do not focus on our careers and become so free spirited to not engage in any form of work. Work is an essential part of society and humanity. Essential to society because you as a human living it one needs to give back and contribute positively to it via work, and essential to humanity because the challenges that work poses to you allows you to embrace your unique skills and talents. Being engaged in work and being in the “flow” state allows us to discover more about who we are, gives us an immense feeling of satisfaction, all at the same time being a productive member of society.
One way I have discovered to reconcile these two concepts, work and self, is to firstly, know yourself. What kind of environment do you like working in? What problems do you want to work on? Do you thrive on open ended creative problems, or prefer solving route ones? What field or vocation do you resonate with. Once you have answered these questions about yourself, essentially finding out what makes you as a human tick, then seek out work that enables and support that. If you like solving creative problems, find creative work. If you’re an introvert, find individual contributor roles. If you like IT, find work within that area. The nature of work should fit the moulds of your character demands, not the other way around.
Don’t make a mistake of finding a career, which is looking for a structured path of promotions and title changes, and you progressing “upwards” a ladder to reap rewards. A career is a lie that gives you a false sense of progression, when in fact the work you’re doing may not be what you want to do. For example, it’s a natural career progression for good engineers to be promoted to team leaders, and suddenly they’re no longer doing the work the wanted to do, which was solving complex IT problems, and are now doing work that may not resonate with them, such as leading teams, setting budgets, and all things non-technical.
Instead, seek out work that engages you, allows you to grow, and poses problems that you’re interested in solving. Don't jump at the next opportunity that lets you climb the ladder of “progression”, but jump at the next opportunity that allows you to grow the skills you want, that is a problem you want to solve, that challenges you in area you want to be challenged in. Don’t seek career growth, but seek skill growth. When you’ve upskilled enough through the passages of skill growth, the rewards will come naturally. Don’t worry if after 10 years of work, you’re still not a team leader. On paper, it might seem that your career might not have progressed, but if you’ve spent 10 years growing your skills and becoming an expert problem solver in the domain your company is interested in, you’re way more valuable than a team leader.
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