My personality is just 'productivity'

A confession from someone who forgot how to be human

So June was one of those weirdest months for me. Couple of friends left the city, I almost decreased my monthly income by 3/5th, fucked my entire sleep-wake-exercise-eat schedule, picked up some bad habits, and went into the loop of doing exactly the opposite of what anyone should be doing with their lives.

Doesn't really matter how I got here. what matters is how I'll get out. And trust me, I'm trying every single day. Making small dents, mostly thanks to one long, important conversation I had…

She asked: "Who are you if you're not your work?"

And that was hard. Because I had just chosen to flip my career upside down at the exact moment my personal life was already falling apart.

I started listing things: I'm fit, I'm ambitious, I'm curious, I'm kind and helpful, I'm a good brother, son, friend...

She stopped me. "Those are all performative. What about you isn't performance-based?"

And I just... blanked. Nothing came to mind. Not one thing.

We were talking about how my life was 12-24 months ago vs. now. Everything's downstream - financial health, physical health, mental health. All of it.

(Okay, social health is up. But I’m not really that person, and honestly, I kind of hate that it’s gone up. Physical health hasn’t tanked, just... shifted. Two years ago I could deadlift four plates and had 30% more muscle. Now I can casually run a 10k. I can fight. Different strengths, I guess.)

But why? Why is everything going south?

What makes this so uncomfortable is that after a massive down in 2020, I only had ups. Just straight ups for years. So this current down is deeply uncomfortable. I don't know how to sit with it.

Then, because the internet knows when you need it, I saw this reel: someone said if you're not confused in your 20s, you're doing it wrong. Your 20s are for exploring, taking risks, traveling. So by 30 you know what to pour your heart into.

Comforting advice. Also terrifying. What if you never find that thing? Waste your 20s searching, then waste your 30s because you still don't know?

The past 5 years

For 5 years, my entire thought process has been:

• What work makes more money?

• What work feels fulfilling?

• How do I connect with more people?

• How do I build an audience that gets me more work?

• How do I become someone people want to work with?

Work work work work work.

Not fun. Not trips. Not time off. Not relationships.

Sure, I traveled. Dated. Gifted my parents things. But all of it - ALL of it - was a byproduct of treating work as the only priority. Of making money.

I couldn't think of anything that's just me. Not performing. Not earning. Just being.

The jar metaphor

She used this image: think of yourself as a jar with different chits in it. Work is one chit. Making money is another. Relationships, health, hobbies - all separate chits.

My jar? It's basically one giant work chit with some tiny scraps labeled "other stuff I do because I made money from work."

I've been attaching my entire self-worth to my net worth. To my work output. To my title, my projects, my next opportunity.

Sitting with discomfort

So here I am. 23, realizing that 90% of my personality is just... performance. Competitiveness. Work as identity.

Maybe that's why everything feels downstream right now. When your entire identity is tied to one thing, and that thing wobbles even slightly, your whole world shakes.

What now?

Honestly, I don't know. And maybe that's okay.

Maybe the first step is just sitting here, writing this instead of immediately pivoting to the next work thing.

Maybe it's admitting that when someone asks "who are you?" the answer shouldn't start with "I work at..." or "I'm building..."

Maybe it's being okay with not having ups all the time. With not performing for a bit.

I keep thinking about that jar metaphor. What would it look like to have multiple chits? Real ones, not just work-adjacent ones?

What would it mean to be someone beyond my portfolio?

I don't have answers. Just this discomfort. And maybe that's exactly where I need to be.

Things I’ve been consuming lately:

1. Wanted to get some real clarity on what to do next and before jumping on to a shiny new opportunity, I felt like I needed to pause and experiment a bit.
   

   So I read this Paul Graham essay on how to get startup ideas (or more broadly, how to find interesting problems to solve in life). It was such a solid read. Highly recommend everyone give it a shot.
   

   I think I’m going to treat it like a manual - something I’ll keep coming back to whenever I feel stuck or unfulfilled, and need to remind myself what’s worth building toward.

   

2. One thing I’ve been trying lately is audiobooks - started with hacking growth by Sean Ellis. Not too deep into it yet, but something to think about:
   

   Sean was consulting and got a 6-month project with Dropbox founder Drew Houston. Before even thinking about growth, he first asked: is this even worth growing?

   So, he got on calls with customers and asked: if Dropbox disappeared tomorrow, would your life change?
   
   It’s a brutally honest way to test product-market fit. Think about it - if Sam Altman asked this about Chatgpt today, most people would panic. That’s PMF. That’s why it works.

3. I absolutely love how Marc Andreessen writes. It’s like he’s passive-aggressively telling you things you should already know, and low-key shaming you for not knowing them.

   
   This piece is about how to hire the best people you’ve ever worked with.
   I’m not hiring anyone. Not even in that stage of life.
   
   But that’s what i love about the internet - you can reverse engineer stuff meant for others and apply it to your tiny little life.
   
   So I did that.
   
   And if someone like Marc, who’s sold a company for over a billion dollars is prioritizing these three traits in people he hires, then internalizing them as someone looking to be hired just makes sense.

   He talks about:

   • drive

   • curiosity

   • ethics

   
   That’s it. Not GPA, not school, not your fancy company.
   Just: how much can you push, do you care about things you love, and can you be trusted? Beautiful.

---

Yep, that’s pretty much it for this month.

Honestly, it was way out of bounds for me across the board.
The food I ate, the coffee I drank, the people I met, the kilometers I ran, the fights I fought, everything was just… excessive.

But weirdly, I liked it. Very different pace for someone like me.

Anyway, here’s a cute little collage I made on Google Photos.

Catch you next month, got a bunch of good things coming up. Let’s get to it.